Garri Bardin was born as Garri Yakovlevich Bardenstein in Chkalov where his pregnant mother Rozalia Abramovna Bardenshtein had been evacuated from Kiev with the start of the Great Patriotic War. The family was Jewish. His father Yakov Lvovich Bardenshtein was a naval officer who joined marines in 1941 and took part in the Battle of Stalingrad. After the war the family moved to Liepāja, Latvian SSR where his father served at the Baltic Fleet. Garri spent three years in the Soviet Army and in 1968 he finished the Actor's Faculty at the Moscow Art Theatre School and joined the N. V. Gogol Moscow Drama Theatre where he served till 1973. The director asked him to shorten his surname which was too long for theatre posters, and he adapted the Bardin stage name. Upon leaving the theatre he spent some time writing stories, plays and TV screenplays. He had been also voicing cartoons since 1967. Around the same time he sent a screenplay to Soyuzmultfilm and was suggested to direct the cartoon by himself despite the lack of education. From then on he worked as an animation director. Among his first shorts was A Tincan segment from the Happy Merry-Go-Round No. 8 anthology series. In 1979 he directed A Flying Ship, a traditionally animatedmusical film loosely based on the old Russian fairy taleThe Fool of the World and the Flying Ship. The film and the songs by Yuri Entin in particular gained popularity. Bardin then worked on several other hand-drawn films along with Entin. In 1983 he directed his first experimental stop motion cartoon for adults — Conflict, a cold war allegory where two groups of matches enter a conflict which leads to a war. It was followed by several claymationcomedy films, including Break!, a parody on a boxing match for which Bardin received a Golden Dove award at the 1986 Dok Leipzig. In 1987 he released two films: Marriage made of ropes and Fioritures made of aluminium wire for which he was awarded the 1988 Short Film Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1990 he directed his last Soyuzmultiflm cartoon — Grey Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood, a claymation musical film that satirized last days of the USSR. It was awarded a number of awards, including Grand Prix for the best short film at the 1991 Annecy International Animated Film Festival and the 1992 Nika Award for the best animated film. After that Bardin founded and headed the Stayer animation studio where he continued directing claymation and stop motion films, as well as TV commercials. After six years in production he finally released his first feature animated musical The Ugly Duckling loosely based on the Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale of the same name, with a heavy influence of George Orwell's Animal Farm. It received mixed reviews from critics and failed at the box office, while central Russian TV channels refused to show it according to Bardin. At the same time it gained a number of awards, including the 2011 Nika Award. Bardin was married three times. His son from the third marriage Pavel Bardin is a Russian film director.
Selected filmography
Little Locomotive from Romashkovo / Паровозик из Ромашково - voice actor
