Biography

For

Georges Stoyanoff

Georges Stoyanoff, born July 15, 1938 in Paris, where he was baptized in the Russian Church the same year as the son of Stoyan Stoyanoff, b. October 26, 1902 - d. January 03, 1992, and his wife Magda Viola Nielsen, b. April 03, 1905 - d. December 23, 1989.

The father, Stoyan Stoyanoff, was a journalist and correspondent in Berlin and Paris 1925-45, but returned with his Danish wife and their two children to Bulgaria during World War II, where they were captured by the political upheavals.

Ever since his childhood, Georges Stoyanoff has liked to draw people and animals in motion, and as a 10-year-old he made his first "film screening" for the family. The "film" consisted of cut strips of paper, which he drew in front of a light source while he told the "story" and made sound.

Georges Stoyanoff went to school at French College in Sofia, where he also graduated. Then he came to Fine Art School / Gymnasium, also in Sofia. He then became a student at the cartoon studio at the Bulgarian National Film Center in Sofia, and here he was apprenticed in 1960. He then worked for the studio until 1968, but the same year he and his sister, Liliane, later married Kemp, managed to escape from Bulgaria and travel to Denmark.

1960-80, the Greek-born Todor Giorgiev Dinoff (b. 1900) was the artistic director and film director of the Bulgarian Cartoon Studio in Sofia, and he was also Georges Stoyanoff's teacher.

Dinoff came to Bulgaria as a child, where he was admitted as a young man to the Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia, from where he graduated in 1943 as a master of stage design. In 1945 he became a member of the Bulgarian Communist Party, which sent him to Moscow to study animation. After some educational years here, he returned to Sofia, where he made his first cartoon, Iunak Marko (1955; "The Hero Marko"). In the following years, he produced one short entertainment cartoon after another, but in the traditional style he had learned in the Soviet Union. In 1962, he co-directed with Khris Khristov on the feature film "Iconastasis".

In 1970, he tried to introduce a more modern design in Bulgarian cartoons, e.g. in "The Artist and the Girl". Gradually he switched to making live-action films and documentaries, but in 1974 he was the director of the cartoon "The Drum". Todor Dinov is the best known of Bulgarian animators, and over the years he has received a number of awards and prizes. In 1969 he was named honorary artist of the People's Republic of Bulgaria. (Source: Maurice Horn: The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons. Chelsea House Publishers, New York London, 1980)

So it was not a Mr.-anyone-who George Stoyanoff had as a teacher of cartoons in his time at the Bulgarian Cartoon Studio.

In Bulgaria, Georges Stoyanoff worked for a few years at various book publishers, where he drew book covers, and in addition he drew political propaganda material and also worked as a decorator.

In 1968, Georges Stoyanoff arrived in Denmark, where in 1970 he was employed as an animator at Bent Barfod Film, and here he worked “together with i.a. good "old" Simon, who I also learned a lot from", as he himself says. At Barfod, Stoyanoff was the animator on a large number of short films with 5-10 minutes of playing time, as well as information films and commercials.

In 1978, however, Georges Stoyanoff got the chance to work for Jannik Hastrup, who at that time was well on his way to becoming Denmark's uncrowned cartoon king. With interruptions, Stoyanoff worked for Jannik Hastrup until around the turn of the millennium. However, as the cartoon production at Dansk Tegnefilm Kompagni was discontinuous, Stoyanoff occasionally took breaks of 2-3 months between the various productions, during which he usually went on unemployment benefits or took on freelance assignments for TV or did linguistic translations. In recent years, these "idle periods" were used to work as animators for A-Film and the Drawing Boys: Anders and Tønnes.

and Dansk Tegnefilm Kompagni A / S.

In the 1980s-90s, Georges Stoyanoff made a name for himself in professional circles for his animation of main characters in Jannik Hastrup's feature films. Thus, it was he who animated the whale cub Samson in "Samson and Sally" (1984). This was high-class character animation.

A few years later, Georges Stoyanoff was the animator on the boy Stumme in the feature film "Strit og Stumme" (1987), and here too he succeeded in making the character alive and believable.

The same was the case in Jannik Hastrup's next feature film, "The Bird War", in which Stoyanoff was responsible for the mouse Frederik, who in collaboration with the mouse Ingolf provided some of the cheerful elements in the film's otherwise quite dramatic action.

Excerpt from the poster for "Strit og Stumme", in which Georges Stoyanoff has animated the flute-playing boy Stumme, who is seen on the right. - © 1887 Warner & Metronome Film ApS and Dansk Tegnefilm Kompagni.

The mice Ingolf and Frederik from "The Bird War". Georges Stoyanoff was the animator on Frederik, who is seen on the right, while Harry Rasmussen was animator on

Jannik Hastrup's next feature film was "The Monkeys and the Secret Weapon" (1995), and in it Georges Stoyanoff was the animator of the monkey boy Hector, whose character is a bit reminiscent of Stumme in "Strit og Stumme".

Excerpt from the poster for "The Monkeys and the Secret Weapon", in which Georges Stoyanoff has animated the monkey boy Hector, who is seen on the left.

and Dansk Tegnefilm Kompagni A/S.

In 1996, Georges Stoyanoff was the lay outer, designer and animator of the cartoon introduction to "Bamse's Christmas Calendar", a worthy and honorable counterpart to Kjeld Simonsen's animation of the introductory sequence to "Bamse's Picture Book".

Filmography for Georges Stoyanoff:

(Unfortunately incomplete and unknown, at least so far)

Short cartoons (for Bent Barfod):

"Jim and I…" (19 ??; Anim) "See my dress…" (19 ??; Anim) "In the forest there should be feasts" (19 ??; Anim) "Three little soldiers" (19 ?? , Anim) "The water drop" (19 ??; after Andersen's fairy tale; Anim) "The sun is red" (19 ??; Anim) "The wife with the eggs" (19 ??; after Andersen's fairy tale; Figure design and Anim)

Short cartoons (for Jannik Hastrup) (list incomplete).

Bjarne and Britta's wonderful world 1-4 (1990; Anim) The golden ring (19 ??, Anim) Fox fur (19 ??; Anim)

Feature cartoons (list incomplete):

Samson and Sally (1984; Anim) Strit og Stumme (1987; Anim) Fuglekrigen (1990; Anim) The monkeys and the secret weapon (1995; Anim) H. C. Andersen and the crooked shadow (1998; Anim)

TV cartoon (list incomplete).

Bamse’s Julerejse (1996; Layout, Design, Anim)

Illustrations, etc .: (list not known)

Book covers, posters, etc.,

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