Калядин Леонид (Leonid Kalyadin) is a Moscow-based artist working primarily with computer animation. Leonid’s work is reminiscent of several artistic influences, in particular Hungarian animation artist Péter Szoboszlay. Leonid’s imagery, music, colors, and text often have a direct Russian influence but also show influence of the internet, video games, and music from all over the world. This is a key difference from Leonid’s predecessors, as with all of us working in the “information age.” We can take and give back to this global cultural message board that is the internet.

-Rosie Rowe

• How did you get started as a filmmaker? 

I got interested in animation at school. At early 2000s there was an animation boom in Macromedia Flash, and my French teacher showed me the Russian Internet series “Masyanya.” The series was painted in ostentatiously primitive technique. The main character is a large-headed girl with nearly no hair. Still the series was incredibly popular, and my friends and I realized that it was possible to make cool cartoons even if the drawing is primitive. It matched my skills at the time, so I started studying Flash and making simple videos about square karatekas [karate experts] and cars. I made my first “serious” drawing in 2007. It’s a ten-second video “Fall”, inspired by works of Sam Brown. I still like the video (I added it to the youtube channel in 2014). Then I drew several more short videos that were similar in style. Unfortunately, there remained no sources, and in 2011 I began working on a clip for a hero of Russian independent musical stage of late 80s – early 90s, Bobby Blesk. The format of musical clips turned out to be very convenient for me, because I put music in first, so I always have a plot or emotional line that I try to express with the help of the drawing.   

• It is evident from your work that you take a lot of inspiration from music. Is there something about the arc of music that inspires you?

It so happened that now it was possible to hear the variety of voices of our time. Due to the development of informational technologies and streaming services, access to the ocean of new music is simple as never before. People invest money into audio facilities, recordings, mastering, and spread music through the network. There one can listen to these cool, inspiring tracks free or at a nominal charge. It also happens that there is a lot of music but few musical clips, mainly because the cost of a clip is high, and the potential income is less than the cost of its production. All my works are non-commercial. In turn, I try to capture portraits of the voices through the reflection of my emotions and images that appear while listening.  

• One aspect of your films that I really appreciate is your ability to present a virtual space that is both playful and poignant. You are crafting art from Russian culture and web & video game iconography. Does this quality represent a core, personal philosophy? Are there any specific aspects of your own identity that inform your work?

For me creative work is inseparable from reflection. While creating a new work of art I relive and try to reflect my childhood feelings from acquaintance with the world of video-game consoles, first impressions from acquaintance with the world of 3D graphics, the emotional experience of watching Soviet cartoons, both wild and experimental from the final period of Soviet history and classical preachy ones. I also try to reflect my current painful experience of living in the still-beloved country, where most of the population are poor people, whose main entertainment is watching militant propaganda that provokes the desire to teach a lesson to the rest of the world, and that is the only consolation for them and justification of their endless boring routine.

• Is there anyone you especially appreciate and look to for inspiration?

I’ll try to shorten the list as much as possible. 

– Russian children’s artist Oleg Estis. I had only one book with his illustrations, but these illustrations constantly evoked my emotions. I could look at them all the time, and was even frightened discovering new details I couldn’t have noticed before. 

– English writer Anthony Burgess, with his spellbinding phantasmagoric prose.

– Hungarian animation filmmaker Péter Szoboszlay, his works finally broke all the borders in animation for me and helped me to concentrate to draw the first clip.

– Enigmatic, shocking and flamboyant filmmaker Sergei Parajanov. 

– For modern artists, these are animator Vewn, my friend French artist Sébastien Sans-Arcidet, also Russian clipmakers Patryk Films and Great Fruit.

• I love your film La Primavera Spring Весна: the pastel colors, the opening scene with the songbird, the sound mixed with images of spring and then ending with a quote from a poem by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin. It was so nicely done. Can you talk about the making of this piece?  

Unfortunately, I don’t remember much about how I made this video. I remember that I wanted to make a clip for some ambient in web art style. I just found the “Vesna” track by Andrey Kireyev (I had already made a clip for his track for Sonic Ball group). Drawing the clip was quite easy; nearly everything was made within a month. When Andrey saw the outcome, he said it was not a clip but a kind of poetry, and it was necessary to input some lyrics, so at the end we added a poem by Pushkin.