Bert Animation – Centenary Of The Russian Revolution

As part of our dotmogo series of posts we have a video in a style you don’t often see nowadays – that of the great era of early 20th century Soviet constructivist propaganda posters.  Appropriately enough its a film that marks the 100th anniversary of the 1917 Russian Revolution – created by Robert Grieves of Bert animation.
Whatever you think about communism and Soviet politics you can’t deny how it has influenced the world – eg China and Cuba.  Further to that it’s milder cousin socialism still plays a major part in modern global politics. In 2016, one of the most dramatic years in the US and UK, Socialism hugely influenced the mainstream debate in both countries. Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders have ignited a new wave of interest in the Socialist values that inspired the 1917 revolution.
Although this is a huge topic Robert has cleverly distilled the main events into this short animation into some key dates.  The main thing for me is the use of the propaganda posters of the era.  Very few people could read in the Russia at that time so the use of striking and easy to understand imagery was important.  The graphic style and the limited “Soviet” colour palette have a very strong effect.

It’s a great animation experiment and as I understand it from the press release there will be a longer follow up animated film from Bert Animation which will have a closer look at the events from that year.  This will cover the February Revolution and the more famous October Revolution when Lenin seized power and created the world’s first Socialist State.

Credits: all direction and animation by Robert Grieves.