Legendary animated film stages a comeback

The state-run Ukrainian Animated Cartoon Studios has finished filming the first episode of the new animated series The Cossacks. Around the World being made with support from the Ukrainian State Film Agency (Derzhkino). In this cycle, the three legendary characters – Tur, Hrai, and Oko – travel around the world, including Australia, India, and America. One of the goals of the animated series is to put across the Ukrainian narrative to the 4-12-year-old viewers and acquaint them with various countries in an entertaining form.

According to film director Maryna Medved, the new series is intended to educate children, for it reveals the culture of other countries to them. Each episode has a key animal character that personifies the country the heroes have arrived in. For example, it will be the pelican in Australia. The cartoon also shows such notable inventions of the Australians as boomerang, windsurfing, and bungee jumping. As the series is jocular, it is the Ukrainian Cossacks who invent these.

The serial is now being edited and dubbed. One of the elements of the cartoon’s soundtrack is the song “Cossack Rode through Town” by the Kozak System band.

“We are pleased very much that this marvelous animated film about Cossacks, which dates back to the years of my childhood, has received a new lease of life in today’s Ukraine, and we have taken a direct part in the making of it by composing the soundtrack,” the band’s front man Ivan Lenio commented. “I wish our children would love this updated version of the Cossacks’ adventures the way we were literally spellbound by the previous versions of this undoubted masterpiece made by Volodymyr Dakhno and Eduard Kyrych.”

The animated series The Cossacks. Around the World won the 4th Derzhkino selection contest in 2012, with contract being signed in late 2015. The cartoon’s overall length is 39 minutes, three episodes 13 minutes each. The premiere will be held later in 2017.

It will be recalled that the Zaporozhian Cossacks – strongman Tur, hunk Hrai, and shorty Oko – first appeared on the screen in 1967. Film director Volodymyr Dakhno and production designer Eduard Kyrych created them at the Kyivnaukfilm studios. Kyrych is working on the current series, too. Ten cycles on the three Ukrainian Cossacks have been made in the past 50 years.