For her Geidai
graduate film, Chinese animator Yantong
Zhu has created a very personal hand drawn animation that has been lovingly
dedicated to her father. My Milk Cup Cow
(コップの中の子牛/Koppu no naka
no Koushi, 2014) is
told from the perspective of a four-year-old girl called Nunu who lives alone
with her single father. Not only is
there a first-person narration voiced by the animator herself of the central
protagonist recalling her childhood, but the visual perspective of many scenes within
the animation has been done from the point-of-view of a small child.
Through the voice-over narration we
learn that Nunu’s early childhood is very unsettled. Her mother is absent from her life, and she
and her father have moved several times.
In response to the constant upheaval of adjusting to new communities and
nursery schools, Nunu becomes a picky eater.
Her father tries to convince her to drink up her milk by telling her a
fanciful tale that if she drinks up all milk she will discover a cow he has
hidden at the bottom of her cup using magic.
Nunu is intrigued by this and drinks up her milk only to discover an
empty cup. Her father tells her that she
must have swallowed the cow and if she listens very carefully she will hear it
in her belly.
Through a
series of interlayered vignettes, this animated short gives us a glimpse into
the everyday life of Nunu. She overhears
the whispers in the playground about her unusual family situation, she notices
that her father has troubles getting enough money together to pay their rent,
she rides in the basket of her father’s bicycle through the city on hot summer
evenings taking a different route home every time. Gradually, Nunu starts to realize that her
father is weaving a fabric of white lies in order to protect her from the harsh
realities of their hard scrabble life.
. . and as she grows up she may need to do the
same in order to avoid causing her father more worry.
Yantong Zhu
has created a very touching story. Although
it is ably narrated, the real emotional content of the film comes from the depiction
of the child’s perspective on the world around her. It is a very sensory experience, showing us
both Nunu’s amusing observations (her father’s prickly chin feeling like a
hedgehog) and her fears (that her father must have eyes in his knees to be able
to see that she is peering through the slats of the bathroom door while he is
on the toilet). The emotional content of
the film, and its nostalgic feel, are heightened by the use of a music composed
by Asuka Horiguchi and performed on
an erhu (Chinese violin) by Yingzi Li, as well as a lilting traditional
northeastern Chinese lullaby arranged by Jianchun
Zhen and performed by Long Wu (piano)
and Guang Yang (singer).
Yantong Zhu (朱彦潼/シュ・ゲンドウ, b. 1988) grew up in Nanjing, China and graduated with a degree in Advertising from the Nanjing University of Finance and Economics in 2010. She graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts’ graduate programme in animation this year. My Milk Cup Cow is screening at international festivals this year. It will screen at Nippon Connection on Thursday, May 29, 2014. Click here to learn more. You can follow Yantong Zhu on twitter or vimeo.
Yantong Zhu (朱彦潼/シュ・ゲンドウ, b. 1988) grew up in Nanjing, China and graduated with a degree in Advertising from the Nanjing University of Finance and Economics in 2010. She graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts’ graduate programme in animation this year. My Milk Cup Cow is screening at international festivals this year. It will screen at Nippon Connection on Thursday, May 29, 2014. Click here to learn more. You can follow Yantong Zhu on twitter or vimeo.
Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014
