Горячий камень (A Hot Stone)

Director: Perch Sarkisyan
Release Date: 1965
Rating: ★★★
Review:

‘A Hot Stone’ is a Soviet propaganda film from the 1960s based on a children’s book by Arkady Gaidar from 1941.

In it a boy stumbles on an old stone in the woods, which has the ability to give someone a new life again. The boy wants to help an old and lonely man with it, but the man sees no need for it as he has led a happy life. Enter the propaganda, in which the old man tells about the revolution and the civil war. This part is not much of a story. but it’s full of symbolic images, like people breaking their chains, and a giant worker slashing the double headed eagle of the czarist empire with a giant hammer.

‘A Hot Stone’ is a slow and boring film, but it’s also beautifully designed, in an original graphic style, which makes use of bold ink strokes.

Watch ‘A Hot Stone’ yourself and tell me what you think:

‘A Hot Stone’ is available on the DVD box set ‘Animated Soviet Propaganda’