As I watched noted director and film critic Natalia Lukinyk’s touching moving documentary film Alexander Tatarsky, Or How To Embrace The Immense . . . I found it hard to believe that it has been almost a year since one of the biggest hearts in Russian animation stopped beating. Natalia’s touching celluloid portrait began as part of her new trilogy of films about creative Russian and Ukrainian artists in three different fields titled The Restless Talents. Sadly the film was completed as a labor of love after the untimely death of her close friend.

Alexander Tatarsky

Natalia gives us a warm and insightful view into the early life that shaped a true artistic genius. Humorous moments of Alexander playing with his beloved toy collection which he said every grown-up child needed and pictures of him with his dogs and cats that played an important part in his life from early childhood show one side of this very complex man. Most beautiful of all are the pictures of him with his wife and of him holding his young son at home in Moscow.

The great director and animator went on to found Pilot Studios, the first private animation studio in the new Russia, turning it into one of the world’s leading animation studios. Pilot is world renowned, winning awards at festivals the world over and mentoring several decades of animators and script writers that now work in all corners of the world. Speaking of his dear friend and colleague at Pilot, Valentin Telegin said “He took up a flag and led the troops.” This quote complete summarizes the great man’s life.

For those of us who had the privilege to know Sasha, Alexander Tatarsky, Or How To Embrace The Unembracable . . . brings back wonderful memories. Even though my Russian is limited to a few words I can recall afternoons on the KROK boat, sharing drinks and laughter with a man whose humor and delight of the world knew no boundaries geographically or linguistically. For those who were not lucky enough to encounter this amazing man or his films, Natalia’s documentary serves as a perfect introduction to his amazing world.

I recently found an animated world in my hometown of Gent, Belgium in a most unexpected place: the Campus Volkskliniek Hospital operating room where I had eye surgery. I can’t say that I felt no anxiety; after all, I was lying on a hospital gurney with an IV in my arm and an oxygen tube up my nose, knowing that an incision was about to be made into my eye and that I wasn’t even going to be given good drugs or knocked out. But with impending blindness as the alternative, I chose my only option.

About a year ago, I began to think that the projectors at the animation festivals were getting very fuzzy and I kept moving further and further toward the front row to see the screen. It became obvious to me that the problem was not with the projectors, but with my eyes. This was a big problem, since I spend a great deal of my time in screening rooms, and what animation festival would want a blind juror, much less a “visually challenged” journalist.

Over the next 12 months, my eyesight rapidly deteriorated. By the time I took my 7 week “Grand Festival Tour” in November, I knew that I was in real trouble. Traveling alone was quite a challenge. It was very unsettling to stare at the arrival and departure screens in the airport and train stations without being able to read a thing, not to mention managing my arrival at an airport in London and taking the tube across town while pulling a very heavy suitcase. I really related to Blanche DuBoise, as I too relied upon the kindness of strangers.

Once I arrived at the festivals, there was always a friend on hand to help me get down the theatre aisle. This simple walk had become a challenge since my night vision was almost gone, and a dim theatre was like entering the belly of the beast. It’s amazing how conspicuous you feel sitting in the front row of a partially full theatre, but I was lucky to have friends offer to escort me down to the front and sit with me.

Enter into my life Doctor Jan Poelman. When he first diagnosed my vision problem as cataracts and said that there was no way to tell how rapidly they would progress, I was horrified. My next thought was “how long can I put surgery off”. I had a busy festival schedule through February, and no matter how silly it seems, spring sunshine and flowers sounded like a much better time for an operation than during the cold and rainy months.

NANCY WITH DR. JAN POELMAN IN THE OPERATING ROOM

Over my next few visits to Doctor Poelman, I discovered that he had a keen sense of humor, an absolute necessity for any doctor that is going to cut me open anywhere. He was straightforward in explaining what was going to happen to my eyes. He answered all my questions, and most important of all, he laughed, qualities that I usually found lacking in my U.S. surgeons (although Jeri, my GP/Nurse Practitioner in San Francisco also possessed these qualities).

Doctor Poelman made me feel secure enough about the entire process so that when I went to the hospital to have my right eye cut open and fitted with its new plastic lens I felt amazingly calm. I was astonished to find only a ten minute wait at the hospital to check in, and then it was right upstairs, where the nurses checked my blood pressure and dilated my eye. Each eye is operated on a week apart just in case something should go wrong and to give you time to recover and adjust.

After a few minutes, off I went to the pre-op room for my IV, which was a mild relaxant, and a local anesthetic for my eye. The nurses gave me my fashion accessories to go with my hospital gown: a blue plastic hat and blue plastic shoe covers. Yes, I was amazed that I got to wear my shoes into surgery and it was somehow very comforting – the adult version of taking my Teddy Bear to bed with me. My entire face was eventually covered in the operating room, with a cloth leaving just a small space where my right eye was exposed. Throughout this entire process, the nurses and my doctor laughed and joked with me, which really helped me relax. They even got into the spirit of taking the photos for this article. The gurney ride to the operating room was only a few feet away from the pre op room. Although we were joined by my smiling doctor, I was pleased that the minute surgery began, everyone became very serious and professional. As much as I love to laugh, this was my eye, and I didn’t want Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush operating on me no matter how much I love Groucho Marx.

NANCY IN PRE OP WITH NURSE NADINE GLORIEUX

No one prepared me for the adventure that awaited me on that operating table. First of all a very bright light was shined in my eye, and then the most fantastic animated light show began. I have never seen such intense, vivid colors, not even at the Fillmore light shows in the ‘60’s. The magenta and aquamarines were intertwined with olive green circles that radiated lustrous gold and orange shooting sparks that felt like they were flying out of my brain. The colors and shapes all moved in rhythmic patterns to the music on the operating room radio and made me feel that I was in the middle of an Otto Fischinger animated short. I can only imagine what I would have seen and heard if I had been given the really good drugs.

DR. POELMAN AND I SHARE A LAUGH AFTER COMPLETION OF A SUCCESSFUL OPERATION

The week between the two surgeries was a bit schizophrenic. One eye had 20/20 vision and the other one had zilch vision, and by the end of the seven days my weaker eye had lost the battle and given in to my stronger eye. I began to have glimpses into the wonderful world of colors and sight that I had lost. Now that round two is over, I can see the world even without my rose colored glasses (although I still need them to read) and it looks like my world is a pretty good place to be right now.

There is no way I can adequately thank my many friends who supported me throughout this entire ordeal. I especially want to acknowledge my numerous friends who helped me look like I knew where I was and what was happening at animation festivals. I never could have done it without you all.

Nik and I leave on 1 May for the Trickfilm Festival in Stuttgart, where we will give a workshop and I will watch and write about films from anywhere in the theatre that I feel like sitting. From there we travel to Lisbon for Monstra where I have the honor to be on the Student Film jury and Nik will perform with the fabulous musician/animator Rasto Ćirić. Nik will also give a three day workshop. I will, of course, send you full reports of these events.

5 through 11 November I will be at Espinho, Portugal at the Cinanima Animation Festival

13 through 19 November I am very pleased and honored to be a juror at the Bradford Animation Festival

19 through 21 November I will visit friends in Riga, Latvia

21 through 25 November I will attend the Black Nights Animation Festival in Tallinn, Estonia

From there I fly to Rome for the I Castelli festival where Nik finally joins me and we give a presentation and workshop, from 28 November to 2 December

3 December to the 6th Nik will be conducting a workshop and I will be writing about the Bournemouth School of Animation in Bournemouth, England

I am afraid that I will have limited e-mail access during my travels but Nik will be at home until 28 November fielding responses. I look forward to seeing many of you during my travels.

Nancy - Cheers!

Nancy - Serious

I will be happy to receive comments from any readers as well as question and of course I expect to get e-mails from those who don’t agree with what I say. I welcome all of the above.

As most of you know Nik and I lost our beloved 15 year old Dalmatian Kirby earlier this year and he was soon followed to dog heaven by our equally beloved 15 year old Molly. It was very painful for us to lose both of them so close together but we are dog people and we knew that somewhere down the road there would be another dog that needed a good home and a lot of love. We had planned not to even think about a dog until after we returned from KROK in the Ukraine in early October but low but as we all know life does not always go the way we plan.

Last Sunday Nik and I saw a sign on a tree in a little park near our house for a homeless 4 year old West Highland Terrier that was free but must be taken before the next day or it would be go to the pound. It turned out that his mistress is dead, the master is in jail and their two sons put the dog out on the street. The family that took him in after a week on the streets already have 2 Skiperkeys and couldn’t keep a third dog but they did take him to a vet to be checked out and an implanted chip was found. The vet tracked down the children who said that they didn’t want anything to do with their father, the dog, or anything that the father had ever touched! Please do not write for more details — we don’t have any and don’t really want to know what happened.
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Nik and I want to thank everyone who sent us such lovely e-mails of condolances about Kirby’s passing — they have made us feel so much better but even though we miss him terribly he did live to a ripe old Dalmation age and spent the last year touring Europe with us (he could bark very expertily in Flemish which is more than we can do).

Through the miracle of modern computers I will be reading my story about my train trip to Russia on the radio show TALES FROM THE EARTH, KUSF 90.3 FM on Wednesday, April 11 at 7:30 PM (San Francisco time — everyone else has to do the time conversions if they want to hear it). For more information visit www.talesfromearth.com - web cast www.live365.com/stations/kusf and iTunes. The guest the week before me is poet Laurence Ferlinghetti.

For those interested in animation you can go to
http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=pageone&article_no=3211
to read my article about the 26th annual AMINA Animation Festival in Brussels, Belgium in February which appeared a few weeks ago on the ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE (AWN) website.

Our beloved Dalmatian Kirby passed away last night. All of you who knew him know how much we loved him and how much he will be missed.

As in all things with the bad comes the good. We have received our official Belgian residence and work permits so we are legally Belgian. Now we begin the long hard task of learning Flemish.

As we near the first Anniversary of the beginning of our new life we will soon send out an account of our adventures in Europe.

Nik and Nancy

Happy Solstice, Merry Christmas, and light another Chanukah candle for us.
We wish you the best of everything in 2007.

With Love from Belgium,

Nik and Nancy

Dancing on a Mountaintop on the Douro River

Who says that Nik and I can’t be in two places at once. While we were
celebrating a very quiet Thanksgiving Day in Gent (no turkeys harmed in our
home that day) our alter egos were partying away at Tracy and Richard’s
fabulous party thanks to the master work of Chris de Monterey.

Holiday Greeting to All,

Nik, Nancy, Molly and Kirby

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To all our American Friends we wish you a

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

To everyone who is gathering at Tracy and Richard’s to carry on a long
tradition

WE ARE WITH YOU IN SPIRIT

AND . . . to the rest of our friends around the world we raise a glass to
you all

HOLIDAY CHEER from

NIK NANCY KIRBY and MOLLY

N&N at Annecy Plus