Description:

A surreal film-portrait of poet Vladimir Mayakovsky based on his eponymous poem.

The poem and some attempts at English translation can be read here.

The first animation meant as a stop-motion film made at Lenfilm in over 50 years. The only problem was that there wasn't a stop-motion camera available for the director, so she developed a technique of reworking existing film footage that Yevteyeva kept true to ever since.

A few quotes from film critics:

The film is inspired by images of poetry and the era of Vladimir Mayakovsky. It is like a living "optic nerve", painfully responding to the fetishization of the poet as the leader of the crowd and calming down only on the gentle intonations of Mayakovsky the lyricist. In the living fabric of the film, related and completely polar textures are organically combined and interpenetrated: animated drawings on glass, chronicles, fragments from the film "The Young Lady and the Hooligan" (in which the poet acted), appliqué, photography, real faces... / A. Artyukh /

Once upon a time there lived Mayakovsky, a tragic poet. Having killed himself, he became a monument exuding marble slime. It follows, therefore, that someone needed that. His poems began to be crammed in schools, and the slime became mixed with boredom. Irina Yevteyeva made a film about Mayakovsky with the strange title "Horse, Violin.. and a Little Nervous". Not a laudatory or devastating (in the spirit of current trends) biography, but an enchanting visual fantasy. Her wordless film is an attempt to find a visual equivalent to Mayakovsky's poetic word. This is not a film adaptation of selected poems by the poet, nor an anthology on the screen. Rather, it is a door to the world of the POET. Love, a good attitude towards horses and other creatures, wound-up enthusiasm (whose hand wound it up?), pathos and pain, marble that shackles the heart - all this is intertwined in the film... /S. Anashkin/

Awards:
1991 - Russia, Zarechny - International Film Festival-Salon "Shameless Cinema" (Нестыдное кино) - Grand Prix
1992 - Russia - "Debut" International Film Festival (?) - Best Animated Film
1992 - Latvia, Riga - Arsenal International Film Festival - Prize
1992 - Belarus, Minsk - Women's Cinema International Film Festival - Best Debut