Kievnauchfilm Artistic Collective for Fictive Animation
ESSAY ABOUT MY GRANDFATHER
My grandfather is the same age as this century.
He is very old.
But once, long ago, he was very young
and he had a friend. He was named Gray.
He was a horse. He was very, very smart.
My young grandpa and Gray came to live in the city.
Back then, the city had neither a metro, nor trolleybuses, nor buses.
If you needed to go somewhere, you hired a cab driver
who drove a horse.
But Grandfather and Gray were poor
and couldn't hire a cab driver,
so they walked.
But then they decided to enroll in a course for horse-drawn cab drivers
and earn some money.
Grandpa was very nervous; he even put on his boots.
The course instructor was very strict.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Hey, you! Come to the blackboard.
Answer in French: what is this?
Grandpa didn't know how to say "lamp" in French.
But Gray knew.
Lamp. Lamp.
Now tell me how you're going to invite passengers in.
"Ah," said Grandpa, "I know."
"Sit down, uncle. Sit down, mama. Sit down, little sister."
"Fool," said the owner, "Come on, all together:"
S'il vous plait, monsieur! S'il vous plait, madame! S'il vous plait, mademoiselle!
And now for a geography lesson.
These streets are special.
[Goods for Gourmands]
Decent, wealthy gentlemen live here.
They have a lot of money, and you must drive them around.
But here - no way.
The streets here are crooked, the people are dirty.
Mechanics, lathe operators, tramps, and all kinds of Bolsheviks.
They'll only dirty the seats.
They have no money, nothing to pay with.
So it is forbidden to carry them.
"How can you recognize them?" asked Grandpa.
"After all, it's not written on their foreheads."
BANKER
ATTORNEY
FACTORY OWNER
SPOOK
OWNER
"You fool," said the owner, "Come on, all together now:"
Bolsheviks and tramps must not be transported!
And now, whoever earns the most will be the top performer.
Hitch up!
Grandpa also carried a passenger.
She kept asking, "Stop here. Stop there."
Grandpa and Gray thought it was an advertisement for some kind of course.
At the time, they didn't know that these advertisements were called leaflets,
and that the girl could be sent to prison for them.
Oh, mommy!
The leaflets were brand new,
they still smelled of printing ink.
"Oh! Thank you so much. You literally saved me,"
said the girl, and rejoiced that she didn't have to go to jail,
but could go home.
CASH DESK
But the owner got very angry with my grandpa
because the girl was a revolutionary.
He said he would dismiss Grandpa from the special cab driver position
if he carried her again.
Then the uprising began.
Gendarmes rode through the streets and shot at the revolutionaries.
Everyone hid.
Grandpa and Gray also decided to hide
so they wouldn't get hit by a bullet.
Suddenly, they saw their acquaintance.
Grandpa immediately decided to save her again.
The gendarmes were behind them, about to catch up.
But Gray ran with all his might,
and then he really took off...
After that, Grandpa and Gray
became true revolutionaries,
and the girl became my grandmother.
And yet, I don't understand:
how was the horse so good at speaking French?
screenwriter Nataliya Guzeyeva director Natalya Marchenkova
art director Nataliya Chernysheva composer I. Maslovskaya
camera Anatoliy Gavrilov sound V. Shchigol
animators Lyudmila Tkachikova, E. Peretyatko, V. Vrublevskiy, S. Leshchenko, Adolf Pedan, M. Yaremko, D. Kovtanets
assistants T. Cherni, Ya. Petrushanskiy, O. Payenok, L. Kucherova
narrator L. Ignatenko montage Yu. Srebnitskaya
script editor Yevgeniy Nazarenko production director Boris Kalashnikov
The End
Kiev Order of the Red Banner Studio of Popular Science Films, 1987
Subs by Eus & Niffiwan, Sep 2025 translating Mastak's Russian Subs