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 24th
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 1st 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
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