The footage is excerpted from one of my favorite animators, Vladislav Starevich (August 8, 1882 – February 26, 1965). Born Władysław Starewicz (Russian: Владисла́в Алекса́ндрович Старе́вич), was a Russian and Frenchstop-motion animator who used insects and other animals as his protagonists. (His name can also be spelled Starevitch, Starewich and Starewitch.)
This particular film is from “The Mascot”. Vladislav Starevich died on 26 February 1965, while working on Comme chien et chat (Like Dog and Cat). It was left unfinished out of respect. He was one of the few European animators to be known by name in America before the 1960s, largely on account of La Voix du rossignol and Fétiche Mascotte (The Tale of the Fox was not widely distributed in the US)
His Russian films were known for their dark humor, probably an inevitable consequence of the choice of dead beetles and grasshoppers as subjects. Once he switched to using more ordinary puppets for his French films, his work became more lyrical. However, the fact that he was working independently had the negative effect that the films are sometimes considered too long, too lyrical, and too uncommercial. The films are united, however, by their wild imagination.- from Wikipedia
