View the film here: https://www.culture.ru/live/movies/19066/argonavty-kolkhida
10 min.; Georgia/USSR; dir. V. Mujiri
In 1936, after its incorporation into the USSR, the Republic of Georgia produced this short as its first animated film. The ten-minute film was not a straightforward retelling of Jason and Medea’s adventures in Colchis; rather, it deployed Jason as a symbol of the Soviet state’s “heroic” efforts to drain the region’s marshes and transform them into productive agricultural land. He promises Medea a garden, and undertakes to destroy the malarial mosquitoes and the cavalry of frogs that live in the area. Once he succeeds in this endeavor, he gives Medea the Golden Fleece and the two find seeds to plant fruit trees. The film appears to be the earliest animated treatment of Greek epic ever made in Russia.
Animated Antiquity 
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