The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda

n 1932, Soviet animator Mikhail Tsekhanovsky began working on an animated film titled The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda (Russian: Сказка о попе и работнике его Балде), that was an adaptation of Alexander Pushkin's fairy tale in verse of the same name. It would be Tsekhanovsky's first feature-length animated film.

World-famous composer Dmitri Shostakovich was brought in to compose the film's score; in November 1934, he wrote that composing for the film was "easy and fun" and that the film contained a lot of "sharp, hyperbolic scenes" and "exaggerated characters". Aleksandr Vvedenskiy, a futurist poet and member of OBERIU society of poets, wrote the lyrics for Shostakovich's music.