Pop Up Skovoroda

One gifted student, young chorister Hryhory Skovoroda, with «artistic suffering» searches for perfect rhymes to his new Xth hymn. Win in a choir contest promises him all the creature comforts. Hryhory and his comrades go to the Choral School Challenge. On the way, Hrihory saves the Cat from the drowning's fate and takes it as a pet. At first, Hryhory thinks that the most important thing for him is winning. But the truth is that you have to provide your mission; a vocation gives you true freedom, "weaving a crown of joy for its creator." With a help from the Cat, a vagrant philosopher and poet, Hryhory receives a revelation. After then Skovoroda explicitly declares his intention to become a famous sage, prizes night-time inspiration for his work, and spends nights with his best friend Cat for rap poetry writing. Finally, he chooses a free life and gives to the world the ideas of humanism and of symbolism with the newfound gospel rhymes.

Director’s statement
We invented a philosophical music tale in animation, the story of how young Hryhory Skovoroda gradually becomes a poet, and the world famous thinker has not yet been. This is our apocryphal point of view about how the process of creation works. And it is quite in the spirit of the late Eastern European Baroque, with its mysticism, symbolism, divinity and esoteric understanding of reality. The plot built on key symbols: the road, the journey, the Garden of Eden, talking animals, the choir, the main character's scroll. The Skovoroda's texts are woven into the plot as rap poetry, a musical form of vocal transmission, a combination of “rhyme, rhythmic speech and street jargon”. In our opinion, exactly this form expresses the poetry writing process, immersion in the magical world of rhythm. We decided to combine 2D, cut-out, marionette and a computer. We believe that this genre is close to viewers over the age of 12 who are entering a period of meaningful self-knowledge and adolescence.