4-Day Weekend (4デイ・ウィークエンド, 1998)

I've been a fan of British indie band The Bluetones for many years now, but only recently discovered this video for their 1998 song "4-Day Weekend." The animation is done by Studio 4°C, a studio founded in the mid-1980s by Koji Morimoto (森本晃司), Eiko Tanaka (田中栄子), and Yoshiharu Sato (佐藤好春). They have done a wide range of cutting edge animation work from Mind Game (2006) to The Animatrix (2003).I...

Perspektivenbox (遠近法の箱, 1990)

遠近法の箱：博士のさがしものPerspektivenbox: The Researcher’s SearchThis four minute animated film written and directed by Koji Yamamura (山村浩二) in 1990 is an early example of the layered technique that Yamamura also used in his Academy Award nominated film Mt. Head (頭山, 2002). The film explores a chaotic Tokyo-inspired cityscape through the eyes of a small researcher who is a cross between Poirot and a British...

Repas en famille (家族の食事, 1897）

The National Film Center (NFC) has a number of fascinating film clips available for viewing on flatscreens throughout the exhibit, many with stools available for comfortable viewing. The most fascinating of these for me are the Lumière shorts just inside the exhibition gallery entrance.The Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, are of course famous film pioneers who invented the cinématographe, a camera...