Win Tickets to Toronto Screening of Beyond Anime: The Outer Limits

What: Beyond Anime: The Outer Limits (16 shorts)

When: July 15, 2012 at 6pm

Where: Revue Cinema, Toronto

This year’s Shinsedai Cinema Festival in Toronto is presenting an eclectic mix of animation by innovative young Japanese animators.  From the psychedelic visual assault of Yoshihiro Haku + Sachiko Hiraoka to the delicate visions of Sayaka Oku, Beyond Anime: The Outer Limits will take the audience on an adventure past the well trodden paths of anime to the farthest reaches of Japan’s animation landscape.  The programme was curated by Jasper Sharp of Midnight Eye and first presented at Zipangu Fest in London last fall.  The screening is being co-presented by the Toronto Comic Arts Festival.

Nishikata Film Review is giving away three double passes to this event.  To win, simply e-mail me at nishikataeiga(at)gmail by June 15, 2012 with the subject line “Beyond Anime” and the answer to this skill testing question:

Which animator in the Beyond Anime: The Outer Limits programme had his/her work featured on Nishikata Film Review in May?

a)  Mana Fujii

b)  KTOONZ

c)  Ryo Hirano

d)  Nasuka Saito

The correct answers will be put into a hat and three winners will be selected at random.  Good Luck!

Here is the full programme:

Syasou

 Ryu Furusawa 2008 2min

Ichigwankoku

 Ryo Hirano 2009 6min

Fantasy Girl

 Hanamushi (Akira Noyama) 2009 6min

Death of Phonebook

 Cinema Iloobia (Tim Grabham) 2011 2min

Stinky Winky 

KTOOONZ (Keiko Nakamura) 2002 2min

Requiem For Pioneer

 Yoshihiro Haku + Sachiko Hiraoka 2008 3min

Future Man

 Ryo Hirano 2008 7min

Doroningen

 Masahiro Osuka 2007 4min

Mizutamamoyo

 Ryu Furusawa 2006 5min

Enchanted Forest

 KTOOONZ (Keiko Nakamura) 1994 9min

A Labyrinth of Residence

 Nasuka Saito 2008 5min

TA-TA TOSY TiT

 Yoshihiro Haku + Sachiko Hiraoka 2009 5min

The Straw Girl and the Strange House

 Hanamushi (Akira Noyama) 2009 1min

Holiday

 Ryo Hirano 2011 14min

Melting Medama

 Sayaka Oku 2011 5min

The Last Train

 Mana Fujii 2008 3min

Akino Kondoh’s Kiya Kiya (きやきや, 2010-2011)

At Nippon Connection 2012, we had the rare opportunity to see the latest animated short by the artist Akino Kondoh.  It took Kondoh more than a year to complete Kiya Kiya(2010-2011), which is remarkable considering that each frame of an Akino Kondoh animation is as highly detailed as her paintings and illustrations.  Kiya Kiya film is about six-and-a-half minutes long with Kondoh creating 15 frames per second.

Eiko, the bob-haired girl with the beguiling smile, sits in a cabinet with a kamishibai (紙芝居) on her lap.  Kamishibai, which translates as “paper drama,” is a traditional form of storytelling that dates back to 12^th century.  It underwent a revival in Japan in the early part of the 20^th century when kamishibaistorytellers (gaito kamishibaiya) would bicycle from village to village with their portable wooden display boxes.  Today in Japan, kamishibai sets are often used in schools in lieu of storybooks as they are easier for storytelling to an audience.  The pictures are on the front of the large cards and the text is on the back for the storyteller to read. 

In Kiya Kiya, Eiko is the storyteller.  As she changes the pictures in her kamishibai, her lips move and instead of hearing her words, cursive script begins to appear in columns as if written by a calligrapher’s hand in the traditional direction of top to bottom, right to left.  At first it appears to be hiragana (the cursive Japanese syllabary which Japanese children today learn first), but is actually illegible.  In an interview, Kondoh explains that she made the script by combining parts of hiragana with four letters from the Latin alphabet.

The illegibility of the text works on two levels in the film.  The first is that it gives the impression of text without allowing words to distract from the animation itself – which is what Kondoh herself has stated as her intention in the aforementioned interview.  The ambiguity of the text is heightened when it metamorphoses into shapes, and then into playful little tailed creatures in blue and red.

The indecipherable text also adds to the illusive character of Eiko herself.  Eiko is a kind of trickster character.  In one moment she charms with her smile, while in the next moment she shocks with a cruel or disturbing act.  The stark blacks and whites of Kondoh’s colour palette also highlight the dual nature of Eiko.  In Kiya Kiya, two more colours are added: red and blue.  In the third section of the film Eiko splits into two and a red Eiko and a blue Eiko chase each other and embrace each other like two kittens at play.  This sequence recalls Kondoh’s earlier animated film Ladybirds’ Requiem (てんとう虫のおとむらい, 2005-2006) which features a sequence in which a red ladybird (or “ladybug” in North American English) with black spots and a black ladybird with red spots embrace and spin around together.

Kiya Kiya is divided into three sections which are indicated by the insertion of title cards.  There is also a short introductory sequence and an upside-down title card before the end credits begin.  When I first heard the title of this film, I thought that “kiya kiya” might be an obscure onomatopoeia (sound word) for the sound made by one of the wonderful insects Akino Kondoh likes to use in her works.  It turns out that the title comes from an archaic expression that Kondoh found in Shojo korekushon josetsu (1985), a collection of short stories about girls by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa – a writer, critic, and translator of French literature (including Jean Cocteau and de Sade) who was close friends with Yukio Mishima.  In the glossary of the Shojo korekushon josetsu, Kondoh came across the expression “mune ga kiya kiya suru” (胸がきやきやする/a “kiya kiya” in one’s chest) which was translated as “a keen feeling experienced after an episode of déjà vu hat is unsettling and disturbing yet also familiar” (source). 

The Japanese language is rich with onomatopoeia which not only mimic sounds (giseigo) but also can describe actions or feelings (gitaigo).  For example, the giseigo “doki doki” is the onomatopoeia for the sound of a beating heart, but when it is turned into a verb “doki doki suru” it is used to describe the feelings one has when one’s heart is racing – such as nervousness or excitement.  “Kiya kiya” may have also at some point have had a sound associated with it, but Kondoh seems to have been drawn to the expression “mune ga kiya kiya suru” because it expresses the feeling of unease mixed with nostalgia that she expresses in her work.

This feeling of unease is amplified in Kiya Kiya by the soundtrack which was composed by the American avant-garde artist John Zorn – for whom Kondoh designed the album cover of The Goddess: Music for the Ancient Days (2010).  The soundtrack is predominantly high female voices and percussive instruments.  Like the images, the music repeats motifs - sometimes so much so that it sounds like a skipping record.  Repetitive images build throughout the film: Eiko lying as if dead in the overturned cabinet, Eiko being strangled by the branches of a tree, Eiko catching the tailed creatures in her hands like she did the ladybirds in Ladybirds’ Requiem.  The images build and build until finally Eiko stretches out naked on her back on a branch over a precipice and she smiles up at us inviting us to both admire and fear her beauty.

Akino Kondoh art comes out of the traditions of alternative manga (Garo, Ax).  In particular, she cites the controversial artist Toshio Saeki as an influence (source).  However, unlike the more exploitative and voyeuristic view of women in Saeki’s work, Kondoh’s work is an exploration of the self.  Eiko is the artist’s alter ego, developed out of Kondoh’s own, often disturbing, childhood memories.  Eiko’s trickster nature means she is hard to pin down, sometimes appearing as a girl while at other times a young woman, sometimes she seems to be the victim, while at other times she is the perpetrator.  Innocent and knowing, kind and cruel, drawing us in and pushing us away – Eiko both seduces and unnerves with her unusual charms.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Credits

Animation by Akino Kondoh

Music by John Zorn

Special Thanks to

Emi Nishiwaki

Marc Urselli

Masahiro Katayama

Tomoe Tsusumi

Agency for Cultural Affairs, Japan

Mizuma Art Gallery

Pola Art Foundation

To learn more about Akino Kondoh and Kiya Kiya, check out:

Akino Kondoh’s official website

Her profile at Mizuma Art Gallery

My chat with Kondoh at Shinsedai 2010

A glimpse of the studio in Astoria (Queens, NYC) where Kondoh made Kiya Kiya

Kamijo, Keiko.  “Manga x Culture Vol. 1 Akino Kondoh.”  Cat’s Forehead. Trans. Luke Baker, 2011.

Huynh, Matt.  “Q+A with Akino Kondoh.” Yellow Trace. 19 April 2011.

This film screened at:

http://nipponconnection.com/

In a Pig's Eye (わからないブタ, 2010)

  

A giant pig lies in an ordinary garden, blocking the door to the house.  The house is occupied by a large and unusual family: wife, husband, grandmother, and six nearly identical chubby boys.  The atmosphere inside the house is dark and oppressive: the balding, middle-aged husband slices deli meat, decorating his body with the slices while the wife tries to push granny up the stairs while chewing on snacks she keeps in her apron.  Life in the garden seems more carefree: a boy embraces a piglet in the branches of a tree, another boy is blown in a series of gentle front tucks by air blown through, a boy swings like an acrobat from the tree, while another pretends to fish from the rooftop.  The repetitive activities of everyday life come to an end with the wail of the town siren.  The family makes a circle around the giant pig and do a kind of ritualized dance. Is this all real life or just a dream?  

In a Pig's Eye (Wakaranai buta, 2010) is independent animator Atsushi Wada’s graduation film from the graduate animation programme at Tokyo University of the Arts.   With In a Pig’s Eye, Wada continues his exploration of the artistic concept of “ma” or the “spaces in between.”  As with his earlier works, the animation is drawn frame by frame using pencil on paper, with subtle colours added during the computer editing process.  Compared to his earlier work, this film has a wonderful sepia hue to it that recalls traditional paintings done on scroll paper.

The film revisits many themes and motifs typical of an Atsushi Wada film: subtle character movements, domestic animals (in this case pigs and a dog), chubby boys, and repetition of movement.  The dreary everyday chores of life depicted inside the house are in stark contrast to the more carefree play outside, yet the film as a whole depicts both the tedium and absurdity of ordinary day-to-day life.  For me the giant pig in the garden symbolizes the types of inexplicable curveballs life sometimes throws at us.  You can allow it to trap you (like the boy trying and failing to leave the house), or you can make the best of it and discover something really wonderful (the boy being blown into the air by the pig).

When I have been at screenings of Atsushi Wada’s earlier films – particularly Manipulated Man (2006) and Day of Nose (2005) – audiences have tended to be quite silent either with wonder or with incredulity.  Mechanism of Spring (2010) and In a Pig’s Eyeare the first Wada films where I actually felt the audiences engage in a warm way with his art.  In fact, In a Pig’s Eye has some slapstick elements (door slamming into pig; boy suddenly falling; etc.) that made me laugh out loud at the absurdity of it all.  Thus I was surprised to learn from Wada, that the films were made with only aesthetics and not comedy in mind.  At the Filmmaker's Talk that I hosted at Nippon Connection 2012, Wada revealed that he had been quite shocked the first time he attended a screening of one of his films at an international festival (it was at VIFF) to hear the audience laughing out loud at his film.

Wada reminded me that film audiences in Japan do not make any noise while watching a screening (they don’t even scream during horror films!), so he cannot tell if Japanese audiences find his films amusing or not.  Western audiences are not shy about expressing genuine emotion during a screening, and the reaction to In a Pig’s Eye at festivals has been largely positive.  The film has won several awards including Best Film at Fantoche in 2010 and the Prix DeVarti for the funniest film at the Ann Arbor Film Festival 2011.  


When Wada was speaking to me about his films I was reminded of Luigi Pirandello's absurdist meta-theatrical play Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) and theories about authorial intention.  A creator of art obviously wishes for their creation to be well received by spectators, but once an artwork is created it takes on a life of its own.  Although audiences may not be receiving the work in the way that Wada intended, it is surely a wonderful thing that the film has taken on a life of its own and delighted audiences around the world.  


Each frame of a Wada film is a work of art in itself.  During the Filmmaker's Talk I asked him about whether or not he preferred working with film or digitally (he had to use 8mm film for Concerning the Rotation of a Child (2004) when he was a student at Image Forum).  Wada prefers making his films digitally because he draws such fine lines using a mechanical pencil.  These fine lines are more difficult to capture with film, so digitally scanning the images gives him a much better result.


Wada explains more about his technique on the CALF DVD Atsushi Wada Works 2002-2010 which also includes In a Pig's Eye.

Order Now

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

The Curious Animated World of Ryo Hirano

With so many young animators coming out of art colleges these days, it is only those who have a truly unique vision or aesthetic that stand out from the crowd.  Ryō Hirano (ひらのりょう,  b.1988) is fast becoming known at home and abroad for his weirdly wonderful animated shorts.  Born in 1988 in Kasukabe, Saitama, Hirano is a graduate of the Information Design programme at Tama Art University and he is managed by is managed by Foghorn.

In 2009, Hirano was one of a group of students selected to participate in the creation of the collaborative  project “music video orchestra” for the experimental collaborative group Omodaka at the 13^th Japan Media Arts Festival.  Last year, he won the Japan Media Arts Festival “New Face Award” for his animated music video for Omodaka’s latest song “Hietsuki Bushi”.    He has also recently done a music video for OvertheDogs, a young band also represented by Foghorn.

According to Yuki Harada’s interview with Hirano last year, Hirano began experimenting with animation during the summer holidays of his first year of university.  He took courses in photography and programming at Tamabi, but felt that he didn’t really excel in those areas.  He also picked up basic training in the use of animation software while at Tamabi (source: public-image.org).  The first film Hirano ever made was an amusing short-short called “Udara Udara” which features cute little hand-drawn creatures on photographs of natural habitats.  He did the sound for this film himself (read review and watch video).

His next film was Future Man which he made as a project for a university course where they were asked to make something about living beings.  In preparation for this film, he read up on ant ecology and used this knowledge as the basis of his film.  One of the details that struck him as remarkable was that scientists who study ants found that their behaviour is not driven by sympathy or love for the ant queen but that it is the evolutionary drive to maximize one’s DNA.    In Future Man, he substitutes humans for the ants.  The many drawings that he did resulted in a 7 minute animation, which gave him a great feeling of accomplishment (read review and watch video).

His third work was Midnight Zoo.  It was based on a dream he had had where he was sucked into a zoo.  In this animation, Hirano wanted to show the connection between humans and animals.  Hirano is drawn to the grotesque (guro) tradition of art in Japan and elsewhere.  The manga of Hideshi Hino has been a major influence on him.  In his interview with Harada, Hirano states that he has always been drawn to the fantastic and the grotesque. Other major artistic influences that he cites are the manga-ka Shigeru Mizuki of GeGeGe no Kitaro fame, the independent animation of Igor Kovalyov, and Garo (ガロ) manga.

Themes that interest Hirano are the transformation of the body – which is perhaps why he is drawn to the grotesque and to yōkai (supernatural creatures).  He has said that he is “interested in the fact that even if you change the body, the essence doesn’t change” and this is a theme that he explores in his works.  Another theme is “boy meets girl” love.  He has tried to express this type of romantic feeling in both Midnight Zoo and Holiday.

Interestingly, Hirano says that he wants to make things that are sugoku guroi (super-grotesque), but that it is sometimes difficult not to overdo it.  In his desire not to overdo the grotesque elements in his work, the result  often turns out more cute than grotesque. When I read this I immediately thought of Hirano’s The Kappa’s Arms which is quite grotesque – I mean a kappa has his arms torn out and bleeds all over the place – but remains quite a cute animation on the whole.

In terms of method, Hirano tends to plan just the first and last scene in his animated shorts and the in-between part just comes naturally.  As a result of this relaxed approach, things that he experiences in his everyday life during the production process often get reflected in the finished film.  For example, The Kappa’s Arms was impacted by the death of a friend during the animation process (read review and watch film).  His work is also heavily influenced by what he reads.  The Kappa’s Arms was initially based on a kappa folktale Hirano discovered in a book, and Ichigwankoku (One-Eyed Country) was based on an old rakugotale (read review).

Hirano’s animation has a unique look because of his use of collage.  Drawn elements are mixed with photographed images and sometimes even real objects.  He apparently prefers watching documentaries to watching animation but as an artist prefers animation to live action because he can control the final results more.  Also, with animation the audience is much more willing to go on a journey into the fantastic.  In a way, animation is Hirano’s jibun no documentary – a documentary of his inner self.  He can express what he wants to say without any uneasy feeling (iwakan).

We showed Ryo Hirano’s film Holiday at Nippon Connectionthis year.  It is his graduate film from Tamabi and the themes are once again love and the body.  He made the film based upon memories of the summer holidays (read review and watch trailer).  Holiday has raised Hirano’s profile as an animator as the film has been picked up by many international festivals.  In order to make a living, he continues to do commercial work such as music videos and the Space Showa TV station ID.   I hope that he finds the funding to continue making indie fare because he shows a lot of promise as an artist. 

A great deal of the information for this article was gleaned from an interview with Hirano by Yuki Harada (source: public-image.org) and through correspondence with Hirano himself.  To read more click on hyperlinked the titles below.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Filmography

2007  udara udara (うだらうだら)

2008  Future Man (蟻人間物語/Ari Ningen Monogatari)

2008  Midnight Zoo (深夜動物園/Shinya Dōbutsuen)

2009  music video orchestra (collaborative work for Omodaka)

2009  The Kappa’s Arms (河童の腕/Kappa no Ude)

2009  Ichigwankoku/ One-Eyed Country (一眼国/Ichigankoku)

2009  Guitar (ギター)

2010 Kensaku Shōnen (検索少年, Tabito Nanao music video)

2011  Hietsuki Bushi (ひえつき節/Omodaka music video)

2011 Space Shower TV Station ID

2011  Holiday(ホリデイ)

Kawamoto-Norstein @ Forum des Images, Day 3

Kawamoto-Norstein @ Forum des Images, Day 3

Sunday, March 25, 2012

On this day I rose early and went for a stroll around the Eiffel Tower and along the Seine with Sakadachi-kun (see tumblr). I then hopped on the Métro Line 6 and headed to the Cinémathèque Française at Bercy.  There was a long queue to get into the Tim Burton Exposition – the one that first appeared at the MOMA in 2009.  Even though they only allowed so many people in per hour, the exhibition was still overcrowded and hot.  I was surprised at the number of parents who had brought very young children to the exhibition.  I witnessed one young girl’s innocent childhood being blemished with nightmarish imagery as she stared as if transfixed at a figure of an infant with nails in it.  It was worth putting up with the crowds to see Johnny Depp’s Edward Scissorhands (1990) costume, as well as a long row of Jack Skellington heads from The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) in a lit display box.  Each head had a slightly different expression on it to give spectators an idea of the process of stop motion.

The regular museum of the Cinémathèque Française had free admission on this day.  It was smaller than I had expected, knowing what treasures are in the archives of the Cinémathèque Française, but there were indeed many delightful things on display.  Martin Scorcese has already donated some set pieces from Hugo (2011), but I was much more impressed to see the original magician’s coat from Georges Méliès’  A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la lune, 1920) in full colour and with hand-embroidered shapes on it.    Some of my favourite things on display at the museum:  a self portrait of Asta Nelson  (here it is on flickr, but it not as vibrantly coloured or as textured in postcard form), Mrs. Bates' head donated by Alfred Hitchcockshortly after the release of Psycho(1960), Mae West’s serpent turban from Leo Macarey’s Belle of the Nineties (1934), original poster art from Julien Duvivier’s Pépé le Moko (1937), and Nikolai Cherkasov’s costume from Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible (1944-6).

For fans of animation, there are many wonderful things to discover in the Cinémathèque Française.  On the walls just before one goes upstairs there is original art from Hans Richter’s Rythmus 23 (1923) and Viking Eggeling’s Symphonie Diagonale(1924).  The Cinémathèque also hold the collection of the pinscreen animation pioneers Alexandre Alexeieff and his wife Claire Parker.  On the upper level of the museum there are two pinscreens on display.  A tableau from 1930 – presumably the one used for the groundbreaking film Night on Bald Mountain (Une nuit sur le mont chauve, 1933)  and a larger screen from 1943.  The large screen holds approximately 1,140,000 pins and was restored for the Cinémathèque by NFB pinscreen animator Jacques Drouin.  The smaller tableau had the image of Bébé Nicolas on it – a character invented by Alexeieff to amuse his daughter when she was young.

There was great excitement at the Forum des images on Day 3, for Raoul Servais (official website) had come from Belgium to see his old friend Yuri Norstein.  I was drinking coffee in the Forum’s café when he entered and witnessed the warm embrace between the two men.  Norstein was delighted to see Servais and introduced him to the audience at the screening of Norstein’s early works and collaborations.  It was wonderful seeing Roman Kachanov’s enchanting The Mitten (1967) on 35mm.  Many of the films in this programme did not have subtitles, but this did not bother me because I had seen the ones with dialogue before.  The highlights of this programme were Ivan Ivanov-Vano and Norstein’s The Battle of Kerzhenets (1971) The Seasons(1969) on 35mm in their full widescreen glory.  They were truly a wonder to behold.

In the evening, Ilan Nguyen  and Serge Éric Ségura did a long presentation on the career of Kihachirō Kawamoto.  This included many rare photographs and video clips of Kawamoto and projects that he worked on throughout his career.  Nguyen teaches animation at Tokyo University of the Arts and is a well known animation expert in France.  He very kindly gave me programmes from the Nouvelles Images du Japon festivals that he assisted in organizing at the Forum des images in past years which have included showcase of the works of Osamu Tezuka, Yōji Kuri, Isao Takahata, Hayao Miyazaki, Satoshi Kon, Kōji Yamamura, and many others.  The French premiere of Kawamoto’s Winter Days occurred at the 2003 festival.  According to his profileon the website of the French periodical éclipses (revue de cinéma), Ségura is working on two books: one about the career of Servais and one about Kawamoto. 

The presentation opened with a clip of Kawamoto singing a Russian song on Japanese TV – which thoroughly delighted Norstein.  The main thrust of the presentation was to demonstrate the way in which Kawamoto had to wear many different hats during his life in order to make a living.  It is very difficult for independent animators to make a living on animation alone. 

There were photographs from Kawamoto’s early childhood – many of which were not in the two Japanese books profiling his life such as those of his mother Fuku(1891-1940) and his father Kinzaburō.  Kawamoto was born and raised in Sendagaya – the neighbourhood in which he was to live for the rest of his life.  His family dealt in porcelain.  There was a photograph of Kawamoto’s paternal grandmother Suzu Kawamoto(1861-1937) who was a major influence on the path his life was to take: teaching him how to make dolls and taking him to the theatre with her.

In the chapter I wrote on Kawamoto for Directory of World Cinema: Japan 2 (ed. John Berra, 2012), I mention the fact that Kawamoto was a big fan of Hollywood and European film of  the 1930s – even making dolls of Greta Garbo and Danielle Darrieux.  Nguyen and Ségura presented a pastel that Kawamoto had made of Swedish film star Zarah Leander next to the original photograph that he had used for inspiration as well as dolls he made of Audrey Hepburn and Brigitte Bardot.

For me the highlights of the presentation were photographs I had never seen before such as Kawamoto on the  set of productions at Toho including Senkichi Taniguchi’s Escape at Dawn (1950) and Teinosuke Kinugasa’s Actress (1947).  We saw clips of a Horoniga (character with a beer stein for a head used in advertisements for Asahi Beer in the 1940s and 50s) animated short directed by either Tadasu Iizawa (1909-94) or Tadahito Mochinaga (1919-99), as well as the first few minutes of Mochinaga’s Little Black Sambo (1956) – which I would have loved to have seen in its entirety.

They also had on hand first editions of the Toppan storybooks, which Shiba Pro later published internationally – such as the Golden Press Living Storybooks series.  I have written about my copy of The Little Tin Soldier (1968) – click here.  There were also clips from other animation Kawamoto had done for the NHK such as the opening credit sequence of Okaasan Ishō and Boo Foo Woo (1960-7).  There was a series of Asahi Beer commercials with the slogan “Watashi no biru” (My beer) which were hilarious send-ups of westerns – Kawamoto had apparently been a huge fan of westerns as a teen, particularly John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939). 

There was one bit of information that took me totally by surprise: I leaned that Kawamoto had elaborate tattoos on his back and upper arms.  Today in the west it has become quite commonplace for people to have tattoos, but in Japan such tattoos are associated with the yakuza.  Many sentō (public bath) have signs declaring that people with tattoos are not welcome to bathe there.  Kawamoto had his tattoos done between 1956 and 1963 apparently as a kind of act of rebellion; a way of marking himself as an individual.  Ségura and Nguyen even showed us a photograph of Kawamoto’s tattoos taken from the rear with him only wearing a fundoshi (traditional male underwear).  This was followed by a series of photographs from Kawamoto’s trip to Eastern Europe.  I looked at the famous photograph of Kawamoto with Jiří Trnka (1912-69) with new eyes.  Kawamoto looks very conservative in his suit: a small, unassuming man in contrast to the hulking form of Trnka.  To think that under that smart suit, Kawamoto was hiding an elaborate work of tattoo art!

One of the questions that had been niggling at me for some time was the mystery of Kawamoto’s first feature film: Rennyo and his Mother (1981).  This 93 min. puppet animation never plays at retrospectives of Kawamoto’s career and has never been made available on video or DVD.  They showed a clip from the film and it looks absolutely stunning.   After the presentation, I asked Nguyen about the availability of the film and he said that it also screens rarely in Japan as the rights are held by the religious organization who commissioned it.  The scenario for the film was written by Kaneto Shindō (Kuroneko, Onibaba) and it features voice acting by Kyōko Kishida and Tetsuko Kuroyanagi.  Although it was not a personal project of Kawamoto's, rather a commissioned work to order, I still feel the work is significant and would love to see it some day.

During the overview of the latter half of Kawamoto’s career there were photographs of him at festivals and other events around the world.  Notable photographs included one of him with Yuri Norstein at 1985 animation festival in Varna – which is the occasion on which the two of them became friends, with Jim Henson in 1986, with Břetislav Pojar at Annecy in 1987, in Shangai in 1987 signing the contact to make To Shoot Without Shooting (1988), and with Karel Zeman and Nicole Saloman at Hiroshima in 1987.  The presentation concluded with footage from the Kawamoto memorial service in 2010 which featured a very moving march of the large puppets from his NHK special series Romance of the Three Kingdoms. 

The presentation was followed by Takashi Namiki’s documentary Living With Puppets: The World of Kihachirō Kawamoto(1999) – read my review here.  The weekend concluded with a screening of Kawamoto shorts including a rare screening of Tadahito Mochinaga’s Little Black Sambo and the Twins(1957), for which Kawamoto had crafted puppets.  Read about this film here.  I slipped out of the final screening event after this film, for I had seen all the other films many times before.

 

with the illustrious Alexis Hunot

I had a chance on the final day of the Kawamoto-Norstein event to get to know animation expert Alexis Hunot a bit better.  I am a longtime fan of his blog Zewebanim and was pleased to find that he is also a fan of this blog.  It turns out that the review that I wrote about Takashi Namiki’s book Animated People in Photo, struck a personal chord with Alexis because his uncle Jean-Luc Xiberras (April 1, 1941- December 26, 1998) is featured in the book.  My blog post apparently triggered Alexis to track down a copy of the photograph for his mother.  Xiberras was the director of Annecy from 1982 until his passing in December 1998.  It was under Xiberras’ direction that Annecy moved from being a biennale to an annual event in 1998.  There is an interview with Xiberras from 1997 on AWN as well as a touching homage to him from 1999 in Englishand Frenchwith tributes written by Frédéric Back, Bruno Edera, and many others. 

Alexis Hunot did his studies in cinema, but his love of animation began when he discovered the works of Back, Norstein, and Jan Švankmajer at Annecy 1987 where he worked as an assistant.  He teaches at Gobelins  and has a monthly radio programme with Florentine Grelier about animation with called Bulles de rêves.   You can see a video of him giving a lecture here, and here is the interview he did with Yuri Norstein.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

PREVIOUSLY: Kawamoto-Norstein @Forum des Images, Day 2 (Part II)

FIRST ENTRY IN THIS SERIES: Kawamoto-Norstein @ Forum des Images, Day 1

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

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 Tomasiand 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)

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 Demonsand 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^thfestival 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 Kuriteach 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

1.

Night on Bald Mountain / Une nuit sur le Mont Chauve

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

2. 

The Street / La rue

(ストリート, Caroline Leaf, 1976)

3.

Crac!

(クラック！, Frédéric Back, 1981)

4.

Bambi

(バンビ, David Hand/Disney, 1942)

5.

Hand / Ruca

(手, Jiří Trnka, 1965)

6.

Blinkity Blank

(線と色の即興詩, Norman McLaren, 1955)

7.

Father and Daughter

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

8.

Ali Baba

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

9. 

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