A pioneer of puppet animation, Ladislas Starevich found himself in France at the beginning of the 1920s, having fled Russia after the revolution. Like many emigrants, he had to find his place in the film business anew and began producing films in his family’s home studio with his wife Anna and two daughters, Irène and Jeanne (aka Nina Star).
The lighthearted animated fairy-tale La Voix du rossignol tells the story of a nightingale who is captured by a little girl (played by Nina Star). While the girl sleeps, the nightingale sings to her a song of how he dreams of being reunited with his beloved. The girl sets the nightingale free, and the bird repays her by lending her its voice.
The film combines animated birds and insects (the latter a hallmark of Starevich’s first animated films made in the 1910s) with live actors. Featuring both toning and stencil colour, La Voix du rossignol brought Starevich worldwide recognition and won him the Hugo Riesenfeld Gold Medal for the “most novel” short film of the year after it was shown in the US in 1925.

Elena Barysheva