Animafest Zagreb 2012

Atsushi Wada's birthday card to Animafest

Animafest Zagreb is celebrating its 40^th anniversary this year.  The renowned festival has been held biannually since 1972, and annually since 2005.  After Annecy, Animafest is the second oldest animation festival in the world and an important cultural event in Croatia.  The guests of honour at this year’s festival, which runs from May 29^th until June 3^rd, are the “godfather of Animafest” Yoji Kuri and winner of three Animafest grand prizes Priit Pärn (Breakfast on the Grass, 1895, and Divers in the Rain).  Pärn will be on this year’s Grand Prize jury.

Kuri is being presented with the Animafest Lifetime Achievement Award. Most of his films will be screened at the festival including many which have never been screened before in Croatia or in Europe. There will also be a rare opportunity to see Ryo Saitani’s documentary Here We Are with Yoji Kuri (2008).  Animafest will also be hosting a Q+A with Kuri.    Events: Yoji Kuri 1, Yoji Kuri 2, Yoji Kuri 3,

Evolution (Yoji Kuri,1976)

Among the wide array of programmes on offer this year is Grand Prix 1972-2012, a nostalgic look back at past winners of the festival.  It is a wonderful cross-section of world animation from Canada to Russia.  I saw Ivan Ivanov-Vano and Yuri Norstein’s The Battle of Kerzhenets (1971), which won the first Animafest, at the Kawamoto-Norstein event in Paris and if they are  showing it on film than it is worth travelling a long way to see 14^th-16^th century Russian frescoes and paintings come to life.  The programme includespast Japanese winners of the grand prizeOsamu Tezuka’s Jumping and Koji Yamamura’s Mount Head.   

This festival will also feature an exhibition entitled 40 Years of Animagest Zagreb, 1972-2012 at the ULUPUH Gallery.  Historical documents and letters, documentary videos, festival trailers, awards, photographs, birthday and other cards by world-acclaimed authors, graphic identities and objects made from 1972 until present will be on display. The exhibition will also feature works by renowned artists from former Yugoslavia and Croatia, who contributed to the festival identity such as Nedeljko Dragić, Pavao Štalter, Miroslav Šutej, Zvonimir Lončarić, Borivoj Dovniković, and Zlatko Bourek.  This year’s festival logo, designed by Damir Gamulin and Tina Ivezić, is a reinterpretation of the most iconic posters from past festivals including designs by Nedeljko Dragić, Zvonimir Lončarić, Pavao Štalter, Borivoj Dovniković and Vladimir Straža (1978), Zvonimir Lončarić (1980), and Borivoj Dovniković and Mihajlo Arsovski (1998).

Koji Yamamura's birthday card to Animafest

In addition to Yoji Kuri, several Japanese animators are screening works at this year’s festival.  Mirai Mizue’s Modern No. 2 (2011), Atsushi Wada’s The Great Rabbit (2012), Shin Hashimoto’s Beluga (2011) are in the grand prize competition.  Alimo’s Island of Man (2011) and Masaki Okuda’s A Gum Boy (2011) are in the student competition.  In addition, Mizue’s music video AND AND (2011) is in the commissioned films competition.  Koji Yamamura’s Muybridge’s Strings (2011) and Isamu Hirabayashi’s 663114 (2011) are both showing as part of the Grand Panorama and Okuda’s Uncapturable Ideas (2011) and Ryo Orikasa’s Scripta Volanta (2011) will feature in the Student Panorama.  Good luck to all.

Help Jeff Chiba Stearns complete his documentary Mixed Match

The Canadian animator Jeff Chiba Stearns, director of the inventive documentary One Big Hapa Family (see my review) is raising funds on IndieGoGo to complete his latest film Mixed Match - a documentary designed to raise awareness about the need for more mixed race bone marrow and cord blood donors.  The sooner this documentary can get the message out to the wider community, the more lives will be saved.  The IndieGoGo campaign ends in 33 hours and your help is desperately needed.  Go to IndieGoGo to learn more and DONATE NOW!!

If you cannot donate money, you can help by getting the word out.  I also recommend putting yourself on the national bone marrow registry so that you can help save lives.  See the bottom of this post for information on how to do this for Canadians and Americans.

In the words of the filmmakers:

The Story

Mixed Match is an inspirational, emotional, and evocative feature-length documentary that explores the need to find mixed ethnicity bone marrow and cord blood donors to donate to multiethnic patients suffering from life threatening blood diseases such as leukemia.  This live action and animated film is a dramatic journey focusing on the main characters’ struggles to survive against incredible odds. 

The documentary will lead the viewer through the lives of young patients and families struggling to overcome life-threatening blood diseases.  While presenting medical concerns, Mixed Match will be a character-driven documentary that will highlight a number of exceptional, courageous, and inspiring participants. The film will follow recently diagnosed multiethnic patients in search of donors, some of whom must struggle to hold on to hope through countless rounds of excruciating chemotherapy as they spend months searching for a match.  A patient who is in remission after a successful stem cell/marrow donation will also be documented.  Another patient’s story is told through his surviving family members, as he was not able to find a suitable marrow match and, as a result, ultimately succumbed to his illness.  Lastly, the documentary will feature a joyous and heartfelt reunion between a donor and patient after a successful transplant, as the two meet for the very first time.  

Mixed Match is an important human story told from the perspective of youth who are forced to discover their identities through their deadly illnesses and how their mixed backgrounds threaten their chance at survival, thus highlighting why in this day and age, knowing our history and cultural heritage still matters.

The film is being produced by Meditating Bunny Studio Inc. (www.meditatingbunny.com), working very closely with Mixed Marrow (www.mixedmarrow.org).

The Impact

Race and ethnicity play a critical role in finding a marrow match for those suffering from fatal blood diseases. It is a lesser-known fact that in order for a marrow or stem cell match to occur between a patient and a donor, genetic markers on cells must line up.  Because these markers are inherited from parents, their children are a blend both of their parents’ markers.  Thus, for mixed patients, their mono-racial parents and relatives will not likely be a match, and their siblings only hold about a 1 in 4 chance of being a match. Many markers on the cells are specific to certain ethnic groups so multiethnic people have a difficult time when their tissue typing has unusual or uncommon combinations.  To put this in perspective, if your background is Egyptian, Japanese, and Russian, there is a likely chance that only another person with a similar ethnic blend could be a possible donor if you are diagnosed with leukemia.

Mixed Match addresses the fact that every year over 30,000 people in North America are diagnosed with life threatening blood diseases. For many patients, a bone marrow transplant is their only chance at survival. Currently, in the US, of the 7 million registered bone marrow donors and 100,000 cord blood donors, less than 3% are multiethnic.  This statistic, although proportionate to the population of mixed people in the country, poses a substantial challenge to a mixed patient given the endless variety of possible genetic combinations in the registry.  Finding a multiethnic marrow match in the public registry has been compared at times to “finding a needle in a haystack” or “winning the lottery.”  Therefore, this is a very timely and important issue. 

According to the 2010 US Census, the number of people who associate with having more than one ethnic background has increased by almost 50% since 2000.  Despite the rapid growth of the multiracial population in almost all reaches of the world, many people do not realize the risks that lie ahead for mixed people with blood diseases, and the hardship that comes with an almost endless search for a donor match.  

In Canada, there are only 1,694 searchable registrants identifying as multiethnic out of the over 277,000 that are currently on Canada's stem cell Network according to OneMatch.  We need to increase this number to help save lives. 

With this film, we are setting out to achieve two goals:

Spread awareness of the challenges and complexities faced by mixed people with blood diseases.

Encourage all people from all backgrounds to join the bone marrow registry and donate core blood to increase the likelihood of finding multiethnic marrow matches.  There are some rare cases where mixed people find matches from monoracial or people of different mixes so it's important to have everyone's support!

Other Ways You Can Help

Another great way to help us complete this movie would be to spread the word about this fundraising to your friends and acquaintances, as well as visiting the Mixed Match page (www.facebook.com/mixedmatch) and clicking the like button so we can keep you updated on our progress.  Of course we encourage you to join your national bone marrow registry and hopefully help save a life.  Please check out www.blood.ca (OneMatch) in Canada andwww.marrow.org (Be The Match) in the US for more info on how to register.  

Check out a CBC radio interview where Jeff, the director, talks about the importance of making Mixed Match at this link: http://www.cbc.ca/nxnw/featured-guests/2012/03/29/jeff-chiba-stearns-documentary-mixed-match/ 

Kawamoto-Norstein @ Forum des Images, Day 3

Kawamoto-Norstein @ Forum des Images, Day 3

Sunday, March 25, 2012

On this day I rose early and went for a stroll around the Eiffel Tower and along the Seine with Sakadachi-kun (see tumblr). I then hopped on the Métro Line 6 and headed to the Cinémathèque Française at Bercy.  There was a long queue to get into the Tim Burton Exposition – the one that first appeared at the MOMA in 2009.  Even though they only allowed so many people in per hour, the exhibition was still overcrowded and hot.  I was surprised at the number of parents who had brought very young children to the exhibition.  I witnessed one young girl’s innocent childhood being blemished with nightmarish imagery as she stared as if transfixed at a figure of an infant with nails in it.  It was worth putting up with the crowds to see Johnny Depp’s Edward Scissorhands (1990) costume, as well as a long row of Jack Skellington heads from The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) in a lit display box.  Each head had a slightly different expression on it to give spectators an idea of the process of stop motion.

The regular museum of the Cinémathèque Française had free admission on this day.  It was smaller than I had expected, knowing what treasures are in the archives of the Cinémathèque Française, but there were indeed many delightful things on display.  Martin Scorcese has already donated some set pieces from Hugo (2011), but I was much more impressed to see the original magician’s coat from Georges Méliès’  A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la lune, 1920) in full colour and with hand-embroidered shapes on it.    Some of my favourite things on display at the museum:  a self portrait of Asta Nelson  (here it is on flickr, but it not as vibrantly coloured or as textured in postcard form), Mrs. Bates' head donated by Alfred Hitchcock shortly after the release of Psycho (1960), Mae West’s serpent turban from Leo Macarey’s Belle of the Nineties (1934), original poster art from Julien Duvivier’s Pépé le Moko (1937), and Nikolai Cherkasov’s costume from Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible (1944-6).

For fans of animation, there are many wonderful things to discover in the Cinémathèque Française.  On the walls just before one goes upstairs there is original art from Hans Richter’s Rythmus 23 (1923) and Viking Eggeling’s Symphonie Diagonale (1924).  The Cinémathèque also hold the collection of the pinscreen animation pioneers Alexandre Alexeieff and his wife Claire Parker.  On the upper level of the museum there are two pinscreens on display.  A tableau from 1930 – presumably the one used for the groundbreaking film Night on Bald Mountain (Une nuit sur le mont chauve, 1933)  and a larger screen from 1943.  The large screen holds approximately 1,140,000 pins and was restored for the Cinémathèque by NFB pinscreen animator Jacques Drouin.  The smaller tableau had the image of Bébé Nicolas on it – a character invented by Alexeieff to amuse his daughter when she was young.

There was great excitement at the Forum des images on Day 3, for Raoul Servais (official website) had come from Belgium to see his old friend Yuri Norstein.  I was drinking coffee in the Forum’s café when he entered and witnessed the warm embrace between the two men.  Norstein was delighted to see Servais and introduced him to the audience at the screening of Norstein’s early works and collaborations.  It was wonderful seeing Roman Kachanov’s enchanting The Mitten (1967) on 35mm.  Many of the films in this programme did not have subtitles, but this did not bother me because I had seen the ones with dialogue before.  The highlights of this programme were Ivan Ivanov-Vano and Norstein’s The Battle of Kerzhenets (1971) The Seasons (1969) on 35mm in their full widescreen glory.  They were truly a wonder to behold.

In the evening, Ilan Nguyen  and Serge Éric Ségura did a long presentation on the career of Kihachirō Kawamoto.  This included many rare photographs and video clips of Kawamoto and projects that he worked on throughout his career.  Nguyen teaches animation at Tokyo University of the Arts and is a well known animation expert in France.  He very kindly gave me programmes from the Nouvelles Images du Japon festivals that he assisted in organizing at the Forum des images in past years which have included showcase of the works of Osamu Tezuka, Yōji Kuri, Isao Takahata, Hayao Miyazaki, Satoshi Kon, Kōji Yamamura, and many others.  The French premiere of Kawamoto’s Winter Days occurred at the 2003 festival.  According to his profile on the website of the French periodical éclipses (revue de cinéma), Ségura is working on two books: one about the career of Servais and one about Kawamoto. 

The presentation opened with a clip of Kawamoto singing a Russian song on Japanese TV – which thoroughly delighted Norstein.  The main thrust of the presentation was to demonstrate the way in which Kawamoto had to wear many different hats during his life in order to make a living.  It is very difficult for independent animators to make a living on animation alone. 

There were photographs from Kawamoto’s early childhood – many of which were not in the two Japanese books profiling his life such as those of his mother Fuku (1891-1940) and his father Kinzaburō.  Kawamoto was born and raised in Sendagaya – the neighbourhood in which he was to live for the rest of his life.  His family dealt in porcelain.  There was a photograph of Kawamoto’s paternal grandmother Suzu Kawamoto (1861-1937) who was a major influence on the path his life was to take: teaching him how to make dolls and taking him to the theatre with her.

In the chapter I wrote on Kawamoto for Directory of World Cinema: Japan 2 (ed. John Berra, 2012), I mention the fact that Kawamoto was a big fan of Hollywood and European film of  the 1930s – even making dolls of Greta Garbo and Danielle Darrieux.  Nguyen and Ségura presented a pastel that Kawamoto had made of Swedish film star Zarah Leander next to the original photograph that he had used for inspiration as well as dolls he made of Audrey Hepburn and Brigitte Bardot.

For me the highlights of the presentation were photographs I had never seen before such as Kawamoto on the  set of productions at Toho including Senkichi Taniguchi’s Escape at Dawn (1950) and Teinosuke Kinugasa’s Actress (1947).  We saw clips of a Horoniga (character with a beer stein for a head used in advertisements for Asahi Beer in the 1940s and 50s) animated short directed by either Tadasu Iizawa (1909-94) or Tadahito Mochinaga (1919-99), as well as the first few minutes of Mochinaga’s Little Black Sambo (1956) – which I would have loved to have seen in its entirety.

They also had on hand first editions of the Toppan storybooks, which Shiba Pro later published internationally – such as the Golden Press Living Storybooks series.  I have written about my copy of The Little Tin Soldier (1968) – click here.  There were also clips from other animation Kawamoto had done for the NHK such as the opening credit sequence of Okaasan Ishō and Boo Foo Woo (1960-7).  There was a series of Asahi Beer commercials with the slogan “Watashi no biru” (My beer) which were hilarious send-ups of westerns – Kawamoto had apparently been a huge fan of westerns as a teen, particularly John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939). 

There was one bit of information that took me totally by surprise: I leaned that Kawamoto had elaborate tattoos on his back and upper arms.  Today in the west it has become quite commonplace for people to have tattoos, but in Japan such tattoos are associated with the yakuza.  Many sentō (public bath) have signs declaring that people with tattoos are not welcome to bathe there.  Kawamoto had his tattoos done between 1956 and 1963 apparently as a kind of act of rebellion; a way of marking himself as an individual.  Ségura and Nguyen even showed us a photograph of Kawamoto’s tattoos taken from the rear with him only wearing a fundoshi (traditional male underwear).  This was followed by a series of photographs from Kawamoto’s trip to Eastern Europe.  I looked at the famous photograph of Kawamoto with Jiří Trnka (1912-69) with new eyes.  Kawamoto looks very conservative in his suit: a small, unassuming man in contrast to the hulking form of Trnka.  To think that under that smart suit, Kawamoto was hiding an elaborate work of tattoo art!

One of the questions that had been niggling at me for some time was the mystery of Kawamoto’s first feature film: Rennyo and his Mother (1981).  This 93 min. puppet animation never plays at retrospectives of Kawamoto’s career and has never been made available on video or DVD.  They showed a clip from the film and it looks absolutely stunning.   After the presentation, I asked Nguyen about the availability of the film and he said that it also screens rarely in Japan as the rights are held by the religious organization who commissioned it.  The scenario for the film was written by Kaneto Shindō (Kuroneko, Onibaba) and it features voice acting by Kyōko Kishida and Tetsuko Kuroyanagi.  Although it was not a personal project of Kawamoto's, rather a commissioned work to order, I still feel the work is significant and would love to see it some day.

During the overview of the latter half of Kawamoto’s career there were photographs of him at festivals and other events around the world.  Notable photographs included one of him with Yuri Norstein at 1985 animation festival in Varna – which is the occasion on which the two of them became friends, with Jim Henson in 1986, with Břetislav Pojar at Annecy in 1987, in Shangai in 1987 signing the contact to make To Shoot Without Shooting (1988), and with Karel Zeman and Nicole Saloman at Hiroshima in 1987.  The presentation concluded with footage from the Kawamoto memorial service in 2010 which featured a very moving march of the large puppets from his NHK special series Romance of the Three Kingdoms. 

The presentation was followed by Takashi Namiki’s documentary Living With Puppets: The World of Kihachirō Kawamoto (1999) – read my review here.  The weekend concluded with a screening of Kawamoto shorts including a rare screening of Tadahito Mochinaga’s Little Black Sambo and the Twins (1957), for which Kawamoto had crafted puppets.  Read about this film here.  I slipped out of the final screening event after this film, for I had seen all the other films many times before.

 

with the illustrious Alexis Hunot

I had a chance on the final day of the Kawamoto-Norstein event to get to know animation expert Alexis Hunot a bit better.  I am a longtime fan of his blog Zewebanim and was pleased to find that he is also a fan of this blog.  It turns out that the review that I wrote about Takashi Namiki’s book Animated People in Photo, struck a personal chord with Alexis because his uncle Jean-Luc Xiberras (April 1, 1941- December 26, 1998) is featured in the book.  My blog post apparently triggered Alexis to track down a copy of the photograph for his mother.  Xiberras was the director of Annecy from 1982 until his passing in December 1998.  It was under Xiberras’ direction that Annecy moved from being a biennale to an annual event in 1998.  There is an interview with Xiberras from 1997 on AWN as well as a touching homage to him from 1999 in English and French with tributes written by Frédéric Back, Bruno Edera, and many others. 

Alexis Hunot did his studies in cinema, but his love of animation began when he discovered the works of Back, Norstein, and Jan Švankmajer at Annecy 1987 where he worked as an assistant.  He teaches at Gobelins  and has a monthly radio programme with Florentine Grelier about animation with called Bulles de rêves.   You can see a video of him giving a lecture here, and here is the interview he did with Yuri Norstein.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

PREVIOUSLY: Kawamoto-Norstein @Forum des Images, Day 2 (Part II)

FIRST ENTRY IN THIS SERIES: Kawamoto-Norstein @ Forum des Images, Day 1

Kawamoto-Norstein @ Forum des Images, Day 2 (Part II)

Kawamoto-Norstein @ Forum des Images, Day 2 (Part II)

Saturday, March 24, 2012

At 19:00, Ilan Nguyen led a conversation with Yuri Norstein about his longstanding and complex relationship with Japan.  In addition to having been a friend to his fellow animator Kihachirō Kawamoto, whom he still affectionately calls “Chiro” just as he did when Kawamoto was alive, Norstein is revered as a master of animation in Japan and has visited the country on many occasions.

Norstein discovered Japanese culture at a young age.  In his mid-teens, he found a small book of haiku poetry by Bashō in the library.  The book featured one poem per page – a clever editing choice which emphasized the minimalism of the three stark lines of poetry on the plain page.  One of the poems that he recalls being in the book is the famous one about the frog:

furu ike ya

kawazu tobikomu

 mizu no oto

an ancient pond

a frog jumps in

the splash of water

(Bashō, 1686)

This book of haiku made a very strong impression on Norstein.  He had learned in school that poems had rhythm and rhyme yet these poems had neither.  He was moved to buy himself a copy of the book and each time he looked at the poems, he was surprised anew by them.  “Can one say that this is poetry?” he would ask himself. 

Many years later he came across a book of Japanese woodcut prints at a friend’s house and he was again surprised.  The images had a different sense of perspective and volume than what he was used to seeing in Russia.  For Norstein, it was a revelation to realize that there was another way of seeing the world and these two incidents marked the beginning of his love for Japan. 

He got to know Russian translators of Japanese and began to learn more about the importance of gesture and movement in Japanese culture.  One thing that he learned from Japanese culture was that a subject that is very simple can express something very great.  He explained that he finds the same thing in the fiction of Marcel Proust.  In À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time, 1913-27), Proust’s simple observations of everyday life take on great meaning.  Norstein also remarked that this was also true of Homer’s The Iliad.

While listening to Norstein talk, it occurred to me that his interest in Japanese poetry, and particularly way in which time is expressed in Japanese poetry has much in common which his fellow compatriots Sergei Eisenstein and Andrei Tarkovsky, who were both also greatly influenced by haiku poetry and Japanese aesthetics.  The influence of Eisenstein's writings on Norstein has been written about by animation scholar Nobuaki Doi (see his ASIFA profile).  The conversation with Norstein was accompanied by a slide show by Ilan Nguyen and among the many photographs and items that were shown there was a photograph of Norstein visiting the Eisenstein Cine-club in Tokyo. 

I had presumed that Norstein and Kawamoto became friends during Kawamoto’s tour of Eastern Europe in 1963-64.  Although a photograph apparently does exist of Kawamoto with another Russian animator (it was not in the slideshow) in which Norstein can be seen working on something in the background, Norstein apparently does not recall Kawamoto’s visit at that time.  Their friendship began at the World Animation Festival Varna in Bulgaria in 1985 where they met and talked up a storm.  Their friendship developed over the coming years at animation festivals such as the second animation festival in Hiroshima in 1987 where Norstein was on jury alongside Te Wei, Paul Driessen, Nicole Salomon, Bruno Bozzetto, and Osamu Tezuka.  This festival was really a star-studded affair with Karel Zeman acting as the International  Honorary President and John Halas being the special guest.  This event is also notable as being Norstein’s first visit to Japan.

Norstein shared many amusing anecdotes.  Some of my favourites:

• the photo from Hiroshima 1987 prompted Norstein to say  that he did not know Tezuka very well but that he thought his skill as an artist was amazing
• there was a wonderful photograph of Norstein sitting at the foot of the Laputa robot on the rooftop of the Studio Ghibli museum.  Norstein laughed with delight at this photograph and it inspired him to even burst into a song from his childhood
•  when discussing the Laputa International Animation Festival, Norstein talked about the fact that he was criticized for always picking the same guy for the Yuri Norstein Award (he didn’t say the name, but it was clear he was referring to Kunio Katō who won twice: in 2001 for The Apple Incident and in 2004 for The Diary of Tortov Roddle).   His response to this criticism was: “well, I don’t know this guy personally, but his stuff is great!”
• he was quite modest when Nguyen pointed out that his films ranked #1 and #2 on the Laputa 150
• if he had had to make Tale of Tales with the interference of producers, it would never have been made
• “the most simple techniques in animation can result in something really spectacular”

On Winter Days:

• Kawamoto loved Chiro’s spirit (Kawamoto): he hated things that were false and his friendship with Kawamoto was the only reason Norstein agreed to do Winter Days
• Norstein wanted to have accurate details in his contribution but he didn’t want it to be too Japanese
• in order to get the details right, he paid a lot of attention to how a Japanese person would move, carry a bag, wear their hat, and other gestures.
• the Japanese loved his contribution to Winter Days, but he is critical of himself
• the most difficult part was getting the colour palette right.  Once they (he and his wife, along with consultation with “Chiro”) got the right colours (gold, maroon, some blue and a touch of grey), everything else fell into place
• re: Bashō meeting Chikusai: “In animation the real and the mythological can meet.”
• ““Chiro” could make everyone laugh.  He had such a wonderful laugh.  He laughed all the time.”

The evening concluded with a screening of The Book of the Dead on 35mm.  As with Winter Days, I noticed many details about the puppets and the scenery that were not as noticeable when watching a digitized version on a TV.  The details were so vivid: the lines on the puppets’ faces indicating age or weariness, the weave of kimono and other fabrics, each thread of hair carefully placed on the puppets heads, and so on.  As I mentioned in my guest stint on Vcinema in 2010, The Book of the Dead is a film that requires multiple viewings in order to fully understand all the nuances of meaning.  One thing that never ceases to amaze me when watching The Book of the Dead is the movement of the kimonos in the wind.  It looks so effortless, but the time and energy that went into painstakingly animating those sequences frame-by-frame boggles the mind.

Order JP edition:

Shisha no Sho

So ends Day 2 – I became acquainted with a number of interesting people between screenings.  Most notably,  animator Florentine Grelier (official website) and animation expert Giannalberto Bendazzi , author of Cartoons: One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation.  Flroentine has posted some lovely images in pixels that she made of Norstein - check it out.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

PREVIOUSLY: Kawamoto-Norstein @ Forum des Images, Day 2 (Part I)

NEXT: Kawamoto-Norstein @ Forum desImages, Day 3

Puppet Maker Sumiko Hosaka's Animation Top 20

Sumiko Hosaka  (保坂純子, b. 1930) has worked as a puppet artist since 1953.  Throughout her career she has made puppets for live theatre, TV, and commercials, but is perhaps best known for the puppets she made for the stop motion animation of Tadanari Okamoto.  She has also made puppets for the films of Fumiko Magari and the Noburo Ofuji Award winning team N&G Production.

Tadanari Okamoto Sakuhin Shu Vol.3

Order from cdjapan

Her first experience making puppets for stop motion animaton came in the early 60s when she was part of the original staff at Tadahito Mochinaga’s MOM Productions.  She was on one of the puppet-making  teams that worked on MOM Pro's first project for Rankin/Bass The New Adventures of Pinocchio (1960-61).  Starting in the late 1960s, she began working for Okamoto, her former colleague at MOM Pro, after he had set up his own independent studio Echo Productions.   She made puppets for many of his most significant stop motion works from The Mochi Mochi Tree (1972) to The Magic Ballad (1982).  She also occasionally worked for Kihachirō Kawamoto – including his greatest work Book of the Dead (2005).

Sumiko Hosaka currently teaches puppet making techniques at Laputa Art Animation School.  Examples of her freelance work can be seen in her profile at Puppet House.

Selected Filmography

The New Adventures of Pinocchio (Rankin Bass, 1960-61)

Back When Grandpa Was a Pirate (Tadanari Okamoto, 1968)

Home My Home (Tadanari Okamoto, 1970)

The Flower and the Mole (Tadanari Okamoto, 1970)

The Monkey and the Crab (Tadanari Okamoto, 1972)

The Mochi Mochi Tree (Tadanari Okamoto, 1972)

Praise Be to Small Ills (Tadanari Okamoto, 1973)

Five Small Stories (Tadanari Okamoto, 1974)

Are wa dare? (Tadanari Okamoto, 1976)

The Magic Ballad (Tadanari Okamoto, 1982)

The Little Bear Oof (Fumiko Magari, 1983)

The Fourth of the Narcissus Month (Suisenzuki no Yokka, Nozomi Nagasaki , N&G Production, 1990)

Home Alone (Rusuban, Nozomi Nagasaki, N&G Production, 1996) – won Noburo Ofuji Award

Book of the Dead (Kihachiro Kawamoto, 2005)

Hosaka’s picks for the Laputa 150 poll in 2003 speak for themselves: a cross-section of some the greatest films in world animation.  Reflecting her interest in puppets, the list is heavy with examples of stop motion animation by Jiri Trnka, Karel Zeman, Roman Kachanov, Jan Svankmajer, and, of course, Okamoto and Kawamoto.  At #1, Hosaka placed the Soyuzmultfilm classic The Little Grey Neck (1948).  In Japan, it was released on DVD together with Ivan Ivanov-Vano’s The Humpbacked Horse (1947/75) as part of The Ghibli Museum Library.  It is also available to buy as a download here.

Konyok-gorbunok & Seraya Sheika

Order from cdjapan

1.   The Little Grey Neck (灰色くびの野鴨, Vladimir Polkovnikov/Leonid Amalrik, USSR, 1948)

2.   The Emperor's Nightingale (支那の皇帝の鴬, Jiri Trnka, Czechoslovakia, 1948)

3.   Prince Bayaya (バヤヤ王子, Jiri Trnka, Czechoslovakia, 1950)

4.   The Hand (手, Jiri Trnka, Czechoslovakia, 1965)

5.   Inspiration (水玉の幻想, Karel Zeman, 1948)

6.   The Fantastic World of Jules Verne (悪魔の発明, Karel Zeman, 1958)

7.   Tale of Tales (話の話, Yuri Norstein, Russia/USSR, 1979)

8.   Hedgehog in the Fog (霧につつまれたハリネズミ, Yuri Norstein, Russia/USSR, 1975)

9.   Cheburashka (チェブラーシカ, Roman Kachanov, Russia/USSR, 1971)

10. Dimensions of Dialogue (対話の可能性, Jan Svankmajer, Czechoslovakia, 1982)

11. Faust (ファウスト, Jan Svankmajer, Czech Republic, 1994)

12. The Fall ( 落下, Aurel Klimt/Derek Shea, Czech Republic, 1999)

13. The Cowboy’s Flute (牧笛, Tei Wei/Qian Jianjun, China, 1963

14. The Demon (鬼, Kihachirō Kawamoto, Japan, 1972)

15. The Magic Ballad (おこんじょうるり, Tadanari Okamoto, Japan, 1982)

16. Creature Comforts (快適な生活, Nick Park, UK, 1989)

17. Nausicaä of the Valley of theWind (風の谷のナウシカ, Hayao Miyazaki, Japan, 1984)

18. The Man Who Planted Trees/L'homme qui plantait des arbres 

      (木を植えた男, Frédéric Back, Canada, 1987)

19. Otesánek (オテサーネ, Jan Svankmajer, Czech Republic, 2001)

20. A Christmas Dream (おもちゃの反乱, Karel and Borivoj Zeman, Czechoslovakia, 1946)

Norio Hikone’s Animation Top 20 (2003)

The characters created by illustrator and animator Norio Hikone (ひこねのりお, b. 1936) are instantly recognizable to young and old alike in Japan.  A graduate of Tokyo University of the Arts, Hikone got his start working as an animator/inbetweener for Toei Animation (Alakazam the Great, The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon) and Mushi Pro (Kimba the White Lion, Jungle Emperor Leo). 

In 1966, he founded Hikone Studios and made a name for himself doing animated shorts for TV as well as a variety of commercial work.  He has done a great deal of animation for the NHK including the long-running popular programmes Minna no Uta (Everybody’s Song) and Manga Nippon Mukashi-banashi (Manga Nippon Folk Tales).  His client list runs quite long, but he is perhaps best known for his delightful Karl Ojisan (Uncle Karl) TV spots for the Meiji Seika snack food “Curls”.  These ran from 1986-90 and are a source of much nostalgia for folks who grew up in Japan in the 1980s.  Norio Hikone also contributed to Kihachirō Kawamoto’s renku animation Winter Days (2003).  Check out his official website to see more of his endearing characters in action (JP only).

Here is the list Hikone contributed to Laputa’s Top 150 Poll in 2003..  Hikone himself featured on many lists, including that of the late Masahiro Katayama.

Le roi et l’oiseau 

(王と鳥 やぶにらみの暴君, Paul Grimault, France, 1948)

Mr. Bug Goes to Town (aka Hoppity Goes to Town)

( バッタ君町に行く, Dave Fleischer, USA, 1941)

Legend of the White Serpent

(白蛇伝, Taiji Yabushita/Kazuhiko Okabe, Japan, 1958)

Toot, Whistle, Plunk, and Boom

(プカドン交響楽, Ward Kimball/Charles A. Nichols, USA, 1953)

Betty Boop in Snow White

(ベティの白雪姫, Dave Fleischer, USA, 1933)

Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor

(ポパイと船乗りシンドバッド, Dave Fleischer, USA, 1936)

The Snow Queen

(雪の女王, Lev Atamov et al., Russia, 1957)

Around the World with Willy Fog

(80日間世界一周, Luis Ballester, Spain/Japan, 1987)

The Old Mill (Silly Symphonies)

(丘の風車, Wilfred Jackson, USA, 1937)

The Spider and the Tulip

(くもとちゅうりっぷ, Kenzō Masaoka, Japan, 1943)

Blinkity Blank

(線と色の即興詩, Norman McLaren, Canada, 1955)

Hedgehog in the Fog

(霧につつまれたハリネズミ, Yuri Norstein, Russia, 1975)

The Man Who Planted Trees/L'homme qui plantait des arbres

(木を植えた男, Frédéric Back, Canada, 1987)

Kitty’s Graffiti

(こねこのらくがき, Taiji Yabushita/Yasuji Mori, Japan, 1957)

The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon

(わんばく王子の大蛇退治, Yugo Serikawa, Japan, 1963)

Animal Treasure Island

(どうぶつ宝島, Hiroshi Ikeda, Japan, 1971)

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

(風の谷のナウシカ, Hayao Miyazaki, Japan, 1984)

Yellow Submarine

(イエロー・サプマリン, George Dunning, 1968)

The Demon

(鬼, Kihachirō Kawamoto, Japan, 1972)

Kawamoto – Norstein: The Puppet Master and the Painter-Animator

Kawamoto – Norstein: The Puppet Master and the Painter-Animator

Kawamoto - Norstein, le marionnettiste et le peintre-animateur

Forum des images, Paris

23-25 March 2012

Last month, I learned from ZewebAnim that the Forum des images was putting together a tribute to the friendship between the late puppet animator Kihachirō Kawamoto (1925-2010) and his friend and colleague, the great Russian animator Yuri Norstein (b. 1941).  I am planning on attending this event.

Kawamoto– Norstein: The Puppet Master and the Painter-Animator has been coordinated by Forum des images programmer Isabelle Vanini and Japanese animation expert Ilan Nguyen (Tokyo University of the Arts).  Yuri Norstein will be in attendance at many of the events and will discuss his craft as an artist as well as his unique relationship with Japan.  In Nguyen’s introduction to the programme, he quotes Norstein as saying that attending the event will be “a double pleasure because it is for my friend Kawamoto Kihachirō, a man with whom I could communicate without being aware of language barriers.”

Kawamoto himself had actually been to the Forum des images on three occasions (1999, 2003, 2005) as part of their festival Nouvelles images du Japon (New images of Japan).  Although Kawamoto’s works appear on the surface as being very “Japanese”, he actually was inspired by animation from around the world – particularly that of Czech puppet animator Jiří Trnka, whom he visited in Prague in 1963.  I write about this in a chapter on Kawamoto in the forthcoming book Directory of World Cinema: Japan 2 (Intellect Books, ed. John Berra, 2012). Available for pre-order:

Kawamoto was very active in the animation community.  His works won awards around the world including the Noburo Ofuji Award (6 times!), the prestigious Winsor McCay Award 1988), and he was the winner of the very first ASIFA Prize in 1985.  Kawamoto was also president of the Japanese Animation Association (JAA) from 1988 until 2010 (the first president was Osamu Tezuka, the current president is Taku Furukawa).

The indisputable master of puppet animation in Japan, this event will showcase most of Kawamoto’s directorial oeuvre, except for that rare film Rennyo and his Mother (蓮如とその母, 1981) and Restaurant of Many Orders (注文の多い料理店, 1991), which Kawamoto completed for his friend Tadanari Okamoto when he died of cancer.  Briar Rose, or The Sleeping Beauty (いばら姫またはねむり姫, 1990) is also not on the programme, but as this film is widely available on DVD this is no great loss.

Other rare treats on the programme include Tadanari Mochinaga’s Little Black Sambo and the Twin Brothers (1958), which features puppets made by Kawamoto.  This was one of the last short films Mochinaga made before establishing MOM Productions in 1961 and doing the puppet animation for Rankin/Bass.  In addition to screening all of Norstein’s major works, the programme features works that Norstein worked on as an animator or co-director such as Roman Kachanov’s The Mitten (1967) and Ivan Ivanov-Vano’s  Seasons (1969).  


It is a must-see event for all fans of animation.  I look forward to dusting off my rusty French and seeing some of my French readers there!

I have translated the main details of the programme into English - minus the film descriptions and with the addition of a few editorial comments of my own.  All films will have their original soundtracks and French subtitles.  I have put links to Nishikata Film reviews when available.  More details and ticket information here (FR only).

23 March 2012 - 20:00

Opening Night: Kawamoto – Norstein: The Puppet Master and the Painter-Animator

Soirée d’ouverture « Kawamoto - Norstein, le marionnettiste et le peintre-animateur »

Special Guest : Yuri Norstein

Self Portrait (セルフポートレート, Kawamoto, 1988, 1’)

Autoportrait de Kawamoto Kihachirô (1988, 1min) 

 read review

Winter Days (Kawamoto, et al., 2003, 65’, 35mm)

Jours d’hiver (Fuyu no hi) de Kawamoto Kihachirô, et al. 

 read my Midnight Eye review / French DVD review

The Poets of Winter Days (Toshikatsu Wada, 2003, 65’, 35mm)

Les Poètes de Jours d’hiver (‘Fuyu no hi’ no shijin-tachi)

24 March 2012 – 14:30

The Art of Puppet Animation: A Programme of Short Films by Kihachirō Kawamoto

"L’art des marionnettes animées" Programme de courts métrages de Kawamoto Kihachirô

Inspired by Japanese puppet traditions, these films adapt literary and theatrical classics and have won awards at major festivals around the world.

 

The Demon (鬼, Kawamoto, 1972, 8’, 35mm)

Démone (La) l Oni l de Kawamoto  Kihachirô

 read review

Dōjōji Temple (道成寺, Kawamoto, 1976, 19’, 35mm)

Temple Dojoji (Le) l Dôjôji l de Kawamoto  Kihachirô

 read review

House of Flame (火宅, Kawamoto, 1979, 19’, 35mm)

Maison en flammes (La) l Kataku l de Kawamoto  Kihachirô

To Shoot without Shooting (不射之射, Kawamoto, 1988, 25’, 35mm)

Tirer sans tirer l Fusha no sha l de Kawamoto  Kihachirô

 read review

24 March 2012 – 16:30

"The Major Works": Programme of Short Films by Yuri Norstein

« Les travaux majeurs » Programme de courts métrages de Youri Norstein

Special Guest: Yuri Norstein

The Heron and the Crane (Цапля и журавль, Norstein, USSR, 1974, 10’, 35mm)

Héron et la cigogne (Le) l Tsaplia i juravl l de Youri  Norstein

The Hedgehog in the Fog (Ёжик в тумане, Norstein, USSR, 1974, 10’, 35mm)

Hérisson dans le brouillard (Le) l Lojik v toumane l de Youri  Norstein

Tale of Tales (Сказка сказок, Norstein, USSR, 26’, 1979, 35mm)

Conte des contes (Le) l Skazka skazok l de Youri  Norstein

The Overcoat ((Шинель, Norstein, 1980, 30’, black and white, video)

Manteau (Le) l Shinel’ l de Youri  Norstein

For more than 30 years, Norstein and his wife Franceska Yarbousova have been working on an adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s The Overcoat.  30 minutes of this unfinished film will be screened. 

24 March 2012 – 19:00

An Evening with Yuri Norstein, hosted by Ilan Nguyen and Isabelle Vanini

Rencontre avec Youri Norstein animée par Ilan NGuyên et Isabelle Vanini

Introduced to Japan in the early 1980s, the œuvre of Yuri Norstein attracted an unparalleled level of critical acclaim in that country.  Over the years, he has been a frequent guest to Japan with the Norstein Prize for animation being handed out semi-annually at the Laputa International Animation Festival in Tokyo as well as various books and exhibitions devoted to his life’s work.

This special event will be include the presentation of a number of documents and is advertised as an opportunity to better understand this singular filmmaker through the prism of his relationship with Japan.

24 March 2012 – 21:00

Book of the Dead (死者の書 , 2005, 70’, 35mm)

Livre du mort (Le) l Shisha no sho l de Kawamoto  Kihachirô

25 March 2012 – 14:30

"Early works and collaborations": Programme of Short Films by Yuri Norstein

«Les débuts et les collaborations» Programme de courts métrages de Youri Norstein

Special Guest: Yuri Norstein

 

The Mitten (Варежка, Roman Kachanov, USSR, 1967, 10’, 35mm)

Moufle (La) l Varezhka l de Roman Katchanov coanimé par Youri Norstein 

25th October, the First Day (25-е — первый день, Norstein/Arkadiy Tyuin, USSR, 1968, 35mm)

25 octobre - premier jour l 25-e - pervyi den’ l de Youri  Norstein

 

The Battle of Kerzhenets (Се́ча при Ке́рженце, Ivan Ivanov-Vano/Norstein, USSR, 1971, 10’, 35mm)

Bataille de Kerjenets (La) l Secja pri Kerjenetz l de Youri Norstein et Ivan Ivanov-Vano 

Seasons (Времена года, Ivan Ivanov-Vano, USSR, 1969, 9’, 35mm)

Saisons (Les) l Vremena goda l d’ Ivan Ivanov-Vano / codirigé et animé par Youri Norstein 

 

The Fox and the Hare (Лиса и заяц, Norstein, USSR, 1973, 10’, video)

Renarde et le lièvre (La) l Lisa i zayets l de Youri  Norstein

 

38 Parrots (38 Попугаевые, Ivan Ufimetsev, USSR, 1976, 8’ video)

38 perroquets l 38 popugaev l D’Ivan Ufimtsev / animé par Youri Norstein

 

Autumn (excerpt) (Andrei Khrjanovsky, USSR, 1992, 8’, video)

Automne (extrait) l Osen’ l d’ Andreï Khrjanovski / animé par Youri Norstein  Khrjanovski

25 March 2012 – 16:30

The Oeuvre of Kihachirō Kawamoto: A Lecture by Ilan Nguyen and Serge Ségura

L’oeuvre de Kawamoto Kihachirô: Conférence d'Ilan NGuyên et Serge Ségura

Special Guest: Yuri Norstein

 

Illustrated by previously unpublished documents, photographs and film excerpts, this lecture aims to present a wide overview of Kawamoto’s life’s work.  From his debut as an animator to the 2007 opening of the Iida City Kawamoto Kihachirō Puppet Museum in southern Nagano Prefecture, the presentation will include information about his little known work included illustrated books, commercial work, theatrical puppet shows, and more. 

25 March 2012 – 19:30

 

Living with Puppets (Takashi Namiki, documentary, 1999, 52’, video)

Une vie avec les marionnettes l Ningyô to ikiru l de Namiki  Takashi

This rare documentary was made by Takashi Namiki of Anido, who has made it his life’s work to document the animation history of Japan.  This film is about the Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Shows which were designed by Kawamoto and his friend and colleague Tadanari Okamoto as a showcase for their unique puppet films.

25 March 2012 – 21:00

"Puppets and Other Techniques": A Programme of Short Films by Kihachirō Kawamoto

« Marionnettes et autres techniques » Programme de courts métrages de Kawamoto Kihachirô

Little Black Sambo and the Twins  (ちびくろさんぼとふたごのおとうと, Tadahito Mochinaga, 1957, 17’, video)

Chibikuro Sambo et les deux jumeaux l Chibikuro Sanbo to futago no otôto l de Mochinaga  Tadahito

 

The sequel to Mochinaga’s Little Black Sambo (ちびくろさんぼのとらたいじ, 1956) sees Sambo rescuing his twin younger brothers from a vulture.  The puppets for this film were designed and handmade by Kawamoto.

Anthropo-Cynical Farce (犬儒戯画, Kawamoto, 1970, 8’, 35mm)

Farce anthropo-cynique l Kenju giga l de Kawamoto  Kihachirô

cutout animation /puppet animation

Travel (旅, Kawamoto, 1973, 12’, 35mm)　

Voyage (Le) l Tabi l de Kawamoto  Kihachirô

cutout animation

A Poet’s Life (詩人の生涯, Kawamoto, 1974, 19’, 35mm)

Vie d'un poète (la) l Shijin no shôgai l de Kawamoto  Kihachirô

cutout animation

The Breaking of Branches is Forbidden (花折り, Kawamoto, 1968, 14’, 35mm)

Ne cassez pas les branches l Hanaori l de Kawamoto  Kihachirô

puppet animation