Nishikata Film Review 西片映画レビュー

Nishikata Kids: Anna on Nausicaä

2012-01-28T21:37:00.002+01:00

An interview with Anna

Age: almost 7

Film: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (風の谷のナウシカ, Hayao Miyazaki, 1984)

Tell me about Nausicaä.

Nausicaä is brave. She wants to save the world.

What does she need to save the world from?

The bad fungus.

Most hysterical moment in the film for Anna.

What is your favourite part of the anime?

I like Nausicaä’s fox squirrel Teto. Actually, I like all the animals because they are interesting.

There is a lot of fighting in the movie. How did you feel about that?

Bad. They should be normal and nice to each other.

What were the most exciting parts?

For me it was exciting when the Ohmu came up from the water.

The movie isn’t just serious. I noticed that you were laughing sometimes.

What did you find funny?

When the man said “She’s still alive. . . that was a short-lived dream”

[This is the moment when Kushana returns and takes control back from Kurotowa. Anna thought he was hysterical. We were watching the German dub, so my quote might not match the English dub/subs.]

What did you think about Kushana, the Princess of Tolmekia?

She was dumb.

If you could be any character in the film, which one would you be?

I would be all the insects and ummmmm. . . the fox squirrel.

Let’s play Mama Ohmu, Baby Ohmu.

interview abruptly ends ;)

Nishikata Kids: A Child's Perspective on Japanese Culture

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (風の谷のナウシカ, 1984)

2012-01-28T17:27:00.000+01:00

When I was a girl there were few heroines in animation with whom I could identify. Snow White and Cinderella were too good and unattainably beautiful. I was a bit of a tomboy, so I recall doing some Wonder Woman and She-Ra: Princess of Power role playing, but I found their sexy costumes a bit off putting. It is such a shame that Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (風の谷のナウシカ, 1984) was not dubbed and released in North America in its original version, for I suspect my then ten-year-old self would have fallen in love with the gutsy young heroine Nausicaä.

My suspicions were confirmed when I watched the film on DVD with my two children. Both Lukas and Anna loved the film, but my young daughter really warmed to Nausicaä. Her heart melted in the scene where Nausicaä adopts her furry fox-squirrel companion Teto. She cheered during the fight scenes and both children were excited by the dynamic animation of the scenes in which Nausicaä is flying her Mehve jet glider. They had no great love for Kushana, the Princess of Tolmekia but warmed to the buffoonery of her aide-de-camp Kurotowa .

My children are also both nature-lovers and Nausicaä appealed to their interest in the environment. The environmentalist message of Nausicaä is even more important today than it was in the 1980s, and is so well executed that it won the film the seal of approval of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Nausicaä is set in a future world in which is facing an environmental apocalypse. Humanity clings to survival on a planet that is being taken over by the polluted “Sea of Corruption.” The few communities (the Valley of the Wind, the Pejite, the Tolmekia, and the Dorok) that are left have begun to fight each other for the dwindling resources. Nausicaä is one of the few who recognizes that in order for people to survive, they need to find a way to live in harmony with the other creatures of the world such as the Ohmu – giant crustaceans that resemble pillbugs – whereas others see violence and warfare as their only means of survival.

Flashback sequence animated in a different style.

This is not a film that one can just pop into a DVD player and leave kids to consume alone. There is a lot of violence, including the murder of innocents / the defenceless both human and non-human, and challenging themes (senseless destruction of the environment, warfare, and so on). I think the part that upset my children the most was the cruel torture of the Ohmu by the Pejites. Although these are difficult topics, I found the film really invigorated my kids to talk about how the lessons of the film can be applied to their own everyday lives. From discouraging their friends from harming insects and other small creatures to the day-to-day things we can do to better the natural world around us, Nausicaä inspired my children to stand up for what they believe in.

In addition to being a terrific story, Nausicaä is also a fine example of animation. It won Miyazaki his second Noburo Ofuji Award for innovation at the Mainichi Film Concours. Particularly notable are the exhilarating flying sequences with Nausicaä on the Mehve and the God Warrior sequence animated by Hideaki Anno (of Neon Genesis Evangelion fame). My favourite sequence was the flashback / dream sequence of Nausicaä's youth (image above), which was animated in a completely different style than the rest of the film.

This review is part of Nishikata Film's series on the Noburo Ofuji Award.

Isamu Hirabayashi’s 663114 wins the Noburo Ofuji Award

2012-01-27T13:08:00.000+01:00

At the Mainichi Film Concours earlier this month, Isamu Hirabayashi (平林勇, b. 1973, Shizuoka) was awarded the prestigious Noburo Ofuji Award, which celebrates innovation in animation, for his latest short film 663114 (2011). I was disappointed last year that no award was given out when there are so many innovative animators working deserving of recognition by their peers. Hirabayashi is a worthy winner and I am delighted that the Mainichi saw fit to honour him.

Hirabayashi is a graduate of Musashino Art University. He initially worked as a graphic designer after graduation, but left his job to become an independent filmmaker. His film Textism (2003) won the Grand Prix at the Image Forum Festival and his following short films have won prizes at festivals around the world. A Story Constructed of 17 Pieces of Space and 1 Maggot 2007) made my list of Top 40 Animated Shorts of the Noughties. His international profile was raised in 2010 when Shikasha was invited to the Cannes’ Director’s Fortnight and last September, along with Mirai Mizue’s Modern No. 2 (2011), 663114 was invited to the Biennale in Venice.

The 8-minute short was made in response to the devastating earthquake and tsunami which struck the Tohoku region on March 11, 2011. The story is told by a cicada (セミ) which has been gestating for 66 years. During the press conference at the Biennale (see video), Hirabayashi explained that he chose the cicada because they when they are nymphs (newly hatched) they must live for a long time underground (usually 2-5 years, but in some species even longer). When the nymph metamorphosizes into a full-fledged cicada, it lives for only a week. As we all know, the earthquake of March 11 triggered many more disasters including the tsunami and the nuclear meltdowns in Fukushima. The cicadas of the region are now living in polluted earth, and Hirabayashi feels that they represent “the destiny of Japanese people.”

Hirabayashi, an interpreter, Watanabe, and Iijima at the 68th Biennale

The music for the film was composed by Osaka-based sound producer Takashi Watanabe. (渡辺崇, b. 1976, Hiroshima). He explained that they approached the soundtrack as if it would be an offering at a temple. He looked to Buddhism and Shintoism in his desire to create a new kind of sacred music. Keitarō Iijima (Studio 301), the sound producer on 663114, explained that they used Japanese food for making the soundtrack including nattō (fermented soybeans), dried Japanese noodles and also cabbage. He echoed Watanabe’s sentiments about the sacredness of the project for them, emphasizing that he tried to have a sense of respect for the food that they used throughout the production.

The title is made up of the age of the cicada ‘66’ and the date of the disaster ‘3/11’, but a member of the Biennale panel is confused by the number ‘4’ at the end of the title and asks Hirabayashi to explain the logic behind it. It turns out that the choice of 66 was not random. Hirabayashi points out that when the disaster struck on March 11^th, Japan had been rebuilding its society for 66 years after the devastation of World War II, and the number 4 refers to the four reactors that were damaged in Fukushima.

Hirabayashi was also asked to explain the meaning of the newly formed cicada that appears the black rain in 663114 as well as about the language of the cicada. He replies that cicada that is born after the black rain, 66 years later, is polluted by radioactive rain. Thus, the cicada is altered by the radioactivity. The language of the cicada is artificial, but they intended for it to have a spiritual, prayer-like meaning.

The most important message that Hirabayashi wanted to get across with the film is about the saving of children. The children whose lives have been dramatically altered by Fukushima should be our first priority. “This is our first prayer: to be able to save children.”

(source: BiennaleChannel)

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Check out Hirabayashi’s work on his YoutubeChannel, his official website, or follow him on twitter.

Isamu Hirabayashi Filmography

Cockroach (2001, 2’)

Penis (2002, 3’)

Helmut (2003, 11’)

Textism (2003, 11’)

VS (2004, 11’)

Conversations with Nature (2005, 5’)

Doron (2006, 16’)

A Story Constructed of 17 Pieces of Space and 1 Maggot (2007, 14’)

BABIN (2008, 30’)

aramaki (2009, 26’)

Shikasha (2010, 10’)

5+ Camera (2011, 15’)

663114 (2011, 8’)

Maya Yonesho’s Top 20 Animated Films

2012-01-23T11:33:00.001+01:00

Ever since I got my hands on a copy of the published version of Laputa’s Top 150 Japanese and World Animation (2003) in autumn 2010, I have been writing off and on about individual animators responses to the 2003 survey. There were quite a range of responses, all of which tell us a great deal about the animators themselves. The first generation of postwar "anime" animators - like Yoichi Kotabe, Reiko Okuyama, Eiichi Yamamoto, and Takashi Yanase, were influenced by a wide range of both domestic and foreign animation both popular and artistic. Animators who followed in the footsteps of this first wave of anime like Keiichi Hara, tend to be strongly influenced by domestic anime of the 70s and 80s.

Independent animators (ie. Keiichi Tanaami, Masahiro Katayama, Shigeru Tamura) who practice what some in Japan call "art animation" tend to be influenced by both Japanese artistic traditions and the best of world animation. The stop motion animator Maya Yonesho has one foot firmly planted in Japan and the other in Europe and her lyrically beautiful films explore the idea of animation as a universal language, as you can read in my 2008 profile of her as an artist. In the 2003 survey, Yonesho lists a wide range of animation from around the world whose animation techniques are as varied as their cultural origins. Yonesho's selection could easily make up the course contents of an introduction to world animation. If you haven't seen the films in her list, you have really been missing out on some pretty remarkable art.

Almost all of the animation on Yonesho's list falls under the vague category of independent or alternative animation. The biggest exception is Walt Disney's Pinocchio (1940). This is an interesting choice because the most animators tend to choose Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) or Fantasia (1940) as their nod to the influence of Disney animators Animation fans who only recall seeing Pinocchio as a child should get a hold of a copy and take another look, for it is a fascinating film in terms of its use of animation technique. In a addition to using the novel technique of rotoscoping stop motion animation miniatures (a technique invented by Disney's competition, the Fleischer Brothers), Disney even had Oskar Fischinger contribute to the sparkle effect of the blue fairy's wand. I think Fischinger's influence is quite obvious in the screen-cap I have chosen below. Fischinger, of course, famously worked on the "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" animation sequence for Fantasia - which was released nine months after Pinocchio, and had a massive row with Disney over stylistic choices.

You can support Maya Yonesho by ordering a DVD of her Abstract AnimationWorks from Anido today.

Learn more about her by visiting her official website.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Here is Yonesho's unranked list:

Crac!

(クラック！, Frédéric Back, 1981)

Swamp

(スワンプ, Gil Alkabetz, 1991)

Divertimenti

(ディヴェルティメント, Clive Walley, 6 shorts, 1991-94)

Frank Film

(フランク・フィルム, Frank Mouris, 1973)

The Magic Ballad

(おこんじょうるり, Tadanari Okamoto, 1982)

Briar Rose or the Sleeping Beauty

(いばら姫、またはねむり姫, Kihachiro Kawamoto, 1990)

Words, words, words

(コトバ、コトバ、コトバ, Michaela Pavlatova, 1999)

The Mitten

(手袋, Roman Kachanov, 1967)

Kirikou and the Sorceress

(キリクと魔女, Michel Ochelot, 1998)

The Fantastic Planet

(ファンタスティック・プラネット, René Laloux, 1973)

Hotel E

(ホテルE, Priit Pärn, 1992)

Study No. 7

(スタディNo.7, Oskar Fischinger, 1932)

Begone Dull Care/Caprice en couleurs

(色彩幻想, Evelyn Lambart/Norman McLaren, 1949)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

(真夏の夜の夢, Jiří Trnka, 1959)

Black Dog

(ブラック・ドッグ, Alison de Vere, 1987)

Linear Dreams

(Richard Reeves, 1998)

The Cowboy’s Flute

(牧笛, Te Wei, 1963)

Pinocchio

(ピノキオ, Ben Sharpsteen et al., 1940)

Hedgehog in the Fog

(霧につつまれたハリネズミ, Yuri Norstein, 1975)

Nightangel / L'heure des anges

(ナイト・エンジェル, Jacques Drouin/Břetislav Pojar, 1986)

Source: Laputa Top 150 World and Japanese Animation

On DVD in Japan:

Mitten [Regular Edition]

Puppet Animation

Frederic Back Collection

Shanghai bijutsu denei sakuhin shu Vol.1

Sway (ゆれる, 2006)

2012-01-23T01:42:00.000+01:00

Is all that we see or seem

But but a dream within a dream?

- Edgar Allen Poe

The human mind loves to try to bring order to chaos. That is why readers are drawn to classic detective fiction like that of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie where we marvel at the ability of Sherlock Holmes or Hercules Poirot to solve the mystery conclusively by bringing together threads of clues and witness testimonies. The modern detective; however, will tell you that such eyewitness testimony is often not very reliable. Not only can it be coloured by prejudice, but the human mind can sometimes play tricks on us.

The first sign in Sway (ゆれる, 2006) that Takeru Hayakawa (Joe Odagiri) is not a reliable witness comes when he returns to his home town for his mother’s funeral. The self-anointed black sheep of the Hayakawa family, Takeru barges late into the funeral services dressed head to toe in red, inciting his father (Masatō Ibu) into a rage over his lack of filial piety. The root of the bad feeling appears to be Takeru’s decision to reject joining the family business – a non-nondescript gas station – to become a big shot photographer in Tokyo. Yet, Isamu Hayakawa’s extreme reaction to his son suggests the strife runs even deeper into the family’s history.

The older brother Minoru (Teruyuki Kagawa), tries to bridge the yawning chasm between them by giving Takeru their mother’s Fujicascope projector and old 8mm home movies she took when they were little. One of the 8mm reels contains footage of a family outing to Hasumi Gorge, where Minoru recalls fondly fishing there with their father. Takeru does not remember ever going to the gorge and Minoru teases him, telling Takeru prophetically that he has selective memory made cloudy by the Tokyo smog.

Sway (Yureru) (English Subtitles)

Order from cdjapan

The camaraderie between the brothers sours when Takeru decides to seduce his old girlfriend Chieko Kawabata (Yōko Maki). Chieko has been working for the Hayakawas since the company she used to work for went under. She had a friendly, flirtatious relationship with Minoru and he’d been hoping she might take a fancy to him. Chieko joins the brothers on a trip to visit Hasumi Gorge, and her shocking sudden death at the old suspension bridge is the mystery that sets into motion the remainder of the film. However, whether or not Minoru was responsible for Chieko's death is really just a red herring. The true question is whether or not this tragedy will bring the brothers closer together or tear their tenuous relationship apart forever.

Director Miwa Nishikawa has a deft hand for creating dramatic tension in her screenplays. Whereas the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, would create it by showing the audience more than what the characters know, Nishikawa creates suspense by withdrawing visual information from us. We only see as much of the events on that fateful day as Takeru can remember, and we are drawn into his struggle to find a way to help his brother avoid being sentenced to prison for murder while remaining true to himself. We share Takeru’s frustration at not knowing all the details of what led to Chieko falling from the bridge.

Sway is an extraordinary film which at turns recalls the themes of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashōmon (1950), the mysterious beauty of Peter Greenaway’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), and the withholding of information narrative structure of Atom Egoyan’s Exotica (1994). The colours in Sway are muted, but beautifully done and like Hitchcock and Kurosawa one has the impression that every frame of the film was carefully composed ahead of the filming. It’s the type of film one needs to watch more than once in order to appreciate the subtle nuances of expression and meaning.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

The Japanese DVD release of Sway has excellent English subtitles for the feature, no subs for the extras. The film was so well received at festivals that it also got a US release.

Directed and Written by Miwa Nishikawa

Cinematography by Hiroshi Takase

Original Music by the Cauliflowers

Cast

Joe Odagiri as Takeru Hayakawa

Teruyuki Kagawa as Minoru Hayakawa

Masatō Ibu as Isamu Hayakawa

Hirofumi Arai as Yohei Okajima

Yōko Maki as Chieko Kawabata

Japan in Germany 7: Oshima (大島, 2010)

2012-01-22T22:52:00.000+01:00

“This story makes no sense,” a frustrated German police officer says at the beginning of Lars Henning’s dark tale Oshima (大島, 2010), and asks the Japanese language interpreter to have the haggard and bruised-looking salaryman before him to repeat his story one more time from the beginning. The man introduces himself as Taburo Oshima and says that he just arrived from Tokyo on business.

The opening credits are positioned over the clouds and a girl’s voice tells us that this is the story of her father, who in October 2002 came to Germany on business with plans of continuing on to the United States. The tale that he told to the police is the last official record of his existence. He disappeared without a trace. The girl mysteriously goes on to explain that while her mother never told her what happened that night, she nevertheless knows what happened that night.

Oshima, played by Japan-born/Germany-raised actor Yuki Iwamoto, arrives in Germany in a haze. In addition to jet lag, Oshima may be experiencing extreme side effects from the depression medication Opipramol that he consumes on the flight. He passes out upon arrival at the airport, and is looked after by an airport employee (Hakan Orbeyi). He somewhat recovers and stumbles out of the baggage retrieval area into the arms of an eager-to-curry-favour German businessman, Herr Kleinschmidt (Devid Striesow), and his interpreter, Frau Izumi (Nina Fog).

Oshima’s wooziness continues in the car journey to the hotel and over the course of this half hour dramatic short, he passes in and out of consciousness due to a mixture of over-medication, alcohol consumption, and just plain exhaustion. Oshima seems disinterested in his business dealings with Herr Kleinschmidt and barely even aware of his surroundings for most of the film. In an off-hand comment to Frau Izumi, which she curiously does not translate to her boss, Oshima reveals that he has lost his entire family in an accident. Izumi is drawn to him, but at the same time suspicious that this man may not be who he says he is. Are we witnessing the mental collapse of a salaryman or is there something more going on here? Oshima’s vision of a white unicorn on the darkened streets of this anonymous German city suggest deeper layers to this man’s story which the viewer must unravel for him/herself.

The ambiguity of the storyline could have been disastrous if not for the sensitive and subtle acting performances of Iwamoto and Fog. Their faces are very expressive and hint at a deeper emotional story than is implicit in the dialogue and narration. Lars Henning (b. 1976, Hamburg) is the director of the much acclaimed short Security (2006) which won prizes at the Avanca Film Festival and Lübeck Nordic Film Days. He pursued a postgraduate degree in television and film at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln) between 2006 and 2010. This is his fourth short film. It is a melancholic tale with beautifully executed transitions. The cinematographer, Carol Burandt von Kameke, and crew have done a remarkable job of lighting these very dark night scenes with great skill. Many scenes have a masterful chiaroscuro look. With most young filmmakers today opting to go digital for budgetary reasons, it is a real delight to discover a short film shot beautifully on 35mm funded by cultural institutions. Oshima is a rare gem that showed on arte before Christmas and at Japan Week in Frankfurt in November. Looking forward to seeing more work by this director.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Credits

director: Lars Henning

screenwriter: Lars Henning

cinematographer: Carol Burandt von Kameke

production company: Radical Movies / Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln

producer: Ulrich Otto

34 minutes / 35mm

shot on location in North Rhine Westphalia

Cast

Yuki Iwamoto Taburo Oshima

Nina Fog Frau Izumi, the Interpreter

Devid Striesow Herr Kleinschmidt, the Businessman

Karolina Porcari Laika, exotic Dancer

Hakan Orbeyi Momo, man in airport

Jens Wachholz Police Officer 1

Markus Haase Police Officer 2

Remo Hofer Night Porter

Tanja Desen Airline Staff

Rosa Bergmann Girl with Wings / Naoko / voice over narration

Melanie Kühn Exotic Dancer

Pia Passion Exotic Dancer

Marie Iguchi voice over

Lars Henning Filmography

2005 Koslowski (15‘)

2006 Security (13‘)

2009 Driving Elodie (19‘)

2010 Oshima (35mm, 34‘)

Mirai Mizue’s Tatamp (2011)

2012-01-16T13:31:00.000+01:00

“One living thing. One sound. Becomes chaos. Becomes melody.”

“This living thing has one sound but a thousand forms.”

Mirai Mizue continues his experimentation with music and movement in his latest “cell animation” Tatamp. Not to be confused with the animation technique of “cel animation”, Mizue’s unique style of “cell animation” is hand-drawn and coloured on paper then scanned onto the computer for editing. The name refers to the fact that the creatures that he draws resemble amoeba and other minute organic creatures one might find under the lens of a microscope.

As the onomatopoetic title Tatamp suggests, sound designer twoth (aka Shinichi Suda) employs a number of different percussive sounds (shakers, synth, snare drum, etc.) in this piece in addition to harp, whistle, loon calls and other experimental noises. As with Jam (2009), the film begins in a minimalistic fashion with one sound being represented by a moving shape or shapes. The cells splash onto the screen and disappear like fireworks exploding in the sky. The appearance and movement of the shapes is directly related to the timbre and duration of each sound.

The more full the soundtrack, the more full the screen is with shapes, and as the tempo increases, so too the movement of the shapes. The score follows a pattern of rising and falling with the screen alive with abstract shapes and a chaos of movement at each peak. The grand finale is an explosion of colour and movement with the individual “cells” layered densely on the screen. Another fantastic film from Mizue in the tradition of visual music.

Learn more about Mirai Mizue and order his DVD from CALF. The DVD is also available from British Animation Awards.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Lord of Chaos: The Cinema of Sono Sion (2011)

2012-01-16T00:23:00.000+01:00

Lord of Chaos: The Cinema of Sono Sion

Il signore del chaos: Il cinema di Sono Sion

In December, the 29th Torino Film Festival (TFF, 25 November – 3 December 2011) honoured Sion Sono by featuring his oeuvre in their Rapporto confidenziale (Confidential Report) section. This annual programme aims to take note of emerging auteurs, genres, and other trends in international cinema.

In honouring Sono, TFF describes him as an “eccentric and mesmerizing Japanese poet, novelist and director” whose works had never before been screened in Italian cinemas. They go on to call him a “visionary” and a “provocative and dynamic filmmaker. . . [who] mixes mixes psychoanalysis and Grand Guignol, melodrama and pop culture, horror and politics, serial killers and dark ladies.” (source)

In addition to presenting almost all of Sono’s films, TFF teamed up with the Italian blog Sonatine: Appunti sul cinema giapponese contemporaneo (Sonatine: Notes on contemporary Japanese cinema) to publish a book of essays and film reviews called Il signore del chaos: Il cinema di Sono Sion (Lord of Chaos: The Cinema of Sono Sion).

The book is edited by Dario Tomasi and Franco Picollo and features the writing of not only the editors but also Claudia Bertolè, Matteo Boscarol, Luca Calderini, Giacomo Calorio, Emanuela Martini, Grazia Paganelli, and Fabio Rainelli. The cover features a photograph of the director taken at TFF. The book includes a complete filmography with titles in Japanese/romaji/English/ Italian

For non-Italian speakers, I recommend checking out the Sonatine website using Google Translate. As Italian sentence structure is very similar to English it is quite readable – unlike the bizarre world of Google JP to EN!! Check out the following reviews on Sonatine:

1984 Rabu songu (Love Song)

1985   Ore wa Sono Sion da! (I Am Sono Sion!)
1986   Ai (Love)
1986   Otoko no hanamichi (Man's Flower Road)

1988   Kessen!Joshiryō tai danshiryō (Decisive Match! Girls Dorm Against Boys Dorm)
1990   Jitensha toiki (Bicycle Sighs)
1992   Heya (The Room)

1997 Keiko desu kedo (I Am Keiko / It's Me Keiko)
1998 Dankon - The Man (Dankon: The Man)

2000 Utsushimi (Utsushimi)

2002 Jisatsu sākuru (Suicide Club)

2005 Yume no naka e (Into a Dream)
2005 Kimyōna sākasu (Strange Circus)

2006 Hazard (Hazard)

2006 Noriko no shokutaku (Noriko's Dinner Table)

2006 Kikyū kurabu, sono go (Balloon Club).

2007   Exte (Exte: Hair Extensions)
2009   Ai no mukidashi (Love Exposure)
2009   Chanto tsutaeru (Be Sure to Share), 2009

2010 Tsumetai nettaigyo (Cold Fish)

2011 Koi no tsumi (Guilty of Romance)

2011 Himizu (Himizu)

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Yuri Norstein’s Animation Top 20 (2003)

2012-01-13T13:04:00.001+01:00

The great Russian animator Yuri Norstein (aka Yuriy Norshteyn, b. 1941) is widely admired in Japan by both mainstream and independent animators alike. His works The Hedgehog in the Fog (1975) and The Tale of Tales (1978) topped the Laputa Top 150 Japanese and World Animation poll done in 2003. His work is so beloved that even his unfinished adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s short story The Overcoat entered the list at #92. Norstein himself participated in the 2003 poll and his picks are listed below.

But first, a bit of background information:

Yuri Norstein has close ties to the Laputa International Animation Festival. The festival began in 2000 and semi-annually presents the Yuri Norstein Award (ユーリ・ノルシュテイン大賞) – with, I believe, Norstein himself acting as the head of the jury. The prize was jointly awarded in its inaugural year to Hiroyuki Tsutita for his film Mutate and to Hiroshi Okuda for Prisoner. Oscar-winner animator Kunio Katō won the Yuri Norstein Award twice: first in 2001 for The Apple Incident and again in 2004 for The Diary of Tortov Roddle. Hosokawa Susumu won the award in 2005 for Demons and Yusuke Sakamoto won in 2006 for The Telegraph Pole Mother. In 2008, the award was given to a non-Japanese for the first time. Latvian animator Vladimir Leschiov took the prize for Lost In Snow. It was my understanding that the award would be given out again in 2010, but I have been unable to find any evidence of this happening – though they did show a retrospective of Norstein’s works at the festival that year. The next festival will have an activist theme as they put out a call for “Fukushima Animation” last autumn. It is unclear when the 11^th festival will take place.

2007 saw the establishment of the Laputa Art Animation School – a “small school” where they teach the art of making animation by hand (puppet, cutout, drawn, etc.). The school creation is credited to Norstein’s insistence that Japan needed its own school of animation in the vein of the great Eastern European centres for training animators. The school even uses Norstein’s iconic hedgehog as their logo. At Laputa, indisputed masters of the art of animation including Fumiko Magari and Sumiko Hosaka – puppet masters who worked for Tadanari Okamoto and Kihachirō Kawamoto – and the avant-garde legend Yōji Kuri teach students the tricks of the trade.

There are no surprises in Yuri Norstein’s top 20. He lists a cross-section of some of the very best in world animation with nods to both early animation pioneers (Ladislaw Starewicz, Alexandre Alexeieff, Claire Parker, Mikhail Tsekhanovsky, Norman McLaren, David Hand, Jiří Trnka) and terrific contemporary work (Nick Park, Aleksandr Petrov, Michael Dudok de Wit). He even gives a nod to his Japanese hosts in recognizing the work of Osamu Tezuka and Kihachirō Kawamoto. If you were teaching a course on world animation of the 20^th century and could only show 20 films – this list would suit nicely. Though you would be hard-pressed to find a copy of Frantisek Vystrcil’s The Place in the Sun.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Night on Bald Mountain / Une nuit sur le Mont Chauve

(禿山の一夜, Alexandre Alexeieff/Claire Parker, 1933)

The Street / La rue

(ストリート, Caroline Leaf, 1976)

Crac!

(クラック！, Frédéric Back, 1981)

Bambi

(バンビ, David Hand/Disney, 1942)

Hand / Ruca

(手, Jiří Trnka, 1965)

Blinkity Blank

(線と色の即興詩, Norman McLaren, 1955)

Father and Daughter

(ファーザー・アンド・ドーター, Michaël Dudok de Wit, 2000)

Ali Baba

(アリババ, Giulio Gianini / Emanuele Luzzati, 1970)

The Substitute / Surogat

(代用品, Dušan Vukotić, 1961)

10.

The Cow / Корова

(雌牛, Aleksandr Petrov, 1989)

11.

De Facto/ De fakto

(デファクト, Donyo Donev, 1973)

12.

The Lady and the Cellist / La demoiselle et le violoncelliste

(お嬢さんとチェロ弾き, Jean-François Laguionie, 1965)

13.

Post / Почта

(郵便, Mikhail Tsekhanovsky, 1929)

14.

The Island / Остров

(島, Fyodor Khitruk, 1973)

15.

The Place in the Sun / O misto na slunci

(太陽の下の場所, Frantisek Vystrcil, 1959)

16.

Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers

(ウォレスとグルミット〜ペンギンに気をつけろ!, Nick Park, 1993)

17.

Tango

(タンゴ, Zbigniew Rybczyński, 1980)

18.

Jumping

(ジャンピング, Osamu Tezuka, 1984)

19.

Dōjōji Temple

(道成寺, Kihachirō Kawamoto, 1976)

20.

The Cameraman’s Revenge

(カメラマンの復讐, Ladislaw Starewicz, 1912)

Source: Laputa Top 150 World and Japanese Animation

Norstein's complete works is available to order from Japan:

Yuri Norstein Sakuhin shu (collection)

Russian with Japanese subs

A-AIR×CALF World of Independent Animation (世界のインディペンデント・アニメーション)

2012-01-12T23:06:00.000+01:00

Sunday, January 22, 2012

日時　2012年1月22日（日曜日）　14:00-18:00

Location: Aoyama Gakuin A Studio

会場　青山学院アスタジオ

Admission: 300 yen

The Japan Image Council (JAPIC) has sponsored three animation artists for a 75 days of residency in Tokyo for from December 2011 until March 2012. The Animation Artists in Residence (A-AIR) include Ewa Borysewicz (エヴァ・ボリセヴィッチ) from Poland, Immanuel Wagner (イマニュエル・ワーグナー) from Switzerland, and London-based filmmaker and animator Mikey Please (マイキー・プリーズ). On the 22^nd of January, JAPIC will be joining forces with the Japanese independent animation label CALF to celebrate the coming together of talented young animation artists from around the world.

14:00

Introduction to the Animation Artist in Residence (A-AIR) project

Speaker: Mr. Saeki / Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs

Programme 1

A-AIR 2010-2011 Playback

Works by last year’s participants

Chen Xi チェン・シー (China/中国)

Chrisophe Gautry クリストフ・ゴートリー　 (France/フランス)

Jospeph Pierce ジョゼフ・ピアス　(UK/イギリス)

14:55 Break

15:00

Programme 2

A-AIR 2010-2011

Screening + Presentation

Who Would Have Thought (Ewa Borysewicz, 2009, 11’)

Baka! (Immanuel Wagner, 2010, 8’)

The Eagleman Stag (Mikey Please, 2010, 9’)

With discussion moderated by animation scholar and critic Nobuaki Doi

16:55 Break

17:00

Programme 3

Recent Japanese and International Independent Animation

Playground (Mirai Mizue, 2010)

Yuki-chan (Kei Oyama, 2006)

Round Table discussion with Ewa Borysewicz, Immanuel Wagner, Mikey Please, Mirai Mizue, and Kei Oyama

Event will conclude at 18:00

A-AIR Profiles ＜A-AIR招へいアーティストプロフィール＞

エヴァ・ボリセヴィッチ　Ewa BORYSEWICZ（ポーランド）

Born in 1985, Ewa Borysewicz grew up in Podlachia, Poland. In 2009 she graduated from Kracow Academy of Fine Arts. Her graduation animated film “Who would have thought?” has been acclaimed both by audiences and critics alike. She has received important festival awards in Poland and abroad. She’s working now on her debut animated film. She’s also a graphic artist and illustrator.

http://ewaborysewicz.blogspot.com/

イマニュエル・ワーグナー Immanuel WAGNER（スイス）

Born in 1984, Immanuel Wagner was raised in Switzerland. After studying for 3 semesters of Fine Arts at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU), he graduated from their animation programme in 2010. His graduation film has been shown in over 20 International Short Film Festivals and has also won 2nd Prize at Animator Festival in Poznan, Poland. He is currently working as a freelancer working on several Swiss commercial and non-profit art projects. http://imma.tv/

マイキー・プリーズ　Mikey PLEASE（イギリス）

Born in 1984. Mikey Please graduated with a BA in Special Effects from the University of Arts London (UAL) and then went on to direct animated promotional material for Virgin, Transgressive Records, Rough Trade, Ninja Tune and Universal Records before doing an MA in Direction at the Royal College of Art. He is now represented commercially by Agile Films, Independent Talent and developing long form projects with Warp Films for 2012. http://mikeyplease.co.uk/

Learn more about the Animation in Residence programme at the JAPIC website.

Please support CALF by ordering their DVDs today.

The full Japanese programme is also on the JAPIC website including a map to the event.

RSVP to the Facebook Invite here.

CALF(info@calf.jp)　JAPIC(03-6670-5676)

Immanuel Wagner's artwork has been used for the cover of Christian Gasser's new book about Swiss animation:

Tsutomu Shibayama’s Animation Top 20 (2003)

2012-01-08T12:55:00.000+01:00

Tsutomu Shibayama (芝山努, b. 1941) admits that he is patting himself on the back by listing his own films in the Animation Top 20 questionnaire that he filled out at the Laputa Animaton Festival in 2003. He uses the expression “temae miso” (手前味噌) – which literally means “home-made miso” but is colloquially used to express that one is singing one’s own’s praises. Shibayama’s entire list but two are all movies from the popular Doraemon franchise which Shibayama has been involved with since the 1970s.

Despite his long history as an animator and director in the anime industry, Shibayama writes that he does not feel that he is particularly discerning when it comes to the quality of animation and doesn’t really feel that he is suited to the task of ranking animation.

Paul Grimault’s The Shepherdess and the Chimneysweep (1953) – which later became the basis of his Grimault’s feature film masterpiece The King and the Mockingbird (1980) – was the film that inspired Shibayama to become an animator himself. Before this film, Shibayama had only seen Disney animation for children and the contrast between Grimault’s work and that of Disney made a great impression on him.

Frédéric Back’s The Man Who Planted Trees was so highly recommended to Shibayama by a friends that he finally “lifted his heavy bottom” and went to see it and it did impress him very much.

The rest of Shibayama’s list ranks what he feels are the best Doraemon feature films. I did not have the impression that Shibayama was listing his own series out of mere egotism, but more out of a place of being proud of the work that he has done. Some animators who work for big franchises grow weary of the limitations they set upon creativity. It is nice to see someone who seems to truly enjoy what he does, even after all these years.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

The Shepherdess and the Chimneysweep / La Bergère et le ramoneur

(やぶにらみの暴君, Paul Grimault, 1953)

The Man Who Planted Trees / L'Homme qui plantait des arbres

(木を植えた男, Frédéric Back, 1987)

Doraemon: Nobita and the Birth of Japan

(ドラえもんのび太の日本誕生, Tsutomu Shibayama, 1989)

Doraemon: Nobita and the Wind Wizard

(ドラえもんのび太とふしぎ風使い, Tsutomu Shibayama, 2003)

Doraemon: Nobita and the Robot Kingdom

(ドラえもんのび太とロボット王国, Tsutomu Shibayama, 2002)

Doraemon: Nobita and the Winged Braves

(ドラえもんのび太と翼の勇者たち, Tsutomu Shibayama,2001)

Doraemon: Nobita and the Legend of the Sun King

(ドラえもんのび太の太陽王伝説, Tsutomu Shibayama, 2000)

Doraemon: Nobita Gets Lost in Space

(ドラえもんのび太の宇宙漂流記, Tsutomu Shibayama, 1999)

Doraemon: Nobita's South Sea Adventure

(ドラえもんのび太の南海大冒険, Tsutomu Shibayama, 1998)

10.

Doraemon: Nobita's Adventure in Clockwork City

(ドラえもんのび太のねじ巻き都市冒険記, Tsutomu Shibayama, 1997)

11.

Doraemon: Nobita and the Galaxy Super-Express

(ドラえもんのび太と銀河超特急, Hiroshi Fukutomi, 1996)

12.

Doraemon: Nobita's Genesis Diary

(ドラえもんのび太の創世日記, Tsutomu Shibayama, 1995)

13.

Doraemon: Nobita and the Fantastic Three Musketeers

(ドラえもんのび太と夢幻三剣士, Tsutomu Shibayama, 1994)

14.

Doraemon: Nobita and Tin-Plate Labyrinth

(ドラえもんのび太とブリキの迷宮, Tsutomu Shibayama, 1993)

15.

Doraemon: Nobita and the Kingdom of Clouds

(ドラえもんのび太と雲の王国, Tsutomu Shibayama, 1992)

16.

Doraemon: Nobita in Dorabian Nights

(ドラえもんのび太のドラビアンナイト, Tsutomu Shibayama, 1991)

17.

Doraemon: Nobita and the Animal Planet

(ドラえもんのび太とアニマル惑星, Tsutomu Shibayama, 1990)

18.

Doraemon: Nobita's Parallel "Journey to the West"

(ドラえもんのび太のパラレル西遊記, Tsutomu Shibayama, 1988)

19.

Doraemon: Nobita and the Knights of Dinosaurs

(ドラえもんのび太と竜の騎士, Tsutomu Shibayama, 1987)

20.

Doraemon: Nobita and the Steel Troops

(ドラえもんのび太と鉄人兵団, Tsutomu Shibayama,1986)

Source: Laputa Top 150 World and Japanese Animation

The Doraemon films are available via cdjapan:

Doraemon Shin, Nobita to Tetsujin Heidan - Habatake Tenshi Tachi Blu-ray [Regular Edition]

Eiichi Yamamoto’s Animation Top 20 (2003)

2012-01-08T12:45:00.000+01:00

Back by popular demand, individual questionnaire responses from Laputa Animation Festival’s publication of the Top 150 Japanese and World Animation (2003).

Biographical information about the great animator Eiichi Yamamoto (山本暎一, b. 1940) in English is unusually sparse on the internet considering that he is one of the top anime directors of his generation. It is somehow fitting that he was born the same year that Fantasia was completed by Disney, for his contributions to animation have been equally bold and groundbreaking as the work done by James Algar, Wilfred Jackson, et al.

Born in Kyoto during the Pacific War, Yamamoto’s father was called up for service and as an infant Yamamoto’s mother and her family moved to Shōdoshima where they stayed for the duration of the war. The island is famous for its olives, soy sauce, and wild monkeys. . . as well as being the setting of Keisuke Kinoshita’s classic film Twenty-Four Eyes (二十四の瞳, 1954). As a school boy, Yamamoto already dreamed of becoming an animator and upon graduation from high school he got work at Otogi Pro under the anime pioneer Ryūichi Yokoyama (横山隆一, 1909-2001). He worked on the productions of Fukusuke (ふくすけ, 1957) and Otogi's World Tour (おとぎの世界旅行, 1960) before meeting Osamu Tezuka (手塚治虫, 1928-89) in 1960.

In 1961, Yamamoto became one of the founding members of Tezuka’s Mushi Productions and he took on the task of animating Story of a Certain Street Corner (ある街角の物語, 1962) which won much acclaim including the first ever Noburo Ofuji Award at the Mainichi Film Concours. He worked with Tezuka on the original Astro Boy Series and directed the Kimba the White Lion series (1965-7) and feature film (1966).

Yamamoto is perhaps best known for his work on the Animerama (アニメラマ) trilogy of films: A Thousand and One Nights (千夜一夜物語, 1969), Cleopatra (クレオパトラ, 1970), and Belladonna (哀しみのベラドンナ, 1973). Although these adult themed films may have been conceived and co-directed by Tezuka, Yamamoto is generally credited as the main creative force behind these unique films. Yamamoto was also the supervising director of Leiji Matsumoto’s influential anime series Space Battleship Yamato (1974-5).

The 20 films that Yamamoto selected for the 2003 Laputa survey reflect his love of both popular and avant-garde forms of animation. . . not to mention a taste for the eclectic and unusual. Yamamoto’s generation were hugely influenced by the extraordinary cell animation produced by Walt Disney in the 1930s and 1940s. Although they emulated Disney to a certain extent, with the Animerama films Mushi Productions also sought to move animation in a completely new and different direction than Disney. The avant-garde spirit of these films was influenced by Yōji Kuri and the Animation Sannin no Kai, which is doubtless why Two Grilled Fish made Yamamoto’s list.

On the surface it may seem egoistic for two of Yamamoto’s own works to appear on this list, but it is not uncommon among the Laputa lists. Puppet animation pioneer Katsuo Takahashi mentions his own work Nobara (野ばら, 1967) and Tsutomu Shibayama lists 18 Doraemon movies in his Top 20 List. I enlisted my husband to help me translate Yamamoto’s comments about his selection which I have included below. They reveal his quirky sense of humour. Although the list is numbered, Yamamoto claims the order is random. I am fascinated by the inclusion of The City of Lost Children which is not animation at all, but he suggests the aesthetics have an “anime taste” to them.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Fantasia

(ファンタジア, 9 Disney directors, 1940)

The film that inspired Yamamoto to become an animator.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

(白雪姫, David Hand et al., Disney, USA, 1937)

“The dark beauty in Snow White reminds me of kabuki” - EY

Two Grilled Fish

(二匹のサンマ, Yōji Kuri, 1960)

“Scary, terrible and disturbing to envision the progress of humanity in this way.” - EY

One Thousand and One Nights

(千夜一夜物語, Eiichi Yamamoto, Japan, 1969)

Yamamoto claims that it was the first animation to be have an “Eirin cut”

(Eirin is the Japanese film classification – some would say “censorship” board)

Belladonna

(哀しみのベラドンナ, Eiichi Yamamoto, Japan, 1973)

“Because I made it!” - EY

Night on the Galactic Railroad

(銀河鉄道の夜 Gisaburo Sugii, 1985)

“Because a friend of mine made it!” - EY

Laputa: Castle in the Sky

(天空の城ラピュタ, Hayao Miyazaki, 1986)

“It has such a great chase scene!” - EY

My Neighbor Totoro

(となりのトトロ, Hayao Miyazaki, 1988)

“It succeeded wonderfully in turning Japanese folklore into entertainment.” - EY

Renown “Ye-Ye” Girls Commericals

(レナウンのイエイエ娘CM, 1960s)

http://www31.ocn.ne.jp/~goodold60net/yeye.htm

“Oh those were fun, weren’t they!” - EY

10.

Ugo Ugo Lhuga series

(ウゴウゴルーガ, Toshio Iwai, 1992-1994)

http://we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2005/08/ugo-ugo-lhuga-j.php

“This series was great because it turned poo into a character.

Iwai took animation to a new level. I watched it every day when it was on TV.” - EY

11.

Minna no Uta series

(みんなのうた, various, NHK, 1961-present)

“I congratulate the NHK on this series. Please continue it forever!” - EY

12.

Hedgehog in the Fog

(霧につつまれたハリネズミ, Yuri Norstein, 1975)

“Well, I listed it because everybody says it’s great.” - EY

13.

The Mighty River / Le fleuve aux grandes eaux

(大いなる河の流れ, Frédéric Back, 1993)

“I like it better than The Man Who Planted Trees” - EY

14.

American Pop

(アメリカン・ポップ, Ralph Bakshi, 1981)

Yamamoto enjoyed the combination of rotoscoping with human drama.

15.

Heavy Metal

(ヘヴィメタル, Gerald Potterton, 1981)

“Hmmmm… this one is ugly and beautiful at the same time (醜悪美).” - EY

16.

The Nightmare Before Christmas

(ナイトメアー・ビフォア・クリスマス, Henry Selick, 1993)

“A grotesque doll with an exceedingly beautiful heart.” - EY

17.

Beavis and Butt-head Do America

(ビーバス・アンド・バットヘッドDo America, Mike Judge/ Yvette Kaplan, 1996)

“Very queer characters, very strange story, knee-slappingly hilarious.

On the one hand there’s Disney, and on the other hand there’s this odd, queer stuff.

America produces such diverse [animation].” - EY

18.

Death Becomes Her

(水遠に美しく, Robert Zemeckis, 1992)

puppets and special effects Guy Himber, Alec Gillis, Don Elliot, et al.

“Fantastic animation techniques used with ‘humans’” - EY

19.

Run Lola Run / Lola rennt animation sequences

(ラン・ローラ・ラン, Tom Tykwer, 1998)

Animation designed by Gil Alkabetz

“The animation is good, as is the beauty of the camera work.

The construction is also great.

Lola with the tattoo on her belly is really kawaii” - EY

20.

The City of Lost Children / La Cité des enfants perdus

(ロスト・チルドレン, Jean-Pierre Jeunet/Marc Caro, 1995)

“There’s no “anime” in it at all, but it has an anime flavour to it.

(he uses the katakana term アニメテイスト literally “anime taste”)

Their debut film Delicatessen was also good.” - EY

Source: Laputa Top 150 World and Japanese Animation

Face To Face (お向かいさん, 2007)

2012-01-08T09:03:00.000+01:00

The animated films of Kansai artist Mika Seike (清家美佳, b. 1975) are a rare treat. Information about her is even harder to come by as she has very little web presence. As far as I am aware, Face to Face (Omukaisan/お向かいさん, 2007) is the most recent animated work released by Seike. As in her previous films, she uses scanned objects and photographs of her actors (in this case Natsuko Miyata and Yoshiro Togami) for the basic forms of her animation, which she manipulates, colours, and animates on her computer. As in her previous films, the people and backgrounds in Face to Face have a grey, textured tone similar to that of newsprint. In contrast to the grey and black of the human forms, elements of the natural world, such as leaves, butterflies, and flowers have been vividly coloured.

2 films by Seike appear on Thinking and Drawing

A female hand enters from screen left and puts a green leaf down on a flat surface and it grows roots and transforms into a small tree that leans to the left. Then a male hand enters from screen right and places a red leaf on the tree. This leaf sprouts into a branch giving the tree a more balanced shape. The camera then cuts to a wider angle and we see that the surface on which the tree is growing is not earthen, but a small wooden card table. A man and woman sit at the table, hands on their laps, heads bent forward in rapt concentration as if they were playing chess with one another.

The woman raises her head, and a green leaf pops out of her mouth, like a ticket out of a vending machine and she places it on the tree, causing a new branch to form. The man does the same with a red leaf. And so the “game” continues, with the man and woman staring intently at one another across the branches of the tree. Their faces have a rough quality to them as if they were made out of corrugated paper.

When the tree is full with entangled branches of green and red, one of the green leaves suddenly pops off the tree and begins to fall. The man looks surprised and the woman’s expression suggests that she is crestfallen by this – her eyes lower to watch it fall. When the green leaf touches the table, it begins growing into a vine which rapidly wraps itself around the woman’s neck and head. Another leaf comes out of her mouth and she places it on the tree. As the green leaves grow higher, close ups show us that the leaves are now almost blocking out eye contact between the woman and man.

Two red leaves fall to the ground and transform into vines that wrap themselves around the neck and face of the man. Another red leaf comes out of his mouth, but instead of placing it on the tree, he plants it on the woman’s side of the table, where it grows into a red-leafed vine that wraps around the woman. She opens her mouth and a green vine grows out of it, wrapping itself around the man’s face. He releases another red leaf, but instead of planting it, holds it up defiantly between their lines of vision and it transforms into a red flame. He sets the vine alight, and the flame travels, as if up a dynamite cable, to the woman’s mouth. Consuming the flame causes a small stone to fall out of the woman’s mouth. She then raises her head and a stone shoots out of her mouth, hitting the man on his forehead.

Seike's Fishing Vine (2006) appears on Tokyo Loop

The woman looks over the man’s shoulder at a butterfly fluttering past the window, set against a red sky. Her gaze then shifts to the floor, where there are three stones – suggesting that this has happened before. She then removes the vines from her face. She walks to the window to peer outside. As she does so, the red butterfly comes to greet her on the windowsill and a rumble of thunder can be heard. Outside, there are some of flower-boxes – some full of colour, some empty – and a giant stone appears to have fallen at some point on the ground causing fissures in the concrete. The woman’s gaze follows the butterfly as it soars into the sky, joining other butterflies against a ruddy sky. This establishing shot reveals a landscape of dull grey apartment buildings, each with flowerboxes giving the scene some colour. In some of the apartment windows other people can be seen sitting at tables performing the same ritual of planting leaves on tables.

As the butterflies continue their soaring, the sound of leaves rustling in the wind joins the low rumble of a distant thunderstorm. Eventually, the butterflies plant themselves on the floor of a small wood of red-leafed trees, causing another red-leafed tree to sprout. This tree also produces a fruit, out of which is born another butterfly.

The butterfly flies to the woman and lands on her hand, then journeys into the sky. The camera pulls back to reveal that the urban landscape seems to be walled. The camera pulls back further to show that these walls are actually the walls of a box that juts out from the chest of the man. Back inside the apartment, the woman returns to the table. The sky is now green and the red butterfly has joined them. The man looks down, then removes the vines from himself, stands and closes the box into his chest, as if it were a bureau drawer. He walks to gaze out the window on the opposite side of the room, where a green butterfly lands on the window sill. Between the apartments out this window is a much less bleaker scene: a garden full of greenery and colour. Some purple butterflies plant themselves in the grass causing a stone to grow out of the earth. The green butterfly returns to the man who looks at it intently before watching it fly away again. The camera then pulls back to reveal more of this garden community, and then to show that it too is inside a box, but this one is jutting out of the woman’s chest. When she closes it into her chest, a green butterfly escapes from it and joins the red butterfly on the tree on the table. The red butterfly then lands on the woman’s forehead, then enters the woman’s mouth.

Inside the woman, the butterfly flies downwards and arrives in the garden where the man is gazing out the window. It plants itself in the ground in front of the man and sprouts into a red-leafed tree. The green butterfly then flies to the man’s forehead, then into his mouth and appears on the stormy side of the house, where it plants itself in the empty flower-box. Unlike the red butterfly, which sprouted a tree of its own colour, the tree that the green butterfly creates has both green and red leaves. The man returns to the table and the couple stare at each other over the original tree. Each pulls a leaf from their mouths and plants them on the tree, causing butterflies to emerge – the red butterfly lands on the woman’s forehead and the green on the man’s forehead. As the camera pulls silently away, we see the butterflies then enter their mouths again. The camera continues to pull back, out of the window. The final image is of the man and woman, framed in a window, staring at each other over the green and red tree on the table.

Seike’s characters inhabit a monochrome world and the only signs of nature – the leaves and the butterflies – seem to represent communication between men and women. But, instead of being a beautiful organic process, the relationship between the two sexes has been reduced to a game of strategy. It is a bleak vision of the modern world with the vibrant butterflies being the only signs of a possible transformation of the relationship into something more beautiful.

Departures (おくりびと, 2008)

2012-01-02T09:25:00.000+01:00

In the modern world we have become quite estranged from the natural process of death. When my grandmother was growing up in rural Ontario death was accepted part of life and bodies were laid out on the dining room table to be cleaned and dressed before being laid in a simple coffin in the living room for visitation. Today, when loved ones die strangers take care of preparing the body for funeral services. People who work in funeral services are often stigmatized for it, as was revealed on the US program The Bachelor when a beautiful young funeral director vied for the prize.

In Japan, the stigma is even greater because of the history of people who worked with the dead being ostracized as burakumin (untouchables). The descendants of the burakumin are still the victims of oppression in Japan and people who work with the dead still risk being stigmatized in their community as “unclean.” Yōjirō Takita’s Oscar-winning film Departures (おくりびと, 2008) tenderly explores this issue with the tale of Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki), a young cellist who suddenly loses his job in a Tokyo orchestra. He decides to return to his home town in Yamagata prefecture with the support of his wife Mika (Ryōko Hirosue) to look for work.

Soon after their arrival, Kobayashi answers an advertisement in the newspaper for a company looking for someone to assist with “tabi” (旅) which he interprets as “travel”. However, the “travel” that is meant in the ad is not to do with a physical journey but a spiritual one and Kobayashi finds himself employed as the apprentice of a man called Sasaki (Tsutomu Yamazaki) who ceremonially prepares the dead for their journey into the next life.

Okuribito Sheet Music for Piano and Cello

The pay for this work is generous so Kobayashi gives it the old college try, but it takes some getting used to and his emotional turmoil is amplified by the fact that he is afraid to tell his wife the truth about what his new job entails. It turns out that Kobayashi is an ideal candidate for the job because he understands what it means to suffer loss. His father walked out on his family when he was six and he missed the funeral of his mother two years earlier because he was too busy to return home. The film follows Kobayashi’s acceptance of his new work as his vocation with warmth and depth and his story is bolstered by cleverly written subplots concerning his lost father, the family that runs the local bath house, and Kobayashi’s co-workers.

Okuribito Original Soundtrack by Joe Hisaishi

Cinematically, the film does not really stand out from the crowd, which is why it was such a shock to many that it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film over the Israeli animated documentary Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman, 2008). In terms of subject matter, it was very brave of the filmmakers to take on the taboo subject of preparing bodies for death. The strong storyline and superb acting is complemented by the glorious location shooting in Sakata, Yamagata. If I were still living in Japan I would be immediately planning a getaway to the region for some hill walking. I am also quite partial to the violoncello and the score by Joe Hisaishi is beautifully written and performed (available from cdjapan).

I watched the German DVD release of this film Nokan: Die Kunst des Ausklangs which has a 16 minute interview with Takita as an extra.

The DVD is also available in the US, the UK, and elsewhere.

Muybridge's Strings Flip Books (マイブリッジの糸フリップブック, 2011)

2011-12-31T12:26:00.000+01:00

Fans of Kōji Yamamura who live outside of Japan may not be aware that it has become a tradition for the great animator to publish a book tie-in along with his latest film releases. For Kafuka Inaka Isha, he published a slim, hardcover illustrated storybook edition of Franz Kafka's acclaimed short story A Country Doctor in Japanese translation.

For his latest animated masterpiece Muybridge’s Strings (マイブリッジの糸, 2011), Yamamura and his publishers came up with the ingenious idea of creating flip book tie-ins. According to the introduction, Yamamura wanted to create a book that would reflect the temporal themes of the animation. Although I have not yet seen it, I have read that Muybridge's Strings employs a parallel editing structure that interweaves a story from the past (the time of Muybridge) with a story set in the present.

Front covers: book slipcases, flip books, info booklet

There are two complementary flip books available: (マイブリッジの糸I and マイブリッジの糸II). They are published in a format of 13x8cm and consist of a slipcase and flip book in full colour, accompanied by a monochrome paper booklet. When the front covers of both slipcases are pushed together (top photograph) they form the full length poster for the film.

Back covers: book slipcases, flip books, info booklet

Each flip book features a series of images on the right-hand side pages and transcribed music from the film by Normand Roger and J.S. Bach on each facing page. The pages are of two different alternating lengths which means that once you have flipped through one side of the book, you can turn the book over and flip through a different series of images. This forward and backward structure is also drawn from the animated short which references J.S. Bach's Crab Canon - a clever piece of music which is the musical equivalent of a palindrome. It is best scene and heard, so I recommend checking out this helpful explanatory video.

Info booklets

Both flip books are accompanied by the same information booklet. It features an introduction by Yamamura as well as an interview with him about not only the flip books but also the making of this Japanese-Canadian (NFB/NHK/Polygon) co-production. See all photos on Google Plus or Facebook. Even if you cannot read Japanese, these books are a visual delight and a must-have for collectors of independent animation.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

ISBN 978-4-89194-909-9
ISBN 978-4-89194-910-5

Nishikata’s Best Japanese Animated Shorts 2011

2011-12-29T10:53:00.000+01:00

2011 has been an exciting year in the world of Japanese independent animation. Kōji Yamamura released his much anticipated NFB co-production Muybridge’s Strings (マイブリッジの糸, 2011) to great acclaim in Canada and Japan. It has already won several awards including the Excellence Prize at the Japan Media Arts Festival. Mirai Mizue was invited to the Biennale to show his latest "cell animation" Modern No. 2 (2011) in which he experiments with increasing the speed of movement and uses washi paper as a background.

There was also much sadness in 2011 as the animation community mourned the loss of Masahiro Katayama and Nobuhiro Aihara. Both belonged to the first wave of “art animators” of the 1960s and 70s and both had been very influential teachers at art colleges in Japan. Katayama will be best remembered for the amazing series of DVDs of world animation he put together for Geneon. His legacy lives on in the amazing work of the students he inspired at Tamabi to give animation a try such as Oscar-winner Kunio Katō, Mirai Mizue, and Akino Kondoh. Kondoh released her latest animated short Kiya Kiya (2006-11) this autumn – a film that took the artist five years of painstaking work to complete.

Aihara passed away during Nippon Connection 2011. One of his former students, Takeshi Nagata of TOCHKA, was a guest at the festival and I learned a great deal about this influential experimental animator’s life and career from him. His final collaboration with Keiichi Tanaami, DREAMS (2011) was released at the Image Forum Festival, and I look forward to seeing it in the New Year.

As it takes some time for animated shorts to make their way from Japan to Germany, my criteria in selecting Nishikata’s Best Animated Shorts 2011 are as follows: I need to have seen the films either at festivals, through artist releases online, or by artists sending me their work for consideration. The works must have been completed at some point during the last two years and be either handmade (direct, drawn, puppet, paint-on-glass, cutouts, etc.), experimental, or avant-garde in nature. I do consider CG animation if I feel that it is innovative in some way. Although many amazing animators screened their works at events like Image Forum 2011 and the CALF Short Film Festival in Summer, I cannot take films into consideration that I have not viewed in their entirety with my own eyes. That means that I am looking forward to seeing not only the aforementioned films, but also Hiroco Ichinose’s TWO TEA TWO (2010), Takashi Ishida’s Three Rooms (三つの部屋, 2011), and Naoyuki Tsuji’s Wind Spirit (風の精, 2011) sometime in 2012.

Here are the top films that I saw this year, in the order in which I saw them:

Getting Dressed (服を着るまで, Aico Kitamura, 2010)

Last year, Kitamura’s graduation film just barely missed my official list because I had already submitted it to Midnight Eye for their year-end round-up. It is a highly sophisticated film for a student and makes me very excited about Kitamura’s future as an artist. The last I heard, she was working on a new animated short which should be released sometime this year. Read Full Review .

Timbre A-Z (Mirai Mizue, 2011)

In January, Mirai Mizue shared a series of daily shorts on Vimeo and Youtube in which he explored the relationship between music , colour, shape, and movement. It was fascinating to see him experiment with minimalism when his “cell” animations like Jam (2009) had been moving towards greater and greater complexity. Read about it here.

Shunga (Keiichi Tanaami + Nobuhiro Aihara, 2009)

Eroticism has long been a theme in the animation, paintings, and illustrations of Tanaami and Aihara. For this collaborative work they draw specifically on the tradition of Shunga (春画) – Japanese erotic art usually executed in the ukiyo-e woodblock print style. As in Shunga, the film uses exaggerated genitalia and poses. In translating Shunga to animation Tanaami and Aihara add the element of sensual movement. They also literally translate the concept of genitalia being a “second face” by surrealistically depicting a couple with faces shaped like male and female genitalia making love. This film appears on the DVD/Book set Portrait of Keiichi Tanaami.

Mechanism of Spring (春のしくみ, Atsushi Wada, 2010)

Mechanism of Spring is Wada’s most light-hearted film to date, capturing the delight that young children and animals take in the season. The chubby youths examine the wildlife, take off their shirts and run about gaily, and observe a plant sprouting out of the earth, among other delights. The frogs behaving like humans recall the famous picture scrolls Chōjū-giga (鳥獣戯画, c.12th-13th centuries) which depict frolicking animals. This film is available on the CALF DVD Atsushi Wada works 2002-2010. Wada is also expected to release a new film in 2012.

Tatamp (Mirai Mizue, 2010)

Like Timbre A-Z, Tatamp continues Mizue's exploration of the relationship between image and movement through his distinctive “cell animation” technique. As the onomatopoeic title suggests, this animated short employs percussive sounds from keyboards to snare drums. As with Fantastic Cells and Jam, the film begins minimalistically then builds to a fantastic crescendo of colour and movement. The call of loons combined with the bright colours against heavy blacks reminded me of Haida and Inuit art. Learn more about Mirai Mizue and find out how to order a DVD of his works.

A Gum Boy (くちゃお, Masaki Okuda, 2010)

This dynamic film was one of my favourites in the CALF Animation Special at Nippon Connection 2011. Masaki Okuda has an inspired talent for using animation to poetically interpret music through moving images. Read Review.

Steps (Tochka, 2010)

A stop motion film inspired by Norman McLaren and Claude Jutra’s A Chairy Tale (1957). The animation team of Tochka (Takeshi Nagata and Kazue Monno) incorporate elements of their famous PiKA PiKA animation technique into the film. Read Review.

The Woman Who Stole Fingers (指を盗んだ女, Saori Shiroki, 2010)

Saori Shiroki’s graduate film from the Tokyo University of the Arts. She creates a haunting and melancholic atmosphere using paint-on-glass to explore the psychological impact of abuse. Read Review.

Hana no Hanashi (はなのはなし, Taku Furukawa, 2010)

A clever little short by one of Japan’s top animators about men with giant noses from Pinocchio to Cyrano de Bergerac. Furukawa seamlessly adapts 5 short stories by renowned international authors into a mere 6 minutes. Stories referenced in the film include “The Dragon” and “The Nose” by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, “The Nose” by Nikolai Gogol, “The Adventures of Pinocchio” by Carlo Collodi, “Cyrano de Bergerac” by Edward Rostand. Catchy soundtrack composed by Toshiyuki Honda.

TAKU BODA (タクボーダ, Taku Furukawa/Noriyuki Boda, 2009)

Computer animation meets 16mm animation in this modern re-mix of Taku Furukawa's 1977 film Nice to See You (ナイス・トゥ・スィ・ユー). Read Review.

Coffee Takaiku (コーヒータダイク, Tomoyoshi Joko + Hiroco Ichinose, 2011)

2011 was a truly memorable one for the young animators Tomoyoshi Joko and Hiroco Ichinose as they got married and started their own production company together called Decovocal. This name was suggested to them by their mentor Taku Furukawa. For Furukawa’s 70^th birthday they made this inspired homage to his 1977 animated short Coffee Break (コーヒー・ブレイク). Read Review.

SPECIAL MENTIONS (Longer than 20 minutes but not feature length)

Elemi (電信柱エレミの恋い/Denshinbashira Eremi no Koi, 2009)

Hideto Nakata was the winner of the 2009 Noburo Ofuji Award for innovation in animation for this sentimental stop motion animation. It also won an Excellence Prize from the Japan Media Arts Festival. The film wasreleased on DVD by Pony Canyon in late 2010 and made its way to my post box in January. It tells the story of an anthropomorphized utility pole who falls in love with a human being. Read Review. Order DVD.

Midori-ko (Keita Kurosaka, 2010)

One of the highlights of Nippon Connection this year was the screening of Keita Kurosaka’s masterpiece of the grotesque Midori-ko. It is a complex work that is difficult to sum up in the space of a paragraph, so I refer you instead to my review of the film. No word yet on a DVD release, but fans are hopeful that someone will pick up Kurosaka’s catalogue of films for a Takashi Ito-like boxset.

THANK YOU

I wish to extend my thanks this year to the generosity of so many who helped make my reviews possible this year. A big thanks to all the artists and directors who sent me samples of their work or were kind enough to answer my questions about their work: Aico Kitamura, Saori Shiroki, Mirai Mizue, Atsushi Wada, Kei Oyama, Takashi Nagata of Tochka, Taku Furukawa, and Takashi Sawa. Marion Komflass, Petra Palmer, and Dennis Vetter of Nippon Connection very generously took my advice and invited CALF animators to the 2011 festival and I am delighted to announce that I have been asked to curate the animation programme for 2012.

In the realm of feature film animation, I remember fondly my conversation with Keiichi Hara (Colorful, Summer Days with Coo) in Frankfurt am Main in March. Hara-san warmly shared his views about the current state of independent anime production in Japan and was a real delight to chat with. I very much enjoyed chatting with Yuki Iwamoto, Marie Miyayama, Julia Leser, Clarissa Seidel, and Ryō Yoshikawa at Japan Week in November.

I am very grateful to my fellow bloggers and film critics who have offered their support throughout the year. Some people who have gone the extra mile include: Nobuaki Doi of CALF and Animations: Creators and Critics, Ben Ettinger of Anipages, Chris MaGee of Shinsedai Fest / Jfilmpowwow for allowing me to sneak an animated short by Tomoyasu Murata into World Film Locations: Tokyo, John Berra for asking me to write about Kihachiro Kawamoto for the forthcoming book Directory of World Cinema: Japan 2 (2012), Jon Jung of Vcinema, Sayoko Ono at Zakka Films, Isamu Matsue, Franco Picolo of Sonatine, Joel Neville Anderson, Negativ: Magazin für Film und Mediankultur (Ciprian David / Dennis Vetter / Elisabeth Maurer / Christian Alt), Wildgrounds, Klaus Wiesmüller of Japan Kino, and the guys at Schöner Denken.

This blog would not be possible without the inspiring work of / information provided by Anido, Animations: Creators and Critics, CALF, Image Forum, Tokyo Art Beat, Tokyo University of the Arts, and Tomoyasu Murata and Co.

The greatest thank you of all goes to my loyal readers, friends, and family whose support made this year the best ever for Nishikata Film Review.

Wishing you all Joy and Prosperity in 2012, Cathy

MOM Productions and the Making of Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer

2011-12-24T08:40:00.000+01:00

It’s the Christmas season again and my children have already watched our DVD of the 1964 stop motion animation of Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) half a dozen times. I never tire of watching this Christmas special which was something I looked forward to watching on TV every year when I was a child. The characters have clearly been lovingly brought to life by the hand of some animator.

As I reported last year in my post Rankin/Bass Christmas Specials: Made in Japan, Rudolf and many other animated Christmas specials produced by Rankin/Bass were animated in Japan. Rudolf is an early example of an international co-production for television. The production, concept, and screenwriting were all done by Americans. Apart from the star, Burl Ives, the voice acting was all done in Canada. The stop motion “Animagic” was subcontacted to Tadahito “Tad” Mochinaga’s MOM Production studios – a place where many animators including the great Tadanari Okamoto got their start. Rick Goldschmidt’s The Enchanted World of Rankin/Bass tantalizingly offered up a few tidbits about MOM Productions, but I could not afford his book about the making of Rudolph. Fortunately, he released The Making of the Rankin/Bass Holiday Classic: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Kindle edition this year. It gives the answers to a lot of questions I had about the production, and provides highly detailed testimonies from former MOM Productions employees.

A few of the nuggets of information about the production:

Arthur Rankin supervised the production in Japan while Jules Bass was responsible for the production outside of Japan. This meant that it was rare for people working on Rudolph to see both men together.

There are two conflicting stories about how Rankin discovered Mochinaga. One is that he saw Mochinaga’s Little Black Sambo at the Vancouver International Film Festival in 1958 and contacted Mochinaga about making TV series The New Adventures of Pinocchio (130x5 minute episodes). The other story Rankin tells is that he was invited to Tokyo in 1958 by a trade delegate called Minoru Kawamoto and one of the studios they visited belonged to Mochinaga. (note: date typo amended 26 Dec 2011)

I had long wondered about the role of Kizo Nagashima, who is listed as a director in the credits of the Rudolph. I could not find any evidence of Nagashima as an animator or a director online. Goldschmidt solves this mystery by reporting that Nagashima “was an elderly gentleman who supervised the business affairs of the Tokyo studio. Perhaps due to Japanese traditions of respect, he was given a prominent creative credit. However, the credit was entirely honorary, as Tadahito Mochinaga was undeniably in charge of the entire animation process.”

Mochinaga began animation in 1938 at Geijutsu Eigasha (芸術映画社 aka GES/ゲス). [This isn’t in Goldschmidt’s book but Mochinaga spent much of the war and the years following working for an animation studio in China]. When he returned to Japan after the war (c. 1953), Mochinaga started up his own studio. He formed MOM Productions in 1960 with many of his old colleagues from GES in order to make puppet animation for Rankin/Bass.

Assistant animation director Hiroshi Tabata recalls that he and Mochinaga took the 10 hour sleeper train from Tokyo to Nara to see the famous sika deer in Nara National Park. The spent two days observing the movements of the deer in order to prepare for the animation of Rudolph. The animation studios were housed in a building that had previously been used to test engines for fighter planes.

Ichiro “Pin-chan” Komuro was the puppet maker for Rudolph. He used the wood of the Katsura tree (カツラ/ Cercidiphyllum japonicum) for Rudolph’s head and torso. The head was carved out to make it lighter and therefore easier to control during animation. The joints of the puppets were made of lead and copper wire which were padded with cotton and polyurethane. The antlers were formed using polyurethane. Rudolph’s eyelids and irises were made using finely shaved leather. Rudolph’s exterior was made of thick-piled white wool that they dyed themselves. The hooves were made of wood and had 1mm holes drilled in them in order to affix the hooves to the sets using pins.

The biggest problem during production was the fight to keep the puppets and sets from collecting dust and dirt. The animators all wore white gloves, and the figures were sprayed with a magnetic spray flock to diffuse reflections for the camera. The most difficult sets and puppets to keep clean were the white ones.

Goldschmidt’s book is a must-read for fans of stop motion animation and Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Add the Kindle edition to your holiday reading:

Learn more about Rankin/Bass Productions on Goldschmidt's blog or in his book:

Paradise Kiss (パラダイス・キス, 2011)

2011-12-18T21:39:00.001+01:00

Things have been quiet here on Nishikata Film the past couple of weeks because I have been ill. When I am under the weather and sofa-bound, I turn to what for me is the movie equivalent of chicken noodle soup: romantic melodramas. 2011 has been so jam-packed for me with work that I have not had the free time to indulge in the guilty pleasures of a cheesy romantic drama.

First on my list was the live action adaptation of Ai Yazawa’s popular manga series Paradise Kiss (パラダイス・キス, 1999-2003). I am a huge fan of Yazawa and have been suffering from withdrawal since she abruptly stopped writing her Nana (2000 – hopefully ongoing) manga series in 2009 due to illness. Paradise Kiss is a standalone sequel / spin off of Yazawa’s Neighbourhood Story (1995-8). The manga tells the story of a high school student called Yukari who gets discovered by some fashion students who want her to model the designs of their studio "Paradise Kiss" at their school's end of year fashion show. Yukari is torn between her desire to give modelling a go and pleasing her mother, who puts a lot of pressure on her to succeed academically and go on to a good university.

Like Nana, the fashion in the manga is influenced by British punk, Vivienne Westwood, and the Harajuku alternative fashion scene. The character of George Koizumi, for example, is based on the character of Brian Slade as played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers in the film Velvet Goldmine (Todd Haynes, 1998). In addition to the avant-guard look of the manga, the central character has a strong coming-of-age storyline. Yukari (called Caroline by the Paradise Kiss fashionistas) does not yet know who she is as a person or what she really wants to do with her life and she is struggling not only with the intense pressure her mother puts on her, but is also having to deal with confusing feelings of sexual desire for the charismatic fashion designer George Koizumi. The manga also has a very strong supporting cast of characters with their own subplots – Isabella, a transgender woman and childhood friend of George, and the love triangle between childhood friends Miwako (whose sister was the central character in Neighbourhood Story), Arashi, and Hiroyuki.

The live action feature film Paradise Kiss (パラダイス・キス, 2011) is adapted from the manga by Kenji Bando and directed by Takehiko Shinjo. Shinjo is known for directing romantic TV dramas and sentimental feature films like Heavenly Forest (ただ、君を愛してる, 2006) and I Give My First Love to You (僕の初恋をキミに捧ぐ, 2009). To put it plainly: Shinjo has basically given the story a TV-dorama makeover that guts the original story of its edginess.

To begin with, the feature film is woefully miscast. In the manga, Yukari/Caroline is taller and more sophisticated than most girls her age and really stands out in a crowd. While she is undoubtedly a beautiful young woman, actress Keiko Kitagawa is of average height. Ordinarily, height would not be much of an issue except that Yukari’s height and body type are the reasons why Arashi picks her out of the crowd in the opening scene of the manga. Kitagawa’s average height might not have stood out so much if it weren’t for the fact that Miwako, played by Aya Omasa, towers over her. Miwako is meant to be a petite “kawaii” girly girl – so tiny in the manga and anime as to be doll-like. Also miscast is Osamu Mukai who is much too sweet to play the charming but predatory George Koizumi.

I knew I was going to be deeply disappointed right from the opening credits, which seemed more like an advertisement for nail polish than the engaging, up-tempo montage opening of the anime. The music throughout is simpering J-pop ballads, which pale in contrast to the funky up-tempo music of the anime adaptation (IE Tomoko Kawase’s “Lonely in Gorgeous” and Franz Ferdinand’s “Do You Want To”). I am no fashion expert, but the clothes looked more mainstream than avant-garde – instead of hiring Vivienne Westwood to design the costumes (which would have been a lovely tribute to Ai Yazawa), the clothes seemed calculatedly selected with an eye to fashion magazine and store tie-ins.

Now I know that practically speaking the limitations of time for a feature film meant that much of the subplots had to be excised. Even the TV anime adaptation with its 12 episodes found itself scrambling to fit everything in towards the end. However, the substantial cuts to the subplots in the feature film meant that all the supporting cast were rendered one-dimensional. Isabella’s gender identity only gets passing references – there is no depth to her relationship with George. Speaking of which, George’s sexuality is much less ambiguous than in the manga/anime. Even worse, Arashi comes off as a creeper and Miwako as promiscuous.

What made Yukari special in the original manga was the fact that her story was messy and complicated. Her friends also led messy and complicated lives. There were no simple answers to problems and her romantic feelings towards George and Hiro-kun were confused – just as it is in real life. By over simplifying Yukari’s story, the filmmakers have just turned it into over-polished Disneyesque schlock for teenaged girls. I don’t mind a fluffy sentimental romance now and then, but Paradise Kiss should have been more Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink (John Hughes, 1986) and less Sandra Dee circa late 1950s. This "happy ending" version of Paradise Kiss may have been enough to please the target audience of the film (IE adolescent girls), but to fans of the original manga it is simply lacking.

Cast

Keiko Kitagawa as Yukari 'Caroline' Hayasaka

Osamu Mukai as Jōji 'George' Koizumi

Yusuke Yamamoto as Hiroyuki Tokumori

Shunji Igarashi as Isabella

Kento Kaku as Arashi Nagase

Aya Omasa as Miwako Sakurada

Natsuki Kato as Kaori Asō

Hitomi Takahashi as Yukino Koizumi

Shigemitsu Ogi as Joichi Nikaido

Michiko Hada as Yasuko Hayasaka

Available from cdjapan:

Paradise Kiss [Regular Edition]

Paradise Kiss Premium Edition [Limited Edition]

Shiba Productions' The Little Tin Soldier (1968)

2011-12-16T17:29:00.000+01:00

I have recently begun collecting the 3D “Living Storybooks” designed and manufactured by Shiba Productions in the 1960s. They were distributed in North America by the New York-based publisher Golden Press. Shiba Productions was a puppet animation studio that was founded in 1958 by three men: writer/editor Tadasu Iizawa (飯沢匡, 1909-1994), artist/designer Shigeru Hijikata (土方重巳, 1915-1986), and puppet maker and animator Kihachirō Kawamoto. Kawamoto would go on to become the most famous of the three men but at the time he was an artisan and not yet a director/artist in his own right. The studio specialized in puppet animation for television commercials. In addition to animation, Shiba Productions also created puppets for picture books, magazines, and print advertising.

click to enlarge

Kawamoto had first worked for Iizawa during the Tōhō strikes of the 1940s. He was hired as an assistant art director by Tōhō in 1946. His mentor was the acclaimed art director and production designer Takashi Matsuyama (松山崇, 1908-1977). After getting the opportunity to work on three major feature films, Kawamoto found himself on strike with his colleagues. During the strike, Matsuyama got Kawamoto some work at Asahi Graph, a weekly pictorial magazine run by Asahi Shinbun that ran from 1923-2000. When Kawamoto was eventually dismissed from Tōhō in 1950, he seems to have worked together with Iizawa and Hijikata on a number of commercial projects. Iizawa was the one who introduced Kawamoto to the stop motion animation pioneer Tadahito Mochinaga (持永只仁, 1919-1993) when he returned to Japan from China in 1953. It was from Mochinaga and his wife that Kawamoto learned the basics of puppet animation.

click to enlarge

At Shiba Productions, it would seem that Iizawa played a kind of producer/writer role and Hijikata was the designer of the characters. Kawamoto crafted the puppets by hand and was in charge of the animation – or in the case of the “Living Storybooks” photo shoots of the puppets. He drew quite heavily on what he had observed as an assistant art director at Tōhō for this. In an interview with Jasper Sharp in 2004, Kawamoto explained that he considered the dolls that he used in the storybooks “puppets” because to him “they were actors within the books.”

The first “Living Storybook” in my collection is The Little Tin Soldier (aka The Steadfast Tin Soldier) by Hans Christian Andersen. As these books were very popular with children, it is rare to find one in mint condition. My copy (see image above) has well worn edges but the binding itself is intact.

The books were called “3D” or “Living Storybooks” not only because they feature photographs of three-dimensional puppets and sets, but also because the front cover features a full colour hologram. This novelty cover meant that the books were quite eye-catching when displayed on the shelves of bookstores and libraries. It also made the storybooks quite memorable for children who grew up with them.

The Little Tin Soldier has thick card pages and features 18 full colour pages and 14 black and white pages with text. The monochromatic images of the puppets are less satisfying than the full colour pages because the images have been rather awkwardly cut out in order to have them alternate with the text. The best monochromatic pages are the ones that have used illustrations to give the tin soldier floating down the river in his paper boat a setting.

click to enlarge

The story is faithful to the original version of Andersen’s Steadfast Tin Soldier (Den standhaftige tinsoldat/しっかり者のスズの兵隊, c. 1838), so it does not have a happy ending. . . at least not in the way most parents today would expect. I rather like how the story ends with a random act by a child. It seems a much more likely scenario for a tin soldier than a happily ever after ending.

The puppets and sets are all consummately designed and crafted. The most striking image by far is that of the tin soldier and ballet dancer in the blazing fire. Although there are certain design elements that make the book recognizable as being a product of the 1960s (ie. the title font, choice of colours, the modern looking castle and toy elephant), on the whole most of the puppets and sets have been designed in a way that references 19^th century European toys and design. It is a beautiful, highly collectable book.

References:
Heibonsha’s Kawamoto Kihachiro: Ningyo Kono inochi aru mono (2007)
Takayuki Oguchi’s interview with Kawamoto: Animation Meister at Japan Media Arts Plaza’s website.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Noburo Ofuji’s Whale (くじら, 1952)

2011-12-04T17:41:00.000+01:00

Some of the most beautiful early anime from Japan are the silhouette animations of Noburo Ofuji (大藤信郎, 1900-61) and Wagoro Arai (荒井和五郎, 1907-95). Inspired by the films of Lotte Reiniger – whose pre-war films were shown extensively in Japan (Donald Richie, A Hundred Years of Japanese Film, p.247) – and drawing on the Japanese traditions of shadow plays and 19^th century utsushi-e (写し絵 / magic lantern shows), Ofuji and Arai created some of the most beautiful silhouette films of the 20^th century.

In his later years, Ofuji became interested in Buddhist and ocean themes. The animator Kōji Yamamura cites the themes of death, eros, and the human ego as examples (Shirarezaru Animation). Ofuji's artistic masterpiece Kujira (くじら/ Whale, 1952) is one such film. Like Kihachiro Kawamoto’s puppet films, which share Ofuji’s interest in Buddhist themes, Kujira features the themes of female suffering, natural phenomena that allude to Buddhist themes, and transformation.

Ofuji first made Kujira (鯨/Whale) in 1927 as a silent black and white film. Inspired by the possibilities of colour film, he remade the film in the early 1950s using not only shadow puppets (silhouettes) but also cutouts of transparent coloured cellophane (影絵とセロファン切り絵). The cutouts were assembled on a multi-plane animation table. The backlighting of the animation table used in combination with the transparent cellophane allowed Ofuji to create highly complex layering of forms. It is a breathtaking experience to watch and has beautifully rendered movement and transitions.

This 8 minute short opens with foreboding music that foreshadows the dark and mysterious events to unfold. The story begins with the creak of a mast being raised on an ancient sailing ship. Seagulls fly overhead as the ship navigates calm seas. Aboard the vessel, men clap and guffaw and women's voices ring with laughter as geisha entertain the men with music and dancing.

Ofuji dissolves between camera shots of varying shot compositions which, combined with the ghostly layering of transparent waves and clouds, give the film a dream-like quality. A storm descends upon the ship. The wooden ship creaks and groans as the sea violently tosses it about. A giant tail of a whale emerges from the ocean and the whale seems to be following the ship as if in anticipation of the ship’s demise. The ship’s crew struggle in vain to regain control of their vessel, but with a series of loud cracks and women’s screams, the ship sinks into the murky waters.

When the sea calms, a number of survivors float, their heads downcast, upon the wreckage. One of the men finds the body of a woman floating in the water who appears to be dead. Suddenly, the mysterious female form begins to move, terrifying the men. As the woman cries out as she stretches herself into a standing position and one of the men immediately clutches her by the hair and drags her to him. The more the woman struggles to escape, the more desperate the men become, tearing the clothes from her body and fighting each other to be the first to claim her. The men’s fighting, as depicted by Ofuji’s shadow cutouts, begins to resemble a dance – their arms outstretched and curved move up and down like an interpretive dance depicting the waves of the ocean.

The tension rises, stoked on by the crescendoing orchestra of the soundtrack, to a fever pitch. At which point the black tale of the whale rises and the woman screams out in terror. The whale, as in the ancient tale of Jonah, swallows the woman and her tormentors whole. This leads to the most dazzling and abstract sequence in the film as the people float around the shadowy belly of the whale, desperately trying to escape. The men are so consumed by fear that they have forgotten their desire to rape the woman.

An exterior shot of the whale shows him to be contentedly bobbing up and down in the ocean. He blows water out of his blowhole and with it the woman and her three tormentors. They land on the whale’s back, but it doesn’t take the men long to recover from their shock and resume their attack on the woman. The woman resists, screams in terror, and races up and down the whale’s back in a bid to escape. Two of the men fall off the whale and disappear and the one remaining man continues to chance the woman until his evil plan is foiled by the whale who raises his tail and flings the man to certain death in the sea. A female narrator concludes the story, telling us that since this incident the woman has been spotted in the form of a mermaid.

Until this final narrative voice, the story has actually been told entirely through a combination of the visuals, the music of composer Setsuo Tsukahara (romanized as Tukahara in 1952), and the sound effects. By sound effects, I mean not just creaks of the ship and the thunder but also the gasps and laughter of the human characters. The dialogue in Kujira is also more incidental than narrative in nature. Although the characters are clearly meant to look like ancient Japanese people the story itself seems to be influenced by a combination of Asian and European influences. The mermaid, for example, resembles the mermaids and sirens of European mythology more than she does the hideous ningyo of Japanese folklore. The idea of a whale swallowing people whole also has very famous precedents in Western literature. Yet, as with the famous tales of Jonah and Moby Dick, the whale is intended to be symbolic not realistic. I think there are many possible readings that can be drawn from Kujira. For me, Ofuji is exploring the dark side of human nature with the woman, who is the most virtuous character in the tale, being reborn in a new form at the end of the film.

Correcting historical facts about Kujira

In 1953, Ofuji’s Kujira (on the programme as “La Baleine”) was part of the official selection at the Cannes Film Festival (under the name Noburo Ohfuji). Kujira is reputed to have received much praise from the Jury president Jean Cocteau and festival attendee Pablo Picasso. Although it has been reported in many publications that the film won an award at this festival, the official Cannes website does not indicate this. Many people have claimed that Kujira won “Second Prize” at Cannes – but as Cannes has no such prize this seems odd. I have yet to find a reliable contemporary Japanese or French source that confirms the events that took place in Cannes that year – I may have to dive into the old French film periodicals in the Frankfurt Museum archives again soon. I will update when I do.

It has also been often reported in error that Kujira appeared at Cannes in 1952. The Japanese Movie Database and other online Japanese sources indicate that the film had its premiere in Japan in December 1952 – much too late for it to screen at Cannes in the spring of 1952. The case for Kujira screening at Cannes in April 1953 is backed up not only by the festival’s official website, but also by the fact that Jean Cocteau was the president of the jury in 1953. This would give more credence to the oft-mentioned anecdote about Cocteau praising the film. The suggestion that Picasso saw the film at Cannes is also likely true, as Picasso had a studio in the nearby commune of Vallarius – as seen in this famous photograph of Brigitte Bardot visiting Picasso in his studio during Cannes 1956.

A good transfer of Kujira is available on the Kinokuniya DVD Ōfuji Noburō: Kūkō no Tensai. Ofuji's original films are held in the archives of the NationalFilm Center.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Ōfuji Noburō: Kūkō no Tensai

Mathematica (マテマテカ, 1999)

2011-12-01T12:00:00.000+01:00

I had the rare delight recently of seeing Takashi Sawa’s experimental short Mathematica (マテマテカ, 1999). Sawa (澤隆志, b. 1971) is perhaps best known for his work as program director at Image Forum, but along with Takashi Nakajima, Takashi Ito, Takashi Makino and Takashi Ishida, he is also one of the five great “Takeshis” of experimental filmmaking.

With his film Mathematica, Sawa trains his 8mm camera on the fine details of the world that we often take for granted. Using the techniques of poetic montage, stop motion animation, and 3D frottage (taking a rubbing of a textured surface), Sawa explores the structures, spaces, and subtle changes over time that occur in the natural world.

In an e-mail to me, Sawa explained that he was interested in exploring the translation between timeline and depth, between 50 seconds and 2500mm, and between film and lath. The average person usually thinks about mathematics in terms of numbers, but in actuality mathematics is study of the art and science of abstraction. It examines how the world around us is made up of not only quantity but also structure, space, and change. In fact, Sir Isaac Newton famously called it the language in which the universe is written (Opticks, 1704).

In Mathematica, this is expressed through a montage of images that demonstrate these mathematical concerns. Skin making itself smooth again after an imprint of the title of the film has been pressed into it, the patterns of wrinkles and lines on the skin, the rings of a tree, the mane of a sorrel horse, a pencil frottage of the cross-section of a tree, the netting covering a scaffolding, and film deteriorating. The stop motion sequences of the tree-rings were for me the most fascinating. The movement of the rings created by the stop motion causes the close-ups of the tree-rings to resemble other patterns of nature that have also been the subject of mathematical conjecture: the waves of the ocean or the formation of patterns on the sands of the desert. These sequences also draw attention not only to patterns, structure, and space, but also to the concept of time.

In the catalogue of the Holland Animation Film Festival 2002, Sawa wrote about how the pleasure of animation is in the way that it “breathes life in between frame and frame” and how “it is precisely the continuous playback by means of intermittent movement of these gaps and flickers that captivates both the makers and the audience of animation. In works of experimental animation, which are made outside the system of film as industry, the question is how far we can extend the magic of these gaps and afterimages.” (p. 14). With Mathematica, Sawa shows us how these gaps and afterimages can be used to focus our awareness on the extraordinary aspects of the commonplace in the world around us.

Takashi Sawa's work regularly screens at international festivals around the world. You can circle him on Google Plus.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Order experimental film via cdjapan:

Takashi Makino Sakuhinshu Vol.1 With Jim O'Rourke

Dreams: A Memorial Tribute for Nobuhiro Aihara

2011-12-01T00:00:00.000+01:00

DREAMS 追悼相原信洋

Image Forum Cinematheque, Shibuya

December 10 - 15

Image Forum in Tokyo is holding a memorial tribute for the artist and experimental animator Nobuhiro Aihara (相原信洋, 1944-2011) who passed away suddenly this spring. As I reported at the time, Aihara began his career in television animation in the 1960s and started producing his own independent animation in 1965. His aesthetic is distinctive for his use of flowing lines, highly complex drawings, and his love of psychedelic colours. He was a prolific artist who often produced several animated shorts a year either on his own or in collaboration with his friend and fellow artist the Keiichi Tanaami (田名網敬一, b. 1936). At the time of his death, he left behind 85 animated works. In addition to his work as an artist, Aihara taught animation at the Kyoto University of Art and Design.

The Image Forum screenings will feature Aihara’s representative works including his groundbreaking experimental work Stone (1975), his animated correspondence films with Keiichi Tanaami, and many films that were discovered posthumously. In addition to the film screenings, many of the leading figures of Japanese experimental film and animation will be giving film talks. Special guests include Takashi Ishida, Yasunori Ikunishi, Mirai Mizue, Takashi Nakajima, Nobuaki Doi, and Keiichi Tanaami.

See below for times and dates, or consult the Image Forum website (JP only).

Program A: 1970s-1980s

December 10 and 13

1971 Poisonous Snake 『やまかがし』

1972 The Last Bee Season『みつばちの季節は去って』

1972 White Snake『おしろい羽根』

1973 Aisanka Hana『逢仙花』

1973 Shoshun Kitsune-iro『初春狐色』

1974 Bōdō『妄動』

1975 『STONE』

1977 Karma『カルマ』

1980 Shelter『シェルター』

1985 Twilight『逢魔が時』

1986 『PRIVATE』

1987 Image (Shadow)『映像（かげ）』

Program B: 1980s-2000s

December 12 and 15

1988 Dragonfly『とんぼ』

1989 『GAVORA』

1990 『LINE』

1991 『MASK』

1994 Air Power『気動』

1996 『RAIN』

1997 『MEMORY OF CLOUD』

1999 『THE THIRD EYE』

2000 『WIND』

2004 『MEMORY OF RED』

2006 『BLACK FISH』

2006 『YELLOW SNAKE』

2007 『LOTUS』

2008 『ZAP CAT』

Program C: Nobuhiro Aihara + Keiichi Tanaami

December 11 and 14

2001 Breath of Wind『風の呼吸』

2002 『SCRAP DIARY』

2002 『WALKING MAN』

2003 『FETISH DOLL』

2004 『LANDSCAPE』

2004 Ten Nights of Dreams『夢10夜』

2005 『Trip』

2005 Madonna no Yūwaku『マドンナの誘惑』

2006 Noise『ノイズ』

2007 Inch High Samurai『一寸法師』

2008 『CHIRICO』

2008 『眼の楽園・PARADISE FOR EYES』

2009 『SHUNGA』

2010 The Heart Sutra『般若心経』

2011 『DREAMS』

Program D: Early Works + Recent Works + Long Film Talk

December 10 and 11

1969 『STOP！』

1970 Sakura『サクラ』

1973 Short Track Runner『短距離ランナー』

1978 Hikari『光』

2009 『BLUE MOON』

2009 『FLOWER』

2009 『TEA TIME』

2009 『IF』

2009 『AMMONTIE』

2009 『8PM』

2010 『TOMATO』

2010 『DOT』

2010 『SEED』

2010 『CCBB』

2011 『30℃』

2011 『GIGI-GAGA』

1981 My Shelter - Director's commentary on his work『マイ・シェルター（作者解説映像付）』

2006 Making of Black Fish『BLACK FISH（メイキング映像付）』

Film Talks

December 10 – following Program D

2011年12月10日（土）プログラムD上映後

Guests:

Takashi Ishida 石田尚志（画家、映像作家 / painter, experimental filmmaker）

Yasunori Ikunishi 生西康典（演出家、美術家 / experimental filmmaker, artist）

December 10 – preceding Program A

2011年12月10日（土）プログラムA上映前

Guest:

Mirai Mizue 水江未来（アニメーション作家 / independent animator）

December 11 – following Program D

2011年12月11日（日）プログラムD上映後

Guests:

Takashi Nakajima 中島崇（映像作家/experimental filmmaker）

Nobuaki Doi 土居伸彰（アニメーション研究・評論 / animation scholar, film critic）

December 11 – preceding Program C

2011年12月11日（日）プログラムC上映前

Guest:

Keiichi Tanaami 田名網敬一（映像作家、アーティスト/ experimental filmmaker, artist）

Available from cdjapan:

TANAAMISM DVD-BOX

Nishikata Film Review 西片映画レビュー

Nishikata Kids: Anna on Nausicaä

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (風の谷のナウシカ, 1984)

Isamu Hirabayashi’s 663114 wins the Noburo Ofuji Award

Maya Yonesho’s Top 20 Animated Films

Sway (ゆれる, 2006)

Japan in Germany 7: Oshima (大島, 2010)

Mirai Mizue’s Tatamp (2011)

Lord of Chaos: The Cinema of Sono Sion (2011)

Yuri Norstein’s Animation Top 20 (2003)

A-AIR×CALF World of Independent Animation (世界のインディペンデント・アニメーション)

Tsutomu Shibayama’s Animation Top 20 (2003)

Eiichi Yamamoto’s Animation Top 20 (2003)

Face To Face (お向かいさん, 2007)

Departures (おくりびと, 2008)

Muybridge's Strings Flip Books (マイブリッジの糸 フリップブック, 2011)

Nishikata’s Best Japanese Animated Shorts 2011

MOM Productions and the Making of Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer

Paradise Kiss (パラダイス・キス, 2011)

Shiba Productions' The Little Tin Soldier (1968)

Noburo Ofuji’s Whale (くじら, 1952)

Mathematica (マテマテカ, 1999)

Dreams: A Memorial Tribute for Nobuhiro Aihara

Muybridge's Strings Flip Books (マイブリッジの糸フリップブック, 2011)