Japanese Auteur Animation at RICA Wissembourg, Part 4: Auteurs of the 2nd and 3rd Generations

Japanese Auteur Animation at RICA Wissembourg, Part 4: Auteurs of the 2^nd and 3rd Generations

« L'animation japonaise d'auteur » presented by Ilan Nguyen

Auteurs of the 2^nd and 3rd Generations (1900s – 2000s)

Auteurs de la 2e à la 3e génération (des années 1980 aux années 2000)

Original Programme :

Banana (Hitoshi Takekiyo, 1991)

A Gum Boy / くちゃお (Masaki Okuda, 2010b

Muybridge’s Strings / マイブリッジの糸 (Kōji Yamamura, 2011)

Hitogata / ひとがた (Osamu Sakai, 2011)

Scenes  /情景 (Kunio Katō, 2012)

Anomalies (Atsushi Wada, 2013)

Actual Programme:

Banana (Hitoshi Takekiyo, 1991)

A Gum Boy / くちゃお (Masaki Okuda, 2010

Digital / デジタル  (Osamu Sakai, 2012)

Scenes  /情景 (Kunio Katō, 2012)

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

Muybridge’s Strings / マイブリッジの糸 (Kōji Yamamura, 2011)

There is no question that the greatest auteur of the second generation of Japanese indie animators is Kōji Yamamura (山村浩二, b. 1964).   Not only has he been producing top notch animation since the early 1990s, but as a professor at Tokyo University of the Arts (aka Geidai) he is nurturing current and future generations of animation talent.  His renown has attracted not just the cream of the crop from across Japan, but also talented young animators from China and South Korea who want to follow in his footsteps.  Nguyen chose to end his RICA programme with Muybridge’s Strings, a film that Nguyen felt has been underrated compared to highly favoured works like Mt. Head (2002) and Franz Kafka’s A Country Doctor (2007).  Muybridge’s Strings is a very complex film with many layers, and its selection fit well in the overall RICA 2014 programme which featured many other NFB productions and co-productions in both the official competition and in the special screening events. 

Nguyen pointed out that Yamamura considers himself an auteur, following in the footsteps of animators he admires such as Jacques Drouin, Ishu Patel, Yuri Norstein, and Priit Pärn.  He is also an advocated for animation. In addition to his teaching, he set up the collective Animations: Creators and Critics, in order to raise awareness about independent world animation. 

Nguyen also presented the works of two animators who were mentored by Yamamura.  Masaki Okuda is a very talented young filmmaker and his award-winning film A Gum Boy (read review) shows a strong Yamamura influence.  Atsushi Wada is a self-taught Kansai-based animator who had already developed a recognisable individual style (thinly drawn lines, a muted colour palette and animal motifs) before attending the Geidai graduate programme.   The Geidai programme took his work to the next level with his acclaimed graduate film In a Pig’s Eye (2010).  Nguyen showed Wada’s Mechanism of Spring, which is one of Wada’s most exuberant films to date. 

The selection opened with Banana (1991) by Hitoshi Takekiyo (竹清仁, b. 1967).  A graduate of Kyushu Institute of Design, Takekiyo founded the KOO-KI collective of designers and directors in Fukuoka in 1997 and his most recent success was the animated comic short After School Midnight (2005) which was extended into a full-length version After School Midnighters in 2012.  He parted ways with KOO-KI in 2012 and founded a new independent production company Mt. Blanc Pictures.  Takekiyo’s specialty is computer animation.  His early work Banana, which won a Special International Jury Prize at Hiroshima 1992, is part of the MoMA collection.  It brings Chinese characters to life through movement and sound, performing the words that they signify.  People, 人, rush about busy streets, while hands 手 perform actions, and so on.  It’s a great little film that really ought to be shared more widely and not hidden away in an archive.

Next, Nguyen presented the work of two graduates of Tamabi (Tama Art University).  Tamabi’s animation programme, under the guidance of the late Prof. Masahiro Katayama and current mentor Prof. Tatsutoshi Nomura (野村辰寿, b. 1964), has produced many outstanding animators including Akino Kondoh, Mizue Mirai, and Oscar-winning director Kunio Katō (加藤久仁生, b. 1977).  Katō is of course most famous for La maison en petits cubes (2008), but Nguyen presented a series of steam-of-consciousness short-shorts called Scenes that Katō made for his travelling exhibition in 2012.  Read my review here. 

Osamu Sakai (坂井 治, b. 1977) is Nomura and Katō’s colleague at their company ROBOT.  Although his films regularly screen at international festivals his work is lesser known abroad.  In Japan his work has been seen on the popular, long-running NHK programme Minna no Uta.  Nguyen had hoped to screen Hitogata, but due to availability we were shown Digital instead.  Digital is a montage of hand drawn geometric shapes.  The film made the 2013 Official Selection at Annecy.  Samples of Sakai’s work including Digital cane be screened on his YouTube channel.

On the whole Nguyen presented an engaging programme of films, many of which I had not had the opportunity to see before, and posited some interesting ideas about auteurism and animation in Japan.  My only criticism was that the programme did not feature any women animators.  For the first generation of indie animators, women tended to take a backseat to their male colleagues.  To be fair, Nguyen did mention that Renzō Kinoshita was not an individual auteur but an artist who worked in a partnership with his spouse Sayoko Kinoshita, and he also mentioned the team effort of Tadanari Okamoto’s studio, which featured the talents of puppet maker Sumiko Hosaka and puppet maker / animator Fumiko Magari.  However, the final programme of animators from the 2^nd and 3^rd generations of indie animators did not reflect the fact that a growing number of women have been making a name for themselves as auteurs.  The Germany-based stop motion animator Maya Yonesho (learn more) has been exporting her unique brand of animation worldwide with her Daumenreise (Thumb Travels) workshops and although lesser known overseas, Reiko Yokosuka’s sumi-e animation is truly beautiful. 

The most exciting news is that the promise held by the current generation of women animators.  For example, Yoriko Mizushiri, a graduate of Joshibi University of Art and Design, has been a festival favourite in recent years and Akino Kondoh makes amazing animated shorts.  I also observed at Hiroshima 2014 that Geidai’s post-graduate programme in animation, where Nguyen works, has a majority of female students.  Some auteurs in the making include Saori Shiroki, who was in the first cohort of graduates alongside Atsushi Wada, as well as Yuanyuan Hu, puppet-animator Aya Tsugehata and Maho Yoshida from the 3^rd graduating class.  Yewon Kim and Yangtong Zhu are two real stand-outs from this year’s crop of graduates.  I was delighted to discover that Kansai animator Mika Seike, whose work I discovered at Image Forum in 2006, has joined the Geidai animation programme.  That means we can expect two short films from her in the next two years. Her works have a unique aesthetic that really appeals to me. 

As Nguyen said during his presentation of animation auteurs of recent decades, there has been a veritable explosion of talent on Japan’s indie scene since the turn of the century. Every year brings exiting new films and interesting young talent.  Nguyen’s presentation gave a peek at some of Japan’s hidden gems both past and present, and whetted my appetite to see more works by many of these fascinating artists.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014

Japanese Auteur Animation at RICA Wissembourg, Part 3: Tadanari Okamoto

Second Screening / Programme 2e partie                   25 Nov- 2014, La Nef, Wissembourg

The 1970s to the Present / Des années 1970 à nos jours

A Great Unrecognized Figure: Tadanari Okamoto

Une grande figure méconnue : OKAMOTO Tadanari

Ten Little Indians /十人の小さなインデイアン (1968)

December Song / 12月のうた (1971)

Chikotan / チコタン ぼくのおよめさん (1971)

The Monkey and the Crab (excerpt) /日本むかしばなしさるかに (1972)

The Soba Flower of Mt. Oni (excerpt) /鬼がくれ山のソバの花  (1979)

Making of: "Are wa dare" (1985)

The Magic Ballad / おこんじょうるり(1983)

Order: Tadanari Okamoto Zensakuhin Shu DVD Box

Ilan Nguyen’s second programme of Japanese Auteur Animation opened with the animation of Tadanari Okamoto (岡本 忠成, 1932 – 1990), an animation genius whose work has been little recognised overseas.  As Okamoto made educational films aimed at Japanese children and adaptations of Japanese folk tales and legends, many of which are challenging to translate, Nguyen speculated that this may have been the reason his films were not distributed overseas.  In Japan, Okamoto is recognised as one of their top animators, having won the prestigious Noburo Ofuji Award for innovation in animation more times than any other animator.   

Nguyen presented an overview of Okamoto’s career, beginning with his decision to return to university (an unusual thing to do in Japan, even today) to study filmmaking after seeing Czech puppet animation.  After completing his studies at Nihon University, Okamoto was mentored by Tadahito Mochinaga at MOM Productions where he worked on the Rankin/Bass productions The New Adventures of Pinocchio (ピノキオの冒険, 1960-1) and Willy McBean and his Magic Machine (1965).  He then set up his own studio Echo Productions in 1964 where he was to make nearly 40 films before his untimely death at the age of 58.  Nguyen spoke about the dedicated team of people who Okamoto employed at Echo Production who worked well together and contributed to the excellence of his films.  This team included puppet artisan Sumiko Hosaka (保坂純子, b. 1930), puppet maker / animator Fumiko Magari (真賀里文子), who both teach at the Laputa Art Animation School, and cinematographer Minoru Tamura (田村実).

Order: Tadanari Okamoto Sakuhin Shu Vol.1

Nguyen also spoke about the special friendship between Okamoto and his fellow puppet animator Kihachirō Kawamoto (川本 喜八郎, 1925-2010), with whom he collaborated on the Kawamoto+ Okamoto Puppet Anime-Shows (1972-1980).  Kawamoto is an internationally recognised animation auteur, but as his work is widely available on DVD, Nguyen chose to shine his spotlight on Okamoto for the RICA audience.  He did; however, show a five-minute clip from a recording of a theatrical presentation of a scene from The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三国志/Sangokushi, 1982-4) which was performed as part of the homage to the great puppet master after his death in 2010. 

All of the Okamoto films Nguyen presented were on 35mm, which was a special treat.  Although the complete box set of Okamoto presents the films in their restored glory, there is something wonderful a about seeing the films in their original format.  The films were not subtitled, so Nguyen did live French interpretation.  The short documentary Making of Are wa dare , is a real treasure because it demonstrates in brief how Echo Productions makes a film from storyboard to character and set design to filming on an impressive multi-plane animation table in order to create depth of space. 

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014 

Coming Soon:

Japanese Auteur Animation at RICA Wissembourg, Part 4 : Auteurs of the 2^nd and 3rd Generations

Japanese Auteur Animation at RICA Wissembourg, Part 2: The Invention of the Animation Auteur

Japanese Auteur Animation at RICA Wissembourg, Part 2: The Invention of the Animation Auteur

« L'animation japonaise d'auteur » presented by Ilan Nguyen

Continued from Part 1: The Beginnings of Auteurism

Screening One / Programme 1ère partie                  22 Nov. 2014, La Nef, Wissembourg

The Invention of the Animation Auteur

L'invention de "l'animation d'auteur"

Clap Vocalism / Human Zoo /人間動物園 (Yōji Kuri, 1962)

Love / 愛  (Yōji Kuri, 1963)

Mermaid / 人魚 (Osamu Tezuka, 1964)

The Flower /花 (Yōji Kuri, 1967)

The idea of a Japanese animation auteur was arguably invented by experimental artist Yōji Kuri (久里洋二, 1928) in the 1960s.  A member of the Animation Group of Three (アニメーション三人の会), who inaugurated a series of animation festivals at the Sōgetsu Art Center in Tokyo, Kuri was also the first indie animator to actively promote his work at international festivals.  Kuri was a part of the counter-culture movement of the 1960s and his avant-garde, racy animated shorts shocked and delighted festival audiences in equal measures.  Nguyen screened Kuri’s 1962 film Clap Vocalism, which won the Special Jury Prize at the third Annecy (1963) and the bronze medal for animation at the 24^th Biennale in Venice (1963).  Click here to read my full review of the film.  The programme also included the Kuri classics Love (read review) and Flower (review forthcoming).  Nguyen described Kuri’s style as anti-commercial and minimalist, with musique concrète.  His style and themes need to be understood in the context of the 1960s era of counter-culture that were formative for him. 

Whereas Kuri sought to shock and surprise with his art, his fellow animation auteur Osamu Tezuka (塚 治虫, 1928-89) sought to impress.  When the Animation Group of Three expanded into the 1^st Animation Festival, Tezuka was one of a handful of animators to present their cutting edge works.  Nguyen showed Mermaid, one of two films that Tezuka presented at that festival.  Inspired by Claude Debussy’s symphonic poem Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (arranged by Isao Tomita), Mermaid is an Orwellian tale of a young man’s unwavering desire for freedom in the overwhelming face of modernism.  The character design in minimalist, with Shigeru Yamamoto doing the original art and Kiyomi Numamoto assisting with the animation.

Independent production of the 1970s 

La production indépendante dans les années 1970

Made In Japan (Renzō Kinoshita, 1972)

Stone (Nobuhiro Aihara, 1975)

Karma / カルマ (Nobuhiro Aihara, 1977)

Coffee Break  / コーヒー・ブレイク(Taku Furukawa, 1977)

Pica-Don   / ピカドン (Renzō Kinoshita, 1978) 

Bubble   / バブル (Shin’ichi Suzuki, 1980)

Another artist acutely aware of the changing face of Japan was Renzō Kinoshita (木下蓮三, b. 1936-97) who founded the Hiroshima InternationalAnimation Festival in 1985 together with his wife and artistic collaborator Sayoko Kinoshita (木下小夜子, b. 1945) (learn more about him).  Kinoshita’s films are concerned with social issues and Nguyen chose to open and close this section of his talk with key works by this innovative cutout animator.   Made in Japan (1972) is Kinoshita’s critique of the rapid modernisation of Japanese culture.  With tongue firmly in cheek, this film mocks the commercialism of 1970s Japan and explores controversial themes such as the Americanisation of Japanese culture, the destruction of traditional values in the pursuit of money. 

Made in Japan was followed by two films by Nobuhiro Aihara (相原信洋, 1944-2011), an experimental animator who hit his stride in the 1970s.  Although Aihara loved to travel overseas and meet fellow artists abroad, his works are rarely shown outside of Japan. The only works that are readily available are the collaborations he did with pop artist and colleague at Kyoto University of the Arts Keiichi Tanaami, which appear on DVDs released in Japan and France.  Stone (1975) is an experimental animation shot using pixilation and other avant-garde techniques during a six-month stay in Sweden.  Key images include Rorschach paintings on paper shot on natural stones and a time-lapse sequence of a brick house being painted shot with a fisheye lens.   Karma (1977) has a more psychedelic feel to it, thanks in part to the soundtrack – “Aegean Sea” by Greek psychedelic / progressive rock band Aphrodite’s Child.  The swirling, mandala-like imagery is a characteristic motif of Aihara’s work, appearing in many of his animations, paintings, and illustrations (see: Hiroshima 2010 poster).  Learn more about Aihara in the obituary that I wrote in 2011.

Taku Furukawa (古川タク, b. 1941) is one of the best known independent animators in Japan.  He began his career being mentored by Kuri, but then went on to found his own studios.  His pared-down caricature style was heavily influenced by the style of the New Yorker cartoonist and illustrator Saul Steinberg.  Furukawa won the Special Jury Prize at Annecy in 1975 for his innovative film Phenakistoscope and the Bungeishunjū Manga Award for his publication The Takun Humour in 1978.  A few years ago he succeeded Kihachirō Kawamoto as the president of JAA (the Japanese Animation Association).  Nguyen presented one of Furukawa’s classic work Coffee Break.  Read my review of it here.

Shin’ichi Suzuki, who featured in the first part of Nguyen’s presentation for his work at Otogi Pro, went on to found his own production company Studio Zero in 1963.  Nguyen was unable to get his animated short Bubble as originally planned, so he showed The Gourd Bottle (ひょうたん, 1976) instead.  It’s a very funny, caricature style short about a drunk with a magic gourd bottle (aka calabash – a squash-like fruit that can be dried and used as a bottle).  Suzuki has been the director of the Suginami Animation Museum since 2005.

Nguyen chose to close the 1st of his 2 programmes with Kinoshita’s 1978 film Pica-don.  I thought that this was a good idea because the experience of watching Pica-don, an animated depiction of the bombing of Hiroshima based upon witness testimonies and drawings, is very intense.  One really needs some quiet time afterwards to process the horror that the film evokes.  Read more in my full review of the film and accompanying picture book. 

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014

Next:

JapaneseAuteur Animation at RICA Wissembourg, Part 3: Tadanari Okamoto