23 January 2012

Maya Yonesho’s Top 20 Animated Films


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 KotabeReiko 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 KatayamaShigeru 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.

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, Gianluigi Toccafondo, 1999)

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 / Puppet Animation
Puppet Animation
Shanghai bijutsu denei sakuhin shu / Animation
Shanghai bijutsu denei sakuhin shu Vol.1


Note: this post was corrected in July 2016