thousands of pins that formed different patterns. Despite the status of white émigré in the USSR his films were well known among Russian professionals and inspired various artists, most famously Yuri Norstein. In the mid-1990s Alexeieff's daughter visited Moscow and presented her father's works to the . Today he is commemorated as a patriarch of Russian animation. Soyuzmultfilm, 1936–1960 In September 1933, the Principal Management of the Photo-Cinematographic Industry (GUKF) ordered to provide animators with facilities and equipment; meanwhile, specialized script-writers were hired for Animated feature films. who headed the Amkino Corporation, a New York-based company responsible for distribution of Soviet movies in North America, was given the task to study the animation processes at Disney and Fleischer Studios. Next year Smirnov returned to Moscow and founded an Experimental Animation Workshop under the Main Directorate of the Photo-Cinematographic Industry where he, Alexei Radakov, Vladimir Suteev and started "developing the Disney style". In 1935, Walt Disney himself sent a film reel with Three Little Pigs and Mickey Mouse shorts to the Moscow International Film Festival that made a lasting impression on Soviet animators and officials. On June 10, 1936, the Soyuzdetmultfilm Studio was created in Moscow from the small and relatively independent trickfilm units of Mosfilm, Sovkino, Mezhrabpomfilm and Smirnov's studio. In a year it was renamed to Soyuzmultfilm. Three-months retraining courses were organized by the studio administration where animators studied everything, from drawing and directing movies to the basics of music and acting. For four years some of the leading animators focused on the creation of Disney-style shorts, exclusively using the cel technique. From 1937, on they also produced films in full color using the three-color film process by Pavel Mershin. In 1938, the team also mastered rotoscoping, or Eclair as it has been known in Russia since the 1920s (after the Eclair video projector). Not everyone was happy with the chosen direction though, and by 1939 many developed their own styles. Ivan Ivanov-Vano directed based on the fairy tale in verse which he personally praised as an important step from Disney. Suteev and Lamis Bredis presented a distinctive Uncle Styopa adaptation, while Leonid Amalrik and converted Doctor Aybolit stories into a distinctive mini-series that ran from 1939 to 1946 and defined the "Soviet style" of animation. At the same time Aleksandr Ivanov and made a radical shift towards agitprop and socialist realism with films such as Grandfather Ivan and