The results of “In the Beginning Was the Word” children's art project were summed up in the Presidential Library

“In the Beginning Was the Word” children's art project with an objective of creation animation studio has become one of the outcomes of the activities of the Presidential Library in a Year of the Cinema. That came as a result of work within the “Orthodox Initiative 2015-2016” International Grant Competition.

“In the Beginning Was the Word” Animation Studio was opened in the Presidential Library in May 2016, being designated to the Sunday and correctional school students of the Leningrad Oblast. The project, which is implemented by the Tikhvin and Lodeynoye Polye Eparchy, was pretty timely, gathering quite different but equally talented children.

“I would like to heartily thank all the organizers of the project and, of course, the Presidential Library, - said in an address to young and adult viewers Archpriest Alexander Yezhov, rector of the Church of the Intercession of the Virgin located at the St. Petersburg farmstead of the Antony Dymsky Monastery. - Each one is created in God's image, so he himself in varying degrees is a creator of the beauty in the highest sense of that word. May the children grow creative way, helping them with a moral and an aesthetic growth of their Orthodox souls.”

During the time that has elapsed since the opening of the studio, the kids in the creative alliance with the adults managed to produce two short films on biblical themes: “Lion, Sanka and Gerasim of Jordan” and “A Miracle about the Dragon.” Co-organizers of the northeastern parishes of Leningrad Oblast had to figure out how in an accessible manner to teach children give the holy books contemporary multimedia adaptation. This was made possible owing to the involvement of writer and director Alena Dolgorukova, a specialist of the Presidential Library.

Archpriest Dmitry Nichiporuk, senior priest of the St. Nicholas Church in the Town of Mga, Archpriest Alexander Yezhov and a member of the Artists' Union Natalia Nazarova.

One of the great animators of our time Constantine Bronzit, who believes that children's imagination will certainly need to be connected to the animation - the art, which knows no borders, which allows dreaming and embodying the imagination into any material, whether an ordinary sand becomes a medium for it, stepped forward as “a godfather” of the established in the grounds of the Presidential Library children's multimedia studio. One of the films invited for screening within the Christmas Cinema Club dedicated to the children's creative groups was created in such technique. Young filmmakers from the “Multpodem” (means “animation lift”) animation studio managed to explain in their story to their peers, why in Russia in the spring people tear a willow. The kids from the “Red Cat” fit their life platform in rhymed line: “I need not candies or little cars, / Just let my mother have no wrinkles.”

The implementation of the project on the grounds of the Presidential Library, which has its own editing and sound recording studios, let the children a chance to look at the adult’s world of the creation of audiovisual works during organized for them sightseeing tour. The prospects of being in reality, where a learning of secular and spiritual orientation may be joined, were introduced. The theoretical and practical work with children, in which compiled the events of church life, the history of religion and clear understandable to the children format of getting information is a powerful incentive for the harmonious development of children in the context of often-conflicting realities of everyday life.

On Christmas Cinema Club it was announced the intention of the Presidential Library to feature the works of the children from “In the Beginning Was the Word” studio in the Presidential Library website. Their movies, reflecting the religious ripening of the younger generation, soon will be available at www.prlib.ru.