Black and White (Блэк энд уайт (Чёрное и белое), 1932) by Leonid Amalrik and Ivan Ivanov-Vano

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Black and White
Блэк энд уайт (Чёрное и белое)
Blek end uayt (Chyornoye i beloye) (ru)

Year 1932
Director(s) Amalrik Leonid
Ivanov-Vano Ivan
Studio(s) Mezhrabpomfilm
Language(s) Russian
Genre(s) Literature (Rus./East Slavic)
Politics
Animation Type(s)  Drawn (not cel)
Length 00:06:45
Wordiness 5.27
Animator.ru profile Ru, En
147 visitors

Subtitles:
Blek end uayt (Chyornoye i beloye).1932.en.1.24fps-1933Karnot.1726299890.srt
Date: September 14 2024 07:44:50
Language: English
Quality: good
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Creator(s): Ettiene Karnot, O. Polenova, Niffiwan

Blek end uayt (Chyornoye i beloye).1932.en.2.24fps-1933Hughes.1726299834.srt
Date: September 14 2024 07:43:54
Language: English
Quality: ok
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Creator(s): Langston Hughes, Lydia Filatova, Niffiwan

Blek end uayt (Chyornoye i beloye).1932.en.3.24fps-1991.1726300056.srt
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Creator(s): Dorian Rottenberg, Niffiwan

Blek end uayt (Chyornoye i beloye).1932.en.4.24fps-2021.1726299974.srt
Date: September 14 2024 07:46:14
Language: English
Quality: good
Upload notes: 1480 characters long (view)
Creator(s): EconJobRumours, Niffiwan

Blek end uayt (Chyornoye i beloye).1932.en.5.24fps-2024.1726301270.srt
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Blek end uayt (Chyornoye i beloye).1932.ru.1.24fps.1726300809.srt
Date: September 14 2024 08:00:09
Language: Russian
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Description:

A look at black-white race relations in America, about the very brief rebellion of a black sugar plantation worker against a white "Sugar King". Adapted from Mayakovsky's poem.

Only the final 7 minutes of the originally 20-minute cartoon have survived to our day. It is an adaptation of a poem written by the famous Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky on July 5, 1925, the day after he spent a day in Havana, Cuba, because his passenger line "Espagne" made a stop-over there.

The cartoon was made in the wake of the 1932 visit of 22 American blacks to the USSR - they were going to make a live-action "Black and White", but it never ended up getting made - you can read their story here.

As described in director Ivanov-Vano's 1984 book, it was originally divided into three parts - part one showed how beautiful and idyllic Cuba was, part two showed the backbreaking labour of the blacks in the country (juxtaposed against the white overseers not working), while part three shows one particular black laborer named Willie and his brief rebellion. It seems that part one and part of part two are lost. The technique was paper cutouts.

In 1933, in return for the US recognizing the USSR, the USSR "agreed to end all propaganda critical of the policies and social order of the US", so this movie would have been impossible just a year later (it seems that tensions did not seriously worsen again until in the years after WW2 and the creation of NATO).

In 1997, another edit was made by the American company Films By Jove for their DVD set "Animated Soviet Propaganda", where the film was greatly sped up, some scenes cut out, seriously re-edited, and made to fit the song "Motherless Child" (bringing it down from 7 to 2.5 minutes). That version is the second video above.

Despite everything, that version is perhaps a more powerful experience than the surviving original film, as the combination of the excellent song and the film's imagery counts for a lot and probably makes up for its many defects. It is also missing the ridiculous vocalizations of Mr. Bragg present in the original, which make the scene more comical rather than serious. Dr. Grob reviewed this version in 2017.

Perhaps because this film dives head-first into what is still a painful area in US society, it seems that more ink has been spilled over it than any other animated Soviet film of the period.

A wonderful article about the poem and the film can be read at AAIHS.

Christina Kiaer dedicated over 20 pages to a detailed analysis of it in the book "Comintern Aesthetics" (2020, p.364-386).

There are five selectable English translations. Click on their info pages for detailed notes.

 

DISCUSSION



1.Admin

Here's the full "EconJobRumours" translation of the poem, that I saw back in 2021. I'm posting it here because the URL is now dead and I can't find it anywhere else. I figure it should be preserved at least somewhere online. It's a rather "spicy" version, more so than the Russian text, I'd say. But interesting.


Mayakovsky - Black and White (1925)

Economist
0e1a

Not much has changed:

A glimpse
at Havana
bright from the windows
A sunland
under the palms stand
red shadows,
the one legged flamingoes;
and bloom
collarlos
In high toned
Vedado.
Of frontiers
Havana
no lack;
Dollars bound the white man,
bare pockets the black.
And so
Willie stands flush
with his brush
before Henry Clay
& Co.
Enough splinters
and fluff
to stock a dead forest
Has black Willie brushed
his lean living
to win.
That's why Willie's hair
off has been harassed
And his belly
brushed in.

Dreams dwarf In cramped beds --
thin phantoms of joy --
Sometimes a thief
or a wharf gang chief
throws a cent
to the "boy."
No escape from the dirt shoveling shoe.
if only
man walked
on his head?--
All the worse !
More dirt
would be spread.
Hairs are a thousand,
feet only two.
Sparkles
and sputters
a three mile jazz.
Straight and ahead
slick boulevards spin.
"Ah here," his mind
the dim thought
has,
the veritable
Eden
must have been.
No subtleties coil
in Willie's
brain,
where little was sown
and little grown;
but one thing's cut
far in
by pain --
(Not deeper
the words indent
the stone of Maseo's
monument)
"White man eats fruit
that's ripe
and firm;
black man
shares his
with the worm.
In fair hands
fair work
parks;
on dark hands
falls the dark."
No great queries worried Willie
but one question
had him stumped.
How that question
drilled through Willie ·--
When it stuck him,
willy-nilly,
from his arm
the big brush
slumped.

Too bad that
just then
heaved his way
toward the King of Cigars
Henry Clay,
in pluperfect whiteness
and big jowl wag,
his royal
sugar highness
Mr. Bragg.
Up to the fat one
runs the
'n***er':
"Beg yo' pardon
Mr. Bragg,
Aint it funny
yo' lily white
sugar
Black man makes and puts it in the bag
With yo' white color
black cigar's sho'
out o' place;
goes lots better
on the black man's
face.
Sugar in yo' coffee?--
Help yo'self,
help;
Be so kind, sir
make it
yo'self."
To flaming yellow
suddenly
the royal whiteness burns.

Here such a question
never goes.
The king does what
each white lord
learns;
then from his hands
his soiled gloves
throws.
Shaky Willie wipes his hand
across his drawers
across his stern.
Broad red smears
he leaves there from
his bloody nose.
Painful sniffs he draws up with
his Injured organ.
Don't ask no questions
of a
gorgon.
One hand on his brush
Willy
presses,
the other to
his bruised cheek
goes.

That such questions
one addresses
To Comintern,
Moscow,
how should Willie
know?


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