Tiny Tracks (2015)

When contemplating his collection of books, the philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote “Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector’s passion borders on the chaos of memories.” (Illuminations, p. 60).  When a collector passes away, this “chaos of memories” is passed on to loved ones who often struggle with whether to keep or discard items that represent a lifelong passion.

In the case of Hilda Walsh, her husband Ivor Walsh (1923-2002) was a streetcar enthusiast.  His favourite streetcar system was the one in Boston, Massachusetts.  Beginning in 1979 or 1980, Ivor began transformed the Walsh’s basement in Toronto into a miniature replica of Boston’s Green Line as it would have looked in the 1950s.  In addition to the meticulously modeled streetcars and tracks, the miniature streetcar scene features highly detailed neighbourhood buildings with interior and exterior lights including an authentic 1950s diner complete with customers eating their meals.  The roof of one of the stations has 350 miniature light bulbs in its ceiling.  When he was alive, Ivor would have the streetcar running all day while listening to cassettes of Frank Sinatra.

Tiny Tracks Short Documentary - Trailer from Naomi Hocura on Vimeo.

This slice of life short documentary by Naomi Hocura is a loving tribute to the life and passion of Ivor Walsh, told in the first person by his widow Hilda and his friends and fellow enthusiasts Dave Haire and Phil Spencer.  It also tells us a great deal about Hilda herself, her warmth, her love for her late husband, and her own passion for making stained glass.  I particularly love the cinematography of the film, such as the cutaways of close up details of the tracks and the miniature scenes. 

Tiny Tracks had its world premiere at the Hot Docs festival in Toronto.  Carol Off interviewed Naomi Hocura and Hilda Walsh about the film for As It Happens.  The Toronto Star also wrote about the film.

Official website: http://tinytracksdoc.com/

Naomi Hocura is a Canadian musician / artist / filmmaker / curator based in Erin, Ontario.  In 2009, she curated the animated short programme Seconds Under the Sun (Toronto/Winnipeg) featuring works by animators from puppet master Kihachiro Kawamoto to cutting edge avant-garde artists like Akino Kondoh and Atsushi Wada.  I once saw her perform a psychedelic soundtrack to Kenji Mizoguchi’s The Water Magician (1933) with her band the Vowls (Shinsedai 2010).

2016 Cathy Munroe Hotes

The Old Man and the Sea (老人と海, 1999)

The Old Man and the Sea (老人と海/Rōjin to Umi, 1999) was the first of two times that the Noburō Ōfuji Award for innovation in animation has been won by a non-Japanese director.  This Russian-Canadian-Japanese co-production qualified for the award because it was co-produced by Japanese companies.  One key figure among the Japanese producers is the animator Tatsuo Shimamura, president of his own studio Shirogumi, and professor at Kyoto University of Art and Design.  Shimamura had won the Noburō Ōfuji Award one year previously for the Shirogumi animated shorts Water Spirit (水の精/Mizu no sei, 1998) and Kappa Hyakuzu (河童百図, 1998).  Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, most independent animators in Russia have had to look to international co-productions in order to finance their work.  In addition to support from Japan, the creative team at Montréal’s  Pascal Blais Studio (Pascal Blais and Bernard Lajoie) were at the heart of this production, and went on to collaborate with Petrov on many commercial projects. 

At the time of the production of this film, the Russian director Aleksandr Petrov (アレクサンドル・ペトロフ, b.1957), had long been admired by fellow animators and animation fans around the world for his superior paint-on-glass animation films.  This involves the painting of a picture and photographing it, then erasing/altering the picture to make the next frame.  This under the camera animation technique requires a great level of skill and planning, because once a scene is started it cannot be corrected.  There have been few practitioners of paint-on-glass, with Petrov being top of the list alongside Vladimir Samsonov (Russia), Caroline Leaf (USA), Georges Schwizgebel (Switzerland) and Witold Giersz (Poland).

Petrov’s Adaptation

Petrov began his adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s popular novel The Old Man and the Sea with a detailed storyboard.  According to a short documentary Petrov made about his techniques as an animator, he had his father (Nikolai Sergeievich) dress up in the role of the “Old Man”, Santiago, and re-enact the movements Santiago would make in the boat.  His son Dima filmed the re-enactment and this footage was used as a reference in the studio.   

On the whole it is a faithful adaptation of Hemingway’s tale.  As a short film, obviously the story information has been streamlined, but the key elements are all there.  Petrov’s artistic style, which critics often call romantic realist suits the subject matter perfectly.  It is realistic in the sense that the character movements and events are depicted in a realistic manner, but romantic in terms of the painting style.  For me, Petrov’s style is like an Impressionist painting in motion.   In the live action adaptations of The Old Man and the Sea, there is a heavy reliance on voice-over narration to express the spiritual aspects of the old man’s relationship to his environment.   With animation Petrov is able to capture this visually in such sequences as the dreamy flashbacks to the African animals of Santiago’s youth, the dramatic arm wrestling flashback, and the dream sequence of Santiago as a youth swimming with the marlin.  

Awards and Honours

In addition to the Noburō Ōfuji Award, The Old Man and the Sea won the Oscar for Best Animated Short for 1999, the Grand Prix and Audience Award at Annecy, the Jutra Award for Best Animated Film (top film prize in Québec), and a Special Prize at Hiroshima (2000).  The film additionally won top prizes at the Montréal World Festival, the San Diego International Film Fesitival, Krok, Zagreb, to name but a selection of honours.

Availability on DVD:

Geneon Universal’s 2002 DVD is only available second hand in Japan. It features Erik Canuel’s Genie Award winning 20-minute documentary Hemingway: A Portrait (Canada, 1999). Both films are dubbed in Japanese.

 In the States, the 2005 DVD of The Old Man and the Sea is currently out of print, but some second-hand copies are available.

 In France, there is a 2004 release that features French and English dubs. Order from Heeza or amazon:




 An Italian release is available with English and Italian dubs and subtitles.
 

 2015 Cathy Munroe Hotes

Sumo Lake (相撲の湖, 2011)

http://gregholfeld.com/

http://www.sumolake.blogspot.de/

http://www.benjaminspeed.com/

Sumo Lake (相撲の湖, 2011) is a humorous, hand-drawn animated short by Canadian-Australian artist Greg Holfeld (グレッグ ホルフェルド, b. 1965).  The official Japanese name that appears in the film is an attempt at a katakana rendering of the English title: スーモー・ルエク.  Unfortunately, as Holfeld told me himself at Hiroshima 2014 (he was on this year’s selection committee), he found out too late that this was inaccurate.  To begin with, “sumo” does not have a long “u”, and “ルエク” is not commonly used for “Lake” in Japanese.  So, I have amended the title to more authentically capture the English title of the film, which is a play on Swan Lake (白鳥の湖), the nineteenth century ballet composed by Tchaikovsky.

Sumo Lake from Panic Productions on Vimeo.

Holfeld’s interest in sumo wrestling dates back to 1990, when he lived in Tokyo.  His attention was captured by the sight of the Hawaiian wrestler Konishiki, the heaviest rikishi ever in sumo with a peak weight of 287kg.   Around this time David Benjamin asked him to illustrate The Joy of Sumo: A Fan’s Notes (1992), which is currently in print in its revised form: Sumo: A Thinking Man’s Guide to the National Sport (2010).  The initial inspiration for this film; however, was a pitch painting by Eddie White and Ari Gibson, co-directors of the animated short The Cat Piano (2009), about a sumo wrestler who dreams of becoming a ballet dancer.  Learn more here.

As with all great comedy, Holfeld takes a simple conceit, the notion of a large, ungainly sumo wrestler doing ballet, and executes it brilliantly for the screen.  The story begins with a wind-up sumo doll performing shiko (四股), the side-to-side stomping that sumo wrestlers ritually perform at the beginning out each bout in order to drive away any demons.  A wider shot shows the tiny doll is facing a large sumo wrestler, who also performs shiko, causing the wind-up doll to fall over, face down.  The wrestler picks up the doll and tries again, but his time the doll clatters away and disappears as if falling into water.  A moment later, the figure re-emerges from the water like “The Lady of the Lake” of Arthurian legend, but the wind-up doll has transformed into a lifelike sumo wrestler on his toes like a ballet dancer. 

The two wrestlers face-off and begin to wrestle one another, but midway through their fight transforms into a graceful pas de deux.  One wrestler sinks into the water yet again, then re-emerges for another showdown.  However, this battle gets interrupted by the stomping foot of a Godzilla-esque kaiju.  Thus commences the climax of the film, which is a hilarious combination of epic battle and dance off.  The icing on the cake is the glorious soundtrack composed by Benjamin Speed in a style similar to that of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.  It is a beautifully drawn film, as you can see from some of materials Holfeld has shared on his website.  The three-minute film consists of 1,300 drawings – a total of 6.24 kg of paper.  The simplicity of the pencil sketch on paper style is delightful, particularly when paired with the complexity of character movement. 

Sumo Lake can be viewed on Vimeo.  You can support Greg Holfeld by buying his books and comics.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014

Bambi Meets Godzilla (バンビ、ゴジラに会う, 1969)

I cannot hear the lyrical melody of Rossini’s Ranz des Vaches (Call to the Dairy Cows) from William Tell (1829) without bursting into a fit of giggles.  This affliction dates back to my early childhood.  My parents were elementary school teachers in London, Ontario.  In those days, educational films were distributed to schools via a 16mm film library held by the London Board of Education.  For my birthday party one year – I believe I was turning 9 or 10 years old – my parents brought a projector home with a collection of animated shorts for my friends and me to watch.  The only film that I recall from the party is Marv Newland’s classic Bambi Meets Godzilla (バンビ、ゴジラに会う, 1969).  If you have not yet seen it, it only lasts about a minute and a half and can be viewed on Vimeo.

The film was made while Newland was still a student in California – he talks about it a little bit in an Anifest interview here – and quickly became a cult classic.  In today’s world in which the internet is patrolled by over-zealous corporations protecting their copyrights and infringing upon freedom of artistic expression, it is doubtful that such a film could be made without the threat of a lawsuit.  Newman did not ask Disney or Toho for permission for his send-up of / homage to their iconic Bambi and Godzilla characters. 

The main conceit of the film is that more than half of the less than two-minute film is taken up by hilarious opening credits and closing acknowledgements.  This is partly a commentary on the growing length of film credits (in the early days, films only credited key people, but by the 1960s the opening and closing credits were getting longer), but it is mainly a suspense technique leading up to the extremely quick “action” of the film.  The opening credits are drawn out for 50 seconds, eliciting chuckles from the audience first when they notice that Marv Newman has done everything, and second when the jobs credited become ludicrous. 

At the 50 second mark, the credits are interrupted by the sudden appearance of Godzilla’s foot flattening poor, unsuspecting Bambi like a pancake.  The “action” lasts just under 2 seconds, then after a few beats for the audience to get over their shock / laughter, the acknowledgements appear, thanking the city of Tokyo for the loan of their most infamous Kaiju.  While watching the film online recently, I got nostalgic for the old 16mm projectors because at my birthday party, in addition to re-watching the film several times, we also watched it backwards and laughed ourselves silly at the sight of Godzilla’s foot going up off-screen and Bambi popping back to life again.  Alas, such joys are not to be had with digital media.  I also miss the whir of the projector and the tactile pleasures of spooling the film into the projector.  It is sad that movie projectors are going the way of the dodo bird, for they bring much pleasure to many.

Marv Newland (マーヴ・ニューランド) is an American-Canadian filmmaker, who has had a long career making short commercials for both private and public broadcasters in the US and Canada.   In the course of his career he has done everything from drawing storyboards for Barbapapa at Toonder Studios (Netherlands) to making delightful animated shorts for the NFB.  His animated adaptation of Gary Larson’s Tales from the Far Side (1994) for TV won him the Grand Prix at Annecy in 1995.  He currently teaches Classical Animation at the Vancouver Film School.  A limited edition DVD of his collected works, The Best of International Rocketship became available earlier this year.  See Cartoon Brew for more info.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2013

Promises (約束, 2011)

On an autumn day, a woman kneels under the scarlet leaves of trees mourning the loss of her infant son.  As she cries, the winds picks up the remains of her child and leaves only a dark shadow behind.  This dark shadow, the spirit of her dead child, whispers to her that she can take his shadow home with her.  The woman does so, looking after this transparent shadow of a child in the same way she would a living, breathing child.   She lives happily with her secret until one day, a kind of shinigami (spirit of death) in the form of an elderly man comes knocking and asks for the shadow of the child. 

After the man leaves, the woman folds the child’s shadow into the shape of a bird in order to hide him from the shinigami.  Soon, there comes another ominous knock at the door.  The shinigami has returned and asks for the shadow of the bird.  He informs her that he is a representative of kami (god) and he has been directed to collect the soul that she has been keeping in her home.  Tears run down her face, and the shinigami offers to make a deal with her.  He asks her to sew herself a doll in the shape of a child and to put the shadow in it.  At first it seems that she has made a deal with the devil as she runs fearfully holding the doll, but could it be that the shinigami is offering her child the chance of resurrection?

Promises (約束 / Yakusoku, 2011) is Shikoku-born animator Aki Kōno’s first silhouette animation.  Her earlier films Youth (青春 / Seishun, 2008) and A brightening life (2010) were stop motion animation using puppets and objects.  This animated short is her graduate work for the Geidai (Tokyo University of the Arts) animation programme, where she was supervised by Yuichi Itō (Knyacki, Norabbits Minutes).   Promises is actually a blend of silhouette and stop motion animation techniques.  The silhouettes are not as flat as the techniques of pioneers like Lotte Reiniger and Noburō Ōfuji – though there was some texture and layering to their films as well.  Kōno’s silhouettes are constructed in three dimensional spaces with other objects being used for special effect such as liquids, string, cloth, and beads. 

The choice of silhouette animation suits the shadow theme of the film.  The figures have a roughly hewn feel to them (in contrast to the precisely cut figures of a Lotte Reiniger film) which I think adds to the emotional impact of the film.  The mood of the film is also elevated by Kōno’s striking use of bold background colours, such as flaming reds and cool blues/greens/purples, which reminded me of Ōfuji’s use of background colour in The Phantom Ship (幽霊船/ Yūreisen, 1956).   

Kōno wrote the script for Promises in addition to directing and animating it.  It has been seen at both domestic and international festivals and made the Jury Selection at the 2011 Japan Media Arts Festival.  I saw the film at Nippon Connection 2013.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2013

This blog post was made possible by:

#nippon13 #nc2013

A Wind Egg (空の卵, 2012)

Priest: If men don't trust each other, this earth might as well be hell.

Commoner: Right. The world's a kind of hell.

Priest: No! I don't want to believe that!

Commoner: No one will hear you, no matter how loud you shout. 

Just think. Which one of these stories do you believe?

Woodcutter: None makes any sense.

Commoner: Don't worry about it. It isn't as if men were reasonable.

- scene from Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)

I was reminded of Akira Kurosawa’s classic film Rashomon while watching the latest film by young CALF animator Ryo Ōkawara:  A Wind Egg (空の卵 / Kara no Tamago, 2012).   Just as the plot of Rashomon circles around an act of senseless violence, so too this animation centres on violence of a most disturbing nature.  A Wind Egg also employs a Rashomon narrative structure with the story being told in fragments from five different points of view.  However, in this case the story is told purely with visuals, music, and sound effects --- no dialogue whatsoever.

Summary

The animation opens with an act of violence: we see the boy from the point-of-view of his abuser as he suddenly gets slapped hard twice across the face.  The opening credits are followed by an establishing shot of a desolate grey farm and  then a close-up of a rooster crowing.  The animation then cuts to the first of five POV vignettes.  The vignettes show fragments of the same period of time.  It is only when they have all been viewed that one can piece together the order of the events that take place.

The Father (父/chichi)

A red nosed, unshaven, aggressive-looking man examines eggs in a shed. He scowls suspiciously from side to side, as if making sure that he is alone, then he furtively caresses and kisses one of the eggs.  He licks the egg lasciviously before being startled by the door opening.  The mother comes in with a box of eggs and drops them ungraciously on table.  He glares at her, quivering with resentment.  The boy’s face pops up from his hiding place under the table.

The Younger Sister (妹/imōto)

With her crazy smile, the younger sister spies on her family.  She grins madly upon witnessing her brother being struck by their father.  The younger sister crawls up the wall like a spider to watch her mother entering the shed.  She shivers in the window and witnesses her brother falling from the sky.

The Mother (母/haha)

The mother walks from the hen house to the shed.  An egg falls from her basket in slow motion to the ground.  Reprise of the scene in shed from her perspective.  She goes outside and strips off her clothes. There is a surreal dream sequence which draws a parallel between the caressing of the egg and sex which ends with the man licking the egg and the boy jumping from the roof.

The Boy (少年/shōnen)

The boy sits in the cage with the chickens.  He watches one defecate and picks it up, puts it in his mouth, chews on it, then spits it out.  He watches geese flying overhead then sinks into the earth.  He watches his mother from the roof as she walks from the hen house to the shed.  He then witnesses his mother enter chicken coop and attack a chicken. He dives off of house.

The Family (家族/kazoku)

This final vignette brings more elements of the story together. We see the full context of the boy hiding under his father’s table, his sister tattling on him then laughing wildly as the father strikes the boy and throws him into an empty shed.  The boy has an egg with him.  The egg hatches a miniature Doppelgänger of the boy.  A final surreal montage: whispering into the ear, a scream, a crazy dinner table scene, the zipping of the mouth, a family in chaos.  .  . the boy on the rooftop in the shape of rooster with glasses on.  .  .  does he fall to his death or fly to his freedom?    

Style

This is Ōkawara’s graduation film for the Geidai (Tokyo University of the Arts) graduate animation programme and his first in which he experiments with narrative form.  His earlier animated shorts were more conceptual.  Orchestra (2008), which he co-directed with fellow students Masaki Okuda and Yutaro Ogara, and Animal Dance (2009) bring music and movement together in a way reminiscent of the works of Norman McLaren, and insomniac (2008) visually depicts the way sounds and images clutter the mind and prevent sleep.

Stylistically, A Wind Egg, has much in common with the works of his Geidai mentor Kōji Yamamura.  The grey washed backgrounds and layering of the image with paint flecks during the dream (or rather nightmare) sequence are reminiscent of the techniques used by Yamamura in films like Mt. Head (2002) and Muybridge’s Strings (2011). Colour is kept to a minimal with grey and black being the predominant hues.  

Theme of Abuse

A Wind Egg played at Nippon Connection 2013 as part of the omnibus of Geidai films presented by Prof. Mitsuko Okamoto.  The audience at Nippon Connection has been following the Japanese independent scene for the past decade and there has been much discussion in recent years about the prevalence of abuse and violence in animation by young independent filmmakers.  This trend includes the films of Saori Shiroki – particularly MAGGOT (2007) and The Woman Who Stole Fingers (2010) – and Kei Oyama (Hand Soap, 2008), and Atsushi Wada’s Gentle Whistle, Bird and Stone (2010). 

I cannot speculate on if this reflects anything about modern Japanese society; however, I do believe the personal nature of independent animation allows for artists to address these darker issues of human nature.  I have long been of the opinion that animation has the power to address subject matter that is too difficult for viewers to witness with live action – Renzō and Sayoko Kinoshita’s Pica-don (1978) and Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies (1988) are two films that automatically spring to mind. 

Just as Pica-don and Grave of the Fireflies deal with the trauma of inhumane wartime violence, A Wind Egg takes on the deeply confronting issues surrounding the trauma caused by sexual perversion and domestic violence within the family unit.  The fractured nature of the narrative is indicative of the way in which abuse – be it psychological, sexual or physical – disrupts family life and traumatizes its victims.  Initially, this film appears to be full of despair, but upon further reflection there is indeed a glimmer of hope at the end.  Eggs are symbolic of birth and creation, and roosters are associated with Amaterasu, the Shintō goddess of the sun.  Perhaps the boy has indeed been reborn at the end of the film and is indeed flapping his way into a brighter future. 

A Wind Egg won the Lotte Reiniger Promotion Award for Animated Film at the Stuttgart Trickfilm Festival.  It appears on the DVD Geidai Animation 3^rd Graduate Works 2012.  You can follow Ryo Okawara on Twitter.

#nippon13 #nc2013

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2013

Watakushiritori (わたくしりとり, 2013)

Kazuhiko Okushita (奥下和彦, b. 1985) first came to my attention in 2010 when his animated short The Red Thread (2009) was featured on the NHK’s Digista program.  My review of the film has actually become one of my most read posts of all time.  At first I thought this was due to people researching the East Asian belief in the “red thread of fate” aka the “red string of fate”, but then I found out that it is also the title of a bestselling novel by Ann Hood – also inspired by the same East Asian concept – which means I was likely benefitting from her popularity.  Someone also told me that “the red thread” idiom is used in Christianity to describe the belief that the Jesus Chris appears in every book of the bible either directly or indirectly. 

In his graduate film made at Geidai, Okushita continues to use his “thread” animation technique – drawing images as if they are made from one single piece of thread – but this time he uses many colours , not just red.  Watakushiritori (わたくしりとり, 2013) translates as “My Shiritori” with Shiritori (しりとり) being a word game similar to a word chain in English.  In the Japanese version of a word chain, one player says a word and the next player has to make a word using the final “kana” (syllable) of the previous word.  Koji Yamamura also used this concept in one of his early experimental shorts Japanese English Pictionary (ひゃっかずかん, 1989) – an influence which Okushita acknowledges an interview on the Geidai Animation 04Sail website. 

As I mentioned in my review of The Red Thread, Okushita’s thread concept reminds me of Osvaldo Cavandoli’s La Linea (1971-86) animations, which I loved to watch on TV as a child.  Watching Watakushiritori it occurred to me that although Okushita is employing a similar concept of a single line animation, the film has a very modern look to it.  Part of the reason for this is the thinness of the lines – which would not have been possible without computer animation technology because when shooting animation on film thin lines get washed out.  Think of the bold lines of Warner Brothers animation during its Golden Era.  I remember talking to Atsushi Wada about this at Nippon Connection 2012 when I asked him about his experience of making Concerning the Rotation of a Child (子供の廻転の事, 2004) on 8mm for his Image Forum Animation School project. This was a real challenge for Wada because he prefers to use very thin lines with drawn with a mechanical pencil (what they call a “sharp pencil” in Japan) which he then scans into the computer.  This was completely ineffective with 8mm so he had to make his lines bolder for this film.

Okushita’s work benefits from being designed on computer because he is able to achieve precise, elegantly drawn thin lines set in sharp relief against a white background. The complexity of his thread drawings – particularly in this film where he has to incorporate hiragana (Japanese cursive script) into the drawing – is really quite remarkable.  In the Geidai interview, Okushita said that trying to achieve single thread effect throughout the film was one of the three main challenges of the film.  He also had the challenge of finding words that would allow him to develop a storyline with Shiritori linked words.  This meant keeping a dictionary close at hand when writing the script. The third challenge fell to the composer Yuri Habuka and sound designer Masumi Takino, whom he asked to create a soundtrack which also incorporates a Shiritori motif.

In explaining the concept behind Watakushiritori, Okushita describes how he recalls the past in a series of connected “fragments of memory” and he wanted to recreate that reality in his animation.  The film begins as a typical day in the life, but it transforms into the tale of a relationship between a man and a woman and the rocky, unpredictable way in which it develops. The impact of the interwoven visual and thematic concepts in Okushita’s film is brilliant in its simplicity.  His animation appears uncomplicated and minimalistic, but behind the scenes it is evident that a lot of careful planning and design went into its execution.  Definitely a young animator to keep an eye on.

Watakushiritori appears on the Geidai Animation 4^th Graduate Works 2013 DVD.  The Red Thread is on Youtube.  Check out Okushita’s official website to see more examples of his art:  http://okushitakazuhiko.com/   

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2013

Direct Animation for the Tablet Generation

The immediacy of tablet touchscreen technology has revolutionised how we interact creatively with computers.  In the realm of animation, The NFB (National Film Board of Canada) has been at the forefront of harnessing this new technology not only by making much their back catalogue of films available to view online via smart phone and tablet apps, but by creating tablet apps that make it easier than ever before for amateurs to try their hand at animating their own films.  They first did this through the development of their PixStop Stop Motion Animation App for iPad and this past summer they released a new free app: McLaren’s Workshop.

Named after the pioneering experimental animation Norman McLaren, this app allows users to create their own short animation and post it exclusively on Vimeo.  In addition to inspiring users with the biography and films of Norman McLaren, the App features three workshops: Paper Cut-Out, Etching on Film, and Synthetic Sound.   Norman McLaren is one of the very few early animators to experiment extensively with direct animation – also known as drawn-on-film animation or cameraless animation – in which artists draw or etch directly onto a filmstrip. 

The McLaren’s Workshop app, allows users to make their own direct animation or cut-out animation on the surface of the iPad.  The resulting films that I have seen on video definitely have a McLaren feel to them – not just because of their look but but because the soundtracks clearly come from McLaren films.  Koji Yamamura’s Five Fire Fish, is clearly an homage to the direct animation of McLaren with recognizable visual motifs from Blinkity Blank (1955).  The cut-outs and soundtrack in Regina Pessoa’s film are from Le merle (1958).

As part of the online promotional campaign, several  top directors were given free reign to make 30-60 second animations using the app:

Five Fire Fish (Koji Yamamura, 2013)

Five Fire Fish by Koji Yamamura - McLaren's Workshop App from National Film Board of Canada on Vimeo.

Cyclop(e)  (Patrick Doyon, 2013)

Cyclop(e) by Patrick Doyon - McLaren's Workshop App from National Film Board of Canada on Vimeo.

Day Sleeper (Don Hertzfeld, 2013)

Day Sleeper by Don Hertzfeldt - Mclaren's Workshop App from National Film Board of Canada on Vimeo.

Barcode Transmission (Renaud Hallée, 2013)

Barcode Transmission by Renaud Hallée - McLaren's Workshop App from National Film Board of Canada on Vimeo.

I Am Alone and My Head is On Fire (David O'Reilly, 2013)

I Am Alone and My Head Is On Fire by David OReilly - McLaren's Workshop App from National Film Board of Canada on Vimeo.

Bon App (Regina Pessoa,2013)

Bon App by Regina Pessoa - McLaren's Workshop App from National Film Board of Canada on Vimeo.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2013

Tokyo University of the Arts Animation at Nippon Connection 2013

At Nippon Connection 2013, a selection of works by graduate students from the Tokyo University of the Arts (aka Geidai) animation programme was presented by NHK producer and current director of the Geidai Graduate School of Film and New Media, Professor Mitsuko Okamoto. 

Although Geidai itself is one of the oldest art schools in Japan, starting off as the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1887, the Graduate School of Film and New Media was established in Yokohama in 2005 with its Department of Animation forming in 2008.  Although the animation programme is only 5 years old, they have quickly established themselves as one of the top places in Japan to study animation as students there are given the opportunity to learn from some of the best in the business including world renowned animator Koji Yamamura (Franz Kafka’s A Country Doctor, Muybridge’s Strings) and i.Toon stop motion animator Yuichi Ito (Knyacki!, Winter Days).  Geidai’s students have already found acclaim at animation festivals around the world including Atsushi Wada (In a Pig’s Eye, The Great Rabbit), Saori Shiroki (MAGGOT, Woman Who Stole Fingers), and Ryo Okawara (Orchestra, A Wind Egg).

The Geidai graduate programme only accepts 16 students a year into its 2-year programme.  They have the lofty aim of developing a “new era of Japanese animation” and pride themselves on their dedication to new expression and experimental spirit.  They actively look for students who have originality, are highly motivated, and demonstrate strong themes in their work.  As it is a graduate programme, the students usually come with some animation experience under their belt.  In addition to honing their skills as animators, Prof. Okamoto uses her experience as a producer to teach the students about the business of filmmaking: how to present a plan, how to make a budget, how to create a workable schedule, how to promote one’s film, and so on.

The programme shown at Nippon Connection 2013 demonstrated Geidai’s wide range of styles from hand drawn to computer animation, from the sweet to the surreal.  In the coming weeks I hope to review some of my favourites for you including Aya Tsugehata’s stop motion animation Imamura Store and Ryo Okawara’s A Wind Egg which won the Lotte Reiniger Promotion Award at Stuttgart in June.

The programme that screened at NC2013:

Fully Cooked For You (Onishime otabe, Yuka IMABAYASHI, 2011, 3’44”)

Promise (Yakusoku, Aki KONO, 2011, 8‘27“)

A Wind Egg (Kara no tamago, Ryo OKAWARA, 2012, 10’30”)

The Tender March (Yasashii March, Wataru UEKUSA, 2011, 4’48”)

Imamura Store (Imamura shoten, Aya TSUGEHATA, 2011, 5’16”) read review

Specimens of Obsessions (Hyohon no to, Atsushi MAKINO, 2011, 12’08”)

Flower and Steam (Hana to yome, Eri KAWAGUCHI, 2012, 4’06”)

Maze King (Hakhyun KIM, 2013, 7’01”)

Recruit Rhapsody (Shukatsu kyosokyoku, Maho YOSHIDA, 2012, 7’27”)

Hide-and-Seek (Kakurenbo, Keiko SHIRAISHI, 2012, 7’51”)

Sunset Flower Blooming (Yugesho, Yuanyuan HU, 2012, 10’19”)

It's Time for Supper (Yoru gohan no jikoku, Saki MURAMOTO, 2013, 8’28”)

Some of these shorts and many more can be found on the Geidai University DVD collections for 2011, 2012, and 2013.

#nippon13 #nc2013

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2013

Hatsumi (ハツミ, 2012)

Hatsumi: One Grandmother’s Journey Through the Japanese Canadian Internment (2012)

ハツミ：日系人強制収容所を経験した祖母の人生の旅路 

Tonight sees the launch of the DVD of Chris Hope’s moving documentary Hatsumi: One Grandmother’s Journey Through the Japanese Canadian Internment (2012) at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre (JCCC) in Toronto.  Since the official Japanese Canadian Redress in 1988 many Nikkei have come forward to tell their stories of forced relocation.  In recent years, at the prompting of their children and grandchildren, many more stories have come to light that add to our understanding of this dark chapter in British Columbia’s history.

Many of the adults who experienced the forced internment have been reluctant to speak of their experiences.  In his animated documentary Minoru: Story of Exile; for example, Michael Fukushima speaks of “those silences” which are such “a large part of [his] identity.”  In Hatsumi, Chris Hope attributes those silences to the notion of shikata ga nai (仕方がない).  This expression literally means “it cannot be helped” and is generally used to describe circumstances that our beyond one’s control.  In North America, the idiom has often been used to explain how the Japanese were able to maintain their dignity in the face of the unavoidable circumstances they found themselves in after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Chris Hope describes how he often tried over the years to get his Nisei “Nana”, Nancy Hatsumi Okura, to tell him about her wartime experiences but that she was unwilling to share the whole painful story.  On the occasion of her eightieth birthday, after her stroke and recovery, Hope decides that the time has come to try to one last time to preserve Nancy Hatsumi's story for posterity.  Okura’s decision to tell her story reveals a wealth of information about herself and her immediate family that had previously remained in photo albums, diaries, and written correspondence.

Told in a straight-forward, first person documentary style, what makes Hope’s film stand out from previous films about the internment experience is his family’s remarkable archive.  His late Issei grandfather, Kenji "Ken" Okura, was an avid photographer and documented his family and his community in remarkable photographs and home videos both before and after the war.  He even managed to smuggle his camera into internment with him and documented his experiences as a forced labourer in Jasper. 

A young, well-to-do Vancouver couple with an infant daughter, both Ken and Nancy Hatsumi kept detailed journals of their experiences from the moment they sold off their dry cleaning business to move to Telegraph Cove on Vancouver Island at the beginning of the war.  Hope first tries to get his grandmother to tell her story by having her read parts of her journal out loud but she finds it too painful.  He changes tack and offers to take her to British Columbia to retrace her wartime journey.    

In the 1940s, Telegraph Cove was a quiet fishing village but today is a centre for ecotourism.  The wooden home that Ken Okura built still stands in the village and can be rented by tourists (see: Okura House).  As Nancy Hatsumi tours the house for the first time in over sixty years, the memories come flooding back as if it was yesterday.  An historical plaque dedicated to the Okuras marks the house and she is even able to meet with former neighbours who still live in the cove.  The passage of time has done nothing to dampen the feelings of both parties of the injustice done to the Okuras when they were given only three hours notice to throw together the possessions that they could carry before being shipped off to internment camps.

Hope and his grandmother also visit the unwelcoming livestock building that was used to house the women and children after they were separated from their husbands.  The building looks remarkably unchanged and brings home the inhumanity of how these Canadian citizens were treated by their own government.  Through historical documents such as NFB propaganda films and archival photographs, Hope demonstrates how a terrible combination of fear, ignorance, racism, and greed brought about this shameful injustice.

The most moving moment in the film comes when Chris Hope discovers that his grandmother’s brother, whom she always spoke of in the past tense, is still alive and living in Japan.  At the end of the war, the Japanese were still forbidden from returning to the Pacific Coast and were given two options: to move elsewhere in Canada or to return to Japan.  Nancy Hatsumi’s parents and siblings chose to return to Japan.  Eventually her parents and sisters returned to Canada, but her brother Tadao Hashimoto stayed on in the small city of Gobō in Wakayama Prefecture. 

Hashimoto suffered the most out of all of his family.  Born with childhood glaucoma, the forced internment meant that the family lost the means to pay for his medical treatment and he ended up going blind.  The blind have a special status in Japan – it has the largest Braille library in the world – and since the Tokugawa period blind people have traditionally been trained as anma masseurs.    Hashimoto received an education in Japan and had a successful career as a shiatsu masseur. 

Like his sister, Hashimoto proves reluctant to dwell on the past.  The subtle cultural differences between Canada and Japan raise their head in this sequence with confusion over what to say when entering the house and Hope’s inability to sit Japanese style.  Hope speaks only a few words of Japanese and Hashimoto has lost most of his English, so Nancy Hatsumi acts as the interpreter. In another example of shikata ga nai, Hashimoto is ambivalent towards the internment.  Although he has every right to be angry and bitter, Hashimoto seems content with how his life turned out.  Upon leaving, Nancy Hatsumi displays her “Canadianness” when they leave by embracing and kissing her brother and sister-in-law.   This moving reunion between a brother and sister after more than half a century brings home the terrible wrong done to them by the wartime government.  

With Hatsumi, Chris Hope has created an invaluable record of his grandmother and her family.  She is their last living link to traditional Japanese culture as Japanese Canadians rarely marry other Japanese (see: One Big Hapa Family).  At the same time, the film is an important contribution to the education of current and future generations of Canadians.  Not only does the film teach us about the past, Hope points out that Nancy Hatsumi’s courage in difficult times demonstrates that “the past should never limit a positive outlook for the future.”

Hatsumi is currently available to order via Amazon Canada.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012