L'Animation Indépendante Japonaise, Volume 3 (DVD release, FR/EN, 2015)

Last spring, the French-Japanese production company and distributor CaRTe bLaNChe released its third DVD in collaboration with the French art film distributor Les films du paradoxe.  The DVD is bilingual in French and English and features the following works by Japanese independent animators:

Happy Bogeys 1 - 12 (2000-2014) by Takashi Kurihara

18’17” - 16/9 – ink on paper

A graduate of Tama Art University, Tokyo animator Kurihara is known for this series of amusing short shorts featuring creatures called “bogeys.”  Possibly inspired in name by the English concept of the “bogeyman” (an imaginary creature used by adults to frighten children into good behaviour), the bogeys are simply amusing, shape-shifting creatures.  At approximately a minute long each, and with their minimalist design (white characters outlined in black against a yellow background) they are reminiscent of the kind of short shorts I watched on public television as a child such as the La Linea (1971-1986) shorts by Osvaldo Cavandoli (aka Cava).

Veil (幕, 2014)

(Maku / Le voile, 2014) by Yoriko Mizushiri

5’26” - 16/9 - pencil on paper
Read my review here.

Poker from CaRTe bLaNChe on Vimeo.

POKER (2014) by Mirai Mizue and Yukie Nakauchi (MIRAI FILM)

3’37”- 16/9 – paper and ink on paper, 2D

This is a music video for singer-songwriter Shugo Tokumaru animated by Tama Art University graduates Mirai Mizue and Yukie Nakauchi.  Both Mizue and Nakauchi are known for their colourful animation styles that play with shapes, metamorphosis and the relationship between animation and music.

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

(Yubi wo Nusunda Onna / La femme qui avait volé des doigts)

by Saori Shiroki (Tokyo University of the Arts)

4’15”- 16/9 – paint on glass

Read my review of Woman who stole fingers

Anal Juke - Anal Juice (肛門的重苦, 2013)

(Koumontekijûku Ketsujiru Juke) by Sawako Kabuki

2’58” - 16/9 – pencil on paper, 2D

Kabaki's work has become a viral sensation online because of her fearless and often shocking depictions of the female body.  In her typical luridly coloured, frenetic animation style, Anal Juke depicts a woman's struggle with diarrhea in a bowel movements, equating the pains of bowel elimination with intensity of earthquakes. 

Consultation Room (診察室, 2005)

(Shinsatsu Shitsu/ La salle de consultation) by Kei Oyama

9’ - 4/3 - 2D  

This is an early work by Kei Oyama which also featured on the Image Forum DVD Thinking and Drawing.  A melancholy, at times disturbing depiction of suffering and waiting in a hospital consultation room, Oyama is the master of using textures to evoke a visceral response on the part of the spectator.  The textures are scans of human flesh that have been layered using computer imaging software.

USALULLABY (2013) by Asami Ike (Tokyo University of the Arts)

5’33” - 16/9 – pastel on paper, light

Ike is a 2014 graduate of the Geidai Graduate Animation program.  Here is her description of this dreamlike short animation: “Increasing in number, small rabbits take care of a great dolphin.  Can the dolphin get to sleep by rabbits’ gentle caress?  May many people have [a] good sleep and sweet dreams tonight even in the world with whining sounds and wriggle of yin and yang."

NEW TOKYO ONDO (ニュー東京音頭, 2012) by nuQ

4’52” - 16/9 - 2D

This colourful imagining of a futuristic New Tokyo was made by another Tama Art University graduate Misaki Uwabo using his pseudonym NuQ.  He himself describes the film as "nonsensical" and explains that he drew the film at a rate of 30 pictures per second using a pencil tool.  

Paradise (パラダイス, 2013) by Ryō Hirano (FOGHORN)

20’18” - 16/9 - pastel on paper, 2D 

Hirano's latest animation was a festival favourite of 2014 (BFI / revue24images).  Another graduate of the Tama Art Animation programme, Hirano came to my attention in 2012 when I did a series about his work.  It is on my list of animated shorts to review this year.

2016 Cathy Munroe Hotes

Veil (幕, 2014)

Veil (幕/Maku, 2014) is the latest animated short by Yoriko Mizushiri (水尻自子, 1984).  Her minimalist pale pastel works like Futon (布団, 2012) and Snow Hut (かまくら, 2013), have been winning acclaim at international festivals in recent years.   Veil premiered at the Berlinale in 2015, and I was lucky enough to see it on the big screen at Oberhausen 2015.  It is now available on DVD the DVD L’Animation Indépendante Japonaise, Vol. 3.  Available from Heeza or amazon.fr.

Although Veil is the official English title, the Japanese title “Maku” (幕) translates more accurately as curtain.  I am guessing the word “veil” has been chosen because as a verb it sounds more poetic and mysterious than “curtain”.  Yet, the film opens not with a veil but with a rising curtain on what the synopsis describes as a Kyōgen stage.  The Kyōgen stage is the same as a Noh stage, for Kyōgen was traditionally the comic relief between the acts of a Noh drama.  The stage features a multi-coloured curtain, or “agemaku” (揚幕), a symbol of the border between one world and another.  The reference to Kyōgen, which literally means “mad words” or “wild speech” is an ironic one for there is no speech in a Mizushiri animated short. 

Clouds, feet sliding across the ground on banana-shaped cushions.  A monkey in a suit sits with a rope around its waist.  Women’s bare legs sitting on office chairs.  Ikura (salmon roe) from an ikura sushi float like bubbles in the air and pushed by a slender female finger.  As is typical for the style of Mizushiri, everyday places and items become extraordinary through her use of close-ups and unusual perspectives.  The commonplace becomes erotic and the combination of sensual imagery with a compelling soundtrack by electronica artist Shunta Hasunuma (蓮沼執太, b.1983) results in an engaging audience experience.

2016 Cathy Munroe Hotes

A Poet’s Life (詩人の生涯, 1974)

A Poet’s Life (詩人の生涯/ Shijin no Shōgai, 1974) is the only non-puppet animation of Kihachirō Kawamoto to win the Noburo Ofuji Award.  Apart from his Self Portrait (1988), Kawamoto’s adaptation of modern tales tended to be done using cut-outs or drawn animation styles such as Farce Anthropo-cynique (1970) based on the short story by experimental modernist Riichi Yokomitsu (横光 利一, 1898-1947) or Kawamoto’s original screenplay Travel (旅 / Tabi, 1973).  In interviews, Kawamoto usually explained that he was a firm believer in finding the right animation materials for telling the story.

This animated short is an adaptation of a story of the same name by the great modernist writer Kōbō Abe (安部 公房, 1924-1993), who is known for his surreal stories that explore the modern angst of individuals in society.  Unlike the colourful world of Kawamoto’s puppet films, A Poet’s Life is drawn in morose shades of grey and brown.  The flatness of the cut-out aesthetic mirrors the one-dimensionality of the dreary life of the factory workers in this modern tale of inequality.  The male main protagonist loses his job when he dares to complain to his boss about the terrible conditions that he and his fellow factory must endure. 

The man lies passed out on the floor of his home while his aged mother works diligently away on her squeaky spinning wheel.  The dialogue is related through the use of title cards, and we learn that the old woman feels as worn out and limp as a thread of cotton.  The cotton flies from her hands and as she reaches for it, she finds herself being terrifyingly turned into thread as well. 

The son awakes to find his mother has disappeared.  All that remains of her is the clothes that were on her back, but he is too exhausted to do anything about it.  A neighbour arrives and takes the newly spun yarn and knits it into a sweater.  But no one will buy the sweater, not only because they are too poor but also because it cries out as if in agony.  The young man, who continues his protest against the factory, has a feeling that the sweater should not be sold.  Eventually, the sweater ends up in a pawnshop.

High up on the hill overlooking the town, the factory owner lives with his family.  The wealthy man polishes his rifle while his wife wears a fur coat indoors.  Winter comes in the form of a beautiful sequence of falling snowflakes “made of crystallized dreams, spirits, and desires.”  The snow keeps falling and the temperatures drop steeply.  The families with foreign made sweaters manage to survive at first, the storybook-like title cards tells us, but the shelves of shops become empty.   As the situation becomes critical, the wealthy man order another 5000 foreign sweaters in “a new pattern ideological tiger stripes in black and white. . . or 50 atom bombs instead?”

The crisis is averted when the young man puts on the sweater knitted by his mother – now red with her blood.  He looks and the snow and comes to the realization that he is a poet: “Look! Aren’t these beautiful snowflakes the forgotten words of the poor? . . .  their dreams, spirits, desires. . .  ”  As he writes down these words, the snow melts, and the sun comes out.  Owner-less storerooms are opened and all the people get sweaters.

Visually, the film does an excellent job of representing the settings and characters of Abe’s story.  Compared to Kawamoto’s later puppet animation, however, this animation is less expressive with too much reliance on the text than on the visuals.  Although the text is very poetically written, I think the film would have been a lot stronger if it had relied on the animation to tell the story.  The red sweater is a particularly compelling visual motif because it is the only object that is brightly coloured in an otherwise monotone film.  Two decades later, Steven Spielberg would use this same technique in his Oscar-winning film Schindler’s List (1993) with the memorable image of a girl in the red coat.

Based upon a short story by

Kōbō Abe

Music

Joji Yuasa

Performers

Aki Takahashi

Yasunobu Yamaguchi

Backgrounds

Takashi Komae

Masami Tokuyama

Camera

Minoru Tamura

Sound

Isamu Katto

Sound Effects

Iwao Takahashi

Editing

Hisako Aizawa

Animation

Kihachiro Kawamoto

Yutaka Mikome

Takao Ishikawa

With the Assistance of

Akiko Konishi

Chitose Nasu

Hiromi Wakasa

Seiya Maruyama

Satoru Yoshida

Echo Studios

Screenplay/Direction

Kihachiro Kawamoto