Little Witch (cartoon)

The cartoon in a humorous and sometimes satirical form tells about the adventures of the Little Witch, who, using her magical skills, fights evil, thereby violating the “code of honor” of witches, for which she is persecuted by her evil aunt Rumpumpel, a faithful minion Chief Witch. With the help of her hand-wise raven Abrahas, the Little Sorceress comprehends all the wisdom of witchcraft, helps the children of Thomas and Vroni, and punishes the main evil - destroys the collection of witches taking her witchcraft exam.

The cartoon is an adaptation of not specifically the original tale of Otfried Preussler , but its retelling, performed by Yuri Korinets in 1972 . Compared to this retelling, the plot of the film is shortened:

• There are no episodes with a small flower girl, causing rain, a storm, circling a broom, a snowman and participating in a village carnival. The meeting with the disguised witch, the forest carnival, the roofer and brother of Abrahas (who, by the way, is present in the filmstrip for this work) is not shown.
• In the book, the throne on which the Chief Witch sits is made of oven grips, and in the film, from the cauldron.
• In the cartoon, the driver, in addition to being beaten, loses all his clothes, which was not in the book. There he carried several barrels of beer, and not one.
• In addition, the driver has one horse in the film, and two in the book.
• The book says that the bull’s name is Korbinian, and in the cartoon he is not called by name.
• In the film at the Shooters' Celebration, they shoot from a bow at a target, and in a book, from shotguns in the shape of a wooden eagle.
• In the film, the action of the episode with the forester takes place in the winter, and in the book in the fall. In addition, in the cartoon, the main character meets the old women only once, because the book also contained a chapter on causing the storm.
• Unlike the film, in the book, witches were simply devoid of magical power.

• Screenwriter: Heinrich Sapgir
• Director: Gennady Sokolsky
• Set Designer: Tatyana Sokolskaya
• Composer: Philip Koltsov
• Operator: Alexander Chekhovsky
• Sound engineer: Vladimir Kutuzov
• Animation artists: Alexander Markelov, Gennady Sokolsky
• Assistant artists: V. Trofimova, I. Lebedev, Natalya Turygina
• Assistant Director: T. Gerasimenko
• Editor: Natalia Stepantseva
• Editor: Tatyana Paporova
• Directors: Bella Khodova , Elena Vasina

• Natalia Derzhavina - Little Witch
• Armen Dzhigarkhanyan - raven Abrahas
• Yuri Volintsev - Forester
• Boris Novikov - The Main Witch
• Sergey Zeitz - Beer Carrier
• Vsevolod Larionov - foreman of shooters
• Efim Katsirov - Aunt Rumpumpel
• Vyacheslav Bogachev - the owner of the shop / 2nd witch
• Anatoly Barantsev - 1st Witch
• Irina Kartasheva - 1st old woman
• Maria Vinogradova - 2nd old woman
• Olga Markelova - Thomas
• Maya Chekhovskaya - Vroni

• The film was made by director Gennady Sokolsky in a grotesque style, and the main character in it does not look like a child. The same version of the image was previously used in the filmstrip of the same name and in most Russian editions of the original book by Otfried Preusler.
• The soundtrack was based on the fully electronic musical suite of the composer Philip Koltsov , which at that time was not usual - of course, synthesizers were introduced earlier in the sound series of domestic cartoons, but never before in such a large cartoon was there a fully synthesizer musical accompaniment.

The cartoon has been reprinted on DVD several times in the cartoon collections “Lukomorye” (“Soyuzmultfilm”, distributor “Soyuz”).

• The Little Witch (1991) on youtube.com