Video: Animation in the Soviet Union was often a glorious thing to behold: experimental, surreal, and eclectic, even amidst government censorship. In fact, just one home-grown animated film didn’t make it past the censors: Andrei Khrzhanovsky’s 1968 satire The Glass Harmonica.
Open Culture pointed us toward this particular film and explains the context in which it was made and subsequently censored. Some rather surprising animated subject matter made its way to Soviet audiences. The Glass Harmonica did not, because of, according to the European Film Philharmonic Institute, “its controversial portrayal of the relationship between governmental authority and the artist.” Yep, the censors didn’t like the film’s portrayal of censorship. The film wasn’t publicly available until after 1989.
Just a heads up: this film contains some pretty grotesque anti-semitic imagery.
Watch the Surrealist Glass Harmonica, the Only Animated Film Ever Banned by Soviet Censors, (1968) [Open Culture]