"The New Gulliver" was one of the world's first feature-length film to combine stop-motion animation with live-action footage. Soviet director Aleksandr Lukich Ptushko (1900-1973) and his animation crew spent almost three years building 3,000 different puppets and filming the movie. The story, a Communist re-telling of "Gulliver's Travels" by Jonathan Swift, was released in 1935 to widespread acclaim. The success of the film convinced the studio, Mosfilm, to allow Ptushko to set up his own department, which became known as "the Ptushko Collective," for the making of stop-motion animated films. This group of filmmakers produced another fourteen animated shorts from 1936 to 1938.
The flyer seen here advertises the one week run of "The New Gulliver," the first film shown at the Montlake Theatre in Seattle after their remodel and rebranding as a movie theater that specialized in foreign films.
Caption information source: "New Installations Postpone Opening of Foreign Films," The Seattle Daily Times, December 3, 1936, p. 18. Caption information source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gOLWijUUt8
ID Number: 2018.38.10
Date: 1936
Physical Description: 1 broadside ; 7.5 x 9.25 in.
Additional Information: Digital copy of this item available thanks to funding from a 2016 Institute for Museum and Library Services grant. Metadata updated as part of a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services administered by the Library Services and Technology Act, through the Washington State Library, a division of the Office of the Secretary of State.
