Todor Dinov


Todor Dinov is informally known as the Father of Bulgarian Animation. During his lifetime he wrote and directed more than 40 short animated films and several live-action feature films, and was also a popular illustrator, children's book illustrator, painter, graphic artist, comics artist and caricaturist.
Dinov was born to a Bulgarian family in Dedeagach in Western Thrace and finished school in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. He studied at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow under the tutelage of distinguished Soviet animators such as Ivan Ivanov-Vano. Dinov created his own first animated film, Yunak Marko, in 1955. Perhaps his best-known animated film in the West is the five-minute short Margaritka, produced in 1965. The film features a square-shaped little man trying to cut down a daisy and failing, then becoming more and more enraged as he tries increasingly brutal methods against the flower; in the end, the daisy only responds to the love of a child. Oddly, Margaritka won a prize for best children's film even though it was meant for adults.
In 1967 he was a member of the jury of the 5th Moscow International Film Festival.
He founded the first animation studio in Bulgaria, setting the highest quality professional standards for producing animation in his country. Later, he created the Animation Department and taught animation classes at the Theatre and Film Arts Institute. Dinov was also a member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
In 1999, Dinov was awarded the highest-rank Bulgarian medal — the Stara Planina order. In 2003 he received the Crystal Pyramide Award of the Bulgarian Filmmaker Union for lifetime achievement to the art of Bulgarian animation.
He died in Sofia at the age of 84.

Filmography

The following are some of the animated films directed by Dinov. Titles have been transliteratred from Cyrillic to Latin, and are followed by their names in English where available: