Geidai Animation: 3rd Graduate Works 2012 (YouTube Playlist)

Geidai Animation: 3^rd Graduate Works 2012

東京藝術大学大学院映像研究科アニメーション専攻第三期生修了作品集2012

The class of 2012 was taught by Professors Yuichi Ito (Model Animation), Mitsuko Okamoto (Production), Takehito Deguchi (Screenwriting), Koji Yamamura (2D animation), and Taruto Fuyama.  Assistant Professors were animator Hiromitsu Murakami and lecturers Ilan Nguyen and Eiji Otsuka.  Sayaka Omodaka, Hiroko Tochigi and Yuichi Matsumoto provided additional assistance.  Sound instructors for the films were Tatsuhko Nishioka, Toru Kamekawa, Yuichi Kishino, and Hiroshi Takayama.  Learn more about this year's graduating class here or via links to the graduate's offical websites and social media below.

Order Geidai Animation 2012

 

『Open play, Forgetting eye』ALIMO×Tukico from Hoshiko Yamane on Vimeo.

空の卵 / A Wind Egg trailer (2012) from Ryo_okawara on Vimeo.

Graduate Films

収録作品  第三期生修了作品

Open Play, Forgetting Eye

開かれた遊び、忘れる眼 
Akareta Asobi, Wasureru Manako 
2012年 / 8'39"

ALIMO (b. 1977) 
official website

Look at Me!

2012年 / 5'35"

Senri Iida (飯田千里, b. 1987) 
official website

A Wind Egg

空の卵 
Kara no Tamago 
2012年 / 10'30"
Ryo Okawara (大川原 亮, b. 1986)

Read my review of A Wind Egg.
CALF Studio /  twitter / vimeo

I am alone, walking on the straight road.

まつすぐな道でさみしい
Matsu suguna Michi de Samishii
2012年 / 5'53"

Masanori Okamoto (岡本 将徳, b.1985) 
vimeo / twitter

Ukiyodoko

浮世床
2012年 / 8'00"

Kazuya Karasawa (唐澤和也, b. 1985)  
twitter

Sunset Flower Blooming

夕化粧 
Yugesho 
2012年 / 10'19"

Yuanyuan Hu (胡 嫄嫄/コ・ユェンユェン, b. 1986)

Read my review of Sunset Flower Blooming.

Spirits from the Night

夜から来た人たち 
Yoru kara Kita Hitotachi 
2012年 / 7'35"

Hiroko Satsuma (薩摩 浩子, b.1987) 
twitter

Hide-and-seek

かくれん坊 
Kakurenbō 
2012年 / 7'51"

Keiko Shiraishi (白石 慶子, b. 1985) 
 twitter / official website

QQQ

2012年 / 8'20"

YungSung Song (宋 永盛 / ヨンソン・ソン)  
vimeo

The Surface of the Earth

2012年 / 6'03"

Sonomi Takada (高田 苑実, b. 1982) 
official website

The Sakuramoto Broom Workshop

櫻本箒製作所 
Sakuramoto Hōki Seisakusho 
2012年 / 9'16"

Aya Tsugehata (告畑 綾, b. 1987)

Read review

xx

2012年 / 7'50"

Toyomi Morishita (モリシタ トヨミ) 
twitter

Tomato confit

トマトコンフィ 
Tomato Konfi 
2012年 / 5'11"

Mayuko Yamakita (山北 麻由子, b. 1986) 
official website

Recruit Rhapsody

就活狂想曲 
Shūkatsu Kyōsōkyoku 
2012年 / 7'27"

Maho Yoshida (吉田 まほ, b.1986)  
her blog
Read review of Recruit Rhapsody

A Black Cat (黒い猫, 2015)

After teaching for many years, the Kansai artist Mika Seike returned to her career as an independent animator in 2014 when she began the Geidai (Tokyo University of the Arts) graduate programme.  Her early works always impressed with the innovative ways she used scanned textures and visual metaphors to create her poetic animated shorts. 

A Black Cat (黒い猫 / Kuroi Neko, 2015) is Seike’s first year work for the programme, and as such is shorter than her other works.  The film is minimalism in nature with a limited colour palette and a dark background.  A faceless woman holds a black cat in her arms.  The focus of the film is on the subtlety and sensuality of the act of caressing a cat.  Like a typical cat, the black cat is not content to stay still but resists with occasional sudden movements.  Eventually the cat slips from the woman’s arms and she touches her hand to her face.  It occurred to me while watching this film that it like the animated version of a still life painting – instead of capturing the inanimate, commonplace object, Seike captures an animate, commonplace incident of everyday life – cuddling with a house pet.   

Mika SEIKE ( 清家美佳, b. 1974) is from Kansai. She started making independent animation films in 2001. After working for many years in the field of education, Seike rejuvenated her animation career at Geidai in 2014.  She graduated from the programme in 2016.  Learn more about her through my reviews of Thinking and Drawing: Japanese Art Animation of the New Millennium and Face to Face (お向さん2007). You can follow her on twitter to learn more. 

GAKI Biwa hōshi (GAKI琵琶法師, 2005)

In feudal Japan, biwa hōshi, “lute masters” or “lute priests”, were travelling performers who earned their living performing vocal literature with the accompaniment of biwa music.  The biwa is a Japanese short-necked, fretted lute traditionally used in narrative storytelling.   Biwa hōshi were often blind and wore robes and had shaved heads in a similar style to that of Buddhist monks.  The style of their musical performance is known as heikyoku (平曲 / Heike music) as the biwa hōshi are believed to have been the first performers of the Japanese epic story The Tale of the Heike (平家物語 / Heike Monogatari, c. 1180-1185). 

Reiko Yokosuka’s 2005 ink brush (sumi-e) animation GAKI Biwa hōshi (GAKI琵琶法師) depicts the performance of such a biwa hōshi.  However, this is no historical figure but a gaki – a type of ghost or yūrei (幽霊) common in Japanese and East Asian folklore.  Not only is this clear from the title of the film, but Yokosuka’s depiction of the gaki as a bent, elderly figure with a bloated stomach resembles very closely the depiction of of gaki in traditional art (see examples).  According to Japanese Buddhist legends, gaki (hungry ghosts) are the spirits of jealous or greedy people who have been cursed with insatiable hunger for something (often something disgusting) as a punishment for their mortal vices. 

In the Oxford University Press’s Handbook of Japanese Mythology (2008), Michael Ashkenazi describes a myth of such a lute-playing gaki that appears after the defeat of the Taira Clan at Dan-no-Ura (p. 156-157).  I suspect that such a myth must have inspired Yokosuka’s animation.

That being said; however, Yokosuka does not employ a contemporary biwa musician to accompany her film.  Instead, she modernizes the gaki biwa hōshi, transforming his traditional instrument into an electric biwa.  He plugs his instrument into an electricity source and the old fashioned setting of a traditional Japanese house transforms into a modern landscape of electricity poles.  Although the poles are modern, they are painted with in the sumi-e brush painting style used in the depiction of bamboo in traditional art.  To the accompaniment of electronic music by Kenji Konishi (小西健司, b. 1955), also known as Ironbeat, the brush strokes become performers in the animation.

The pika pika of electricity comes alive as a dancing figure on the electricity wire.  We return to the lonely figure of the gaki biwa hōshi for a moment as the sound of wind transforms the brushstrokes of sumi-e paint into a beautiful abstract animation.  The brushstrokes swirl like cloth around a spinning top, they fill the screen with waves as the music crescendos again until we finally return to the gaki musician, worn out by his efforts.  As he sits once again, two little figures like the one dancing on the electricity line bring the hungry ghost some refreshment in the form of a drink and a snack.  "Sigh.  .   ."  a wonderful blend of traditional art and mythology with contemporary art and music. 

You can get a glimpse of the animation in the trailer here.  This animated short screened as part of A Wild Patience – Indie Animated Shorts by Women at Nippon Connection 2016.

Artist: Reiko Yokosuka (横須賀令子)

Offical Website

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2016 Cathy Munroe Hotes