Who’s there? (だぁれぇ, 2016)

Who’s there?  (だぁれぇ/ Dārē, 2016) by Kōjirō Inoue (井上幸次郎) was the opening film of Hiromitsu Murakami’s selection of Tokyo University of the Arts’ (Geidai) recent works at this year’s Nippon Connection.  It was one of the best films on the programme and clocks in as the shortest with a runtime of only 1’25”.   In fact, my only criticism of the film was that it was a tad too short because I was enjoying it so much. 

The shortness of the film and its comedic nature are due to the fact that it is Inoue’s first year work for Geidai’s graduate programme in animation.  As assistant professor Murakami explained during the Q+A at the Nippon Connection screening, students have only 6 months to complete their first year film and a whole year to complete their second year film.  This results in many students experimenting with playful or comedic styles in the first year and creating more serious works for their graduate film. 

Inoue’s short short is an adaptation of a classic rakugo story, “The Parrot” (オウム/Oumu).  The story varies according to the rakugo performer’s interpretation.  For this animation, it is performed by Kintarō (金太郎, b. 1956), a master rakugo performer from Yamagata Prefecture. 

Rakugo (落語) is a comic storytelling tradition that dates back at least to the 18^th century.  A lone storyteller, or rakugoka (落語家) sits on a stage (kōza / 高座) that is empty but for a zabuton (座布団 / floor cushion) wear the performer sits.   Apart from word and gesture, the performer may use a paper fan (sensu / 扇子) or a small cloth (tenugui / 手拭) as props.  The comic tale features two or more characters which the rakugoka differentiates through his pitch, tone, and by turning his the head.

Rakugo literally translates “fallen words”, which is exactly how Inoue depicts it in his animation.  The rakugo storyteller is made up of an assortment of kana and kanji that appear in the story and as he tells the story, the words fall from his mouth into piles on his left and right sides.  By the end of Kintarō’s tale, the piles transform into the two central protagonists of his story: the elderly woman who owns the parrot and the paper delivery boy who interacts with the parrot.  They bow their acknowledgement to the audience.

The film captures the spirit of Norman McLaren in the way that it uses one animation technique to express a complete story and a complex art form (rakugo) in a very short amount of time.  The well told story and film’s visual appeal are complemented by traditional Japanese music (shamisen and percussion) arranged by Yae Yamaguchi and sound design by Tomoya Matsuda.  The title "Dārē" (Who's there?) is a repeated refrain central to the joke in the story.

Check out Kōjirō Inoue’s official website to learn more about this up and coming young artist.  For a short interview and behind the scenes images of the making of this film, click here.  I am excited to see what he does for his graduation project.

2016 Cathy Munroe Hotes

Animation at Nippon Connection 2016

Animation at Nippon Connection 2016

Frankfurt am Main, May 24-29

http://www.nipponconnection.com/

It’s a strong year for animation at Nippon Connection 2016.  The festival features two adaptations of works by the late science fiction writer Project Itoh (伊藤 計劃): The Empire of Corpses (2015) by Wit Studio and Harmony (2015) by Studio 4⁰C.  The co-director of Harmony, Michael Arias (Tekkon Kinkreet, Heaven’s Door) will be present at the German premiere on the 29^th.

One of the festival highlights is Keiichi Hara’s award-winning latest feature film Miss Hokusai (2015).  Adapted from Hinako Sugiura’s historical manga of the same name, it tells the story of the renowned artist Hokusai’s third daughter O-Ei, who was such a talented artist talented she would sometimes paint in lieu of her father.  Hara first made a name for himself working on major anime franchises like Doraemon, Obake no Q Taro and Crayon Shin-chan.  Since going independent, he has made the acclaimed features Summer Days with Coo (2007) and Colorful (2010).  Miss Hokusai has won many accolades including the Jury Award at Annecy, four top awards at Fantasia 2015, and Best Animation Film at the 70th Mainichi Film Awards.

Shunji Iwai is better known for his live action films like Love Letter (1995) and Swallowtail (1996).  His animated feature film The Case of Hana + Alice (2015) is a prequel to his teen romance Hana and Alice (2004).  The animation was made using rotoscoping and CG animation.  The anime won Bronze Audience Award for best animated feature film at the 19th Fantasia International Film Festival.

This year’s Japan Visualmedia Translation Academy (JVTA) sponsored film is Twilight of the Cockroaches (Hiroaki Yoshida, 1987).  This live action / animation hybrid has a cult following thanks to an English dub that used to play on Turner Broadcasting networks in the 1990s.  There is currently no region 1 DVD so this screening will be a rare treat for animation fans.  The feature film will be preceded by Rushio Moriyama’s excellent animated short Macky and Euchy in the Midnight Gallery (2015).

Macky and Euchy in the Midnight Gallery

Tokyo University of the Arts (Geidai) is returning to Nippon Connection with a strong programme of works by recent grads.  The films will be presented by Hiromitsu Murakami.  Learn more about the programme here. 

Cathy Munroe Hotes of Nishikata Film Review has curated another programme of independently produced animated shorts called A Wild Patience – Indie Animated Shorts by Women.  Stop motion animator Maya Yonesho has recently announced that she will be present at the screening to answer audience questions.

The Studio Ghibli production When Marnie Was There (Hiromasa Yonebayashi, 2014) is screening as part of the Nippon Kids section on Thursday afternoon at the Mal Seh’n Kino.  This is the only animation screening with the German dub.  All others are in Japanese with English subtitles. 

The Case of Hana + Alice

花とアリス殺人事件/ Hana to Alice satsujin jiken

Shunji IWAI, 2015, 100 min.

German premiere, Japanese with English Subtitles

Thursday, May 26, 12:00 Mousonturm Saal

Friday, May 27, 22:30 Mal Seh'n Kino

The Empire of Corpses

屍者の帝国 / Shisha no teikoku

Ryotaro MAKIHARA, 2015, 120 min.

German premiere, Japanese with English Subtitles

Friday, May 27, 12:00 Mousonturm Saal

Saturday, May 28, 22:45 Mal Seh'n Kino

Erinnerungen an Marnie (When Marnie Was There)

思い出のマーニー / Omoide no Mani

Hiromasa YONEBAYASHI, 2014, 99 min.

German dub

Thursday, May 26, 15:30 Mal Seh'n Kino

HARMONY

ハーモニー

Takashi NAKAMURA and Michael Arias, 2015, 120 min.

Japanese with English subtitles

German premiere on May 29, in the presence of the director Michael Arias

Wednesday, May 25, 17:30 Mal Seh'n Kino

Sunday, May 29, 14:15 Mousonturm Saal

JVTA Presents: Twilight of the Cockroaches

ゴキブリたちの黄昏 / Gokiburitachi no tasogare

Hiroaki YOSHIDA, 1987, 105 min.

Japanese with English subtitles

Saturday, May 28, 22:30 Naxoshalle Kino

Miss Hokusai

百日紅〜Miss HOKUSAI〜 / Sarusuberi: Miss Hokusai

Director: Keiichi HARA

Japan 2015, DCP, 90 min, Japanese with English subtitles, released to age 12 or older

Friday, May 27, 19:30 Mousonturm Saal

Saturday, May 28, 14:00 Mal Seh'n Kino

Tokyo University of the Arts: Animation

In presence of Hiromitsu MURAKAMI

Thursday, May 26, 14:45 Naxoshalle Kino

A Wild Patience – Indie Animated Shorts by Women

In the presence of the curator Dr. Catherine Munroe Hotes and the director Maya YONESHO

Sunday, May 29, 17:15 Naxoshalle Kino

The North Wind and the Sun (きたかぜとたいよう, 1960)

The North Wind and the Sun (きたかぜとたいよう/ Kitakaze to Taiyō, 1960) is based on the story of the same name (北風と太陽) from Aesop's Fables (イソップ寓話).  The story focuses on a competition between the North Wind and the Sun to determine which of them is stronger.  They challenge each other to see which one of them can succeed in making a passing traveler remove his jacket.  The film was distributed in the United States by Coronet Instructional Films in 1962 under the title The North Wind and the Sun: An Aesop Fable. 

Many Gakken educational shorts use a traditional setting, but this one modernizes it by having the North Wind riding through the sky on a kind of scooter with a built-in wind machine.  The interior workings of the sun are beautifully rendered in a modern art style.  The technique used is stop motion animation using cut outs and flat puppets that are skilfully rendered.  After the North Wind fails to get the jacket off of the traveler, the sun’s rays bring not only warmth but springtime to the landscape.  The most lovely animation sequences are those of paper flowers opening.  The effects are simple but effective.  A very charming film overall.

This short animation was produced by Haruo Itoh (伊藤治雄) and directed by Kazuhiko Watanabe (渡辺和彦).  Although the tale has been adapted many times over the centuries in many different media, the only other animation I have seen of this tale is the NFB’s The North Wind and the Sun: A Fable By Aesop (Les Drew/Rhoda Leyer, 1972).  Like the Gakken animation, is very short and an educational film for children.  Both shorts modernize the setting, transforming the cloak of the original tale to a jacket.  The NFB film places a stronger emphasis on the moral: “Persuasion is better than force”.  Watch both the films below:

 

The North Wind and the Sun: A Fable by Aesop by Les Drew& by Rhoda Leyer, National Film Board of Canada

2016 Cathy Munroe Hotes

The Musicians in the Woods (もりのおんがくたい, 1960)

The Musicians in the Woods (もりのおんがくたい / Mori no Ongakutai, 1960) is an adaptation of the Grimm fairy tale (グリム童話) Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten (Town Musicians of Bremen / ブレーメンの音楽隊 / Bremen no Ongakutai).  It is the 27^th tale in the volume one of the 1819 publication of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales.  The Japanese title, which I would translate to The Town Musicians of Mori, changes the name of the German city of "Bremen" to the common Japanese family name of "Mori" (which means forest).  This choice was likely intended to make it easier for children to understand.  The film was distributed on 16mm in the United States by Coronet Films under the title The Musicians in the Woods in 1961. 

The film opens with a man riding in a wagon pulled by donkey.  He becomes frustrated by the donkey’s poor performance and tries to get him to move forward by offering him a carrot.  When the donkey shows no interest he pulls on the reins.  The donkey resists and the farmer is sent flying backwards.  This angers the farmer, who unties the donkey and tells him to get lost, giving him a kick in the backside for good measure.  The donkey decides to try his luck in town.

In the next scene, a hunter is frustrated by his old dog, who is too tired to help chase a rabbit.  The donkey sees takes pity on the dog and him to join his journey to town.  This scene is followed by one in which a farmer’s wife places a basket of eggs on the ground.  As soon as her back is turned, an army of mice line up and steal many eggs.  The housewife blames her old cat for this.  The cat tries to catch the mice but she is too old and the housewife throws the cat out the window.  She lands on the donkey and joins the two other animals on their way to the city.  

They have hardly walked a step when they hear the cries of a rooster.  With a visual flashback, we learn that the rooster is in danger of being turned into dinner.  He joins the menagerie on their journey.  They traverse a bridge and a barren landscape before coming across a cottage in the forest. They peer in the lit windows of the house and discover it is the lair of a group of bandits dressed like stereotypical pirates.  The animals watch the bandits feasting and reveling in their ill-gotten gains.  They almost get caught by one of the bandits when they make too much noise outside.  They then scare the bandits by standing on top of one another and making fearsome shadows on the windows while making terrible noises.  

The bandits run away in fear and the animals run into the house and eat the food left behind.  When the animals go to bed for the night, we see that the bandits are keeping watch on the house from the hill.  They discuss whether or not the animals are bakemono (化け物 / preternatural creatures of Japanese folklore).  One of the men sneaks back into the house but is frightened by the eyes of an “o-bake”.  All four animals attack the man, but because it is dark he thinks it is bakemono.  The bandit runs back to his companions and tells them of his nightmarish experience.  They all run away in terror.  The next day, the animals celebrate their success by putting on an orchestral performance using items they found around the house and they presumably live happily ever after.

This animated short produced by Haruo Itoh (伊藤治雄) and directed by Matsue Jinbo (神保まつえ) is a fairly straightforward adaptation of Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten with scenery and puppets made in the Western style.  The story is quite similar to the original except for the scene in which the animals attack the bandit.  In the original, the man tells his companions that he was scratched by the long fingernails of a witch (the cat), cut by an ogre with his knife (the dog), hit by an ogre with a club (the donkey) and that a judge had screamed from the rooftop (the rooster).  They simplify this to blame the attack on bakemono or o-bake – a concept that Japanese children would be familiar with from folk tales. 

I particularly enjoyed the simple but effective techniques used to create specials effects in this stop motion puppet film.  The rooster’s flashback is cleverly indicated by a black matte shaped like an egg.  The suffering felt by the bandit when the animal quartet attacks him is amplified by the use of cartoonish “pow” shapes superimposed over the image.  The animation team was able to have a lot of fun with the man’s nightmarish flashback sequence which uses experimental techniques of superimposing symbols to convey the idea of trauma.  It reminded me of Salvador Dali’s set design for the dream sequence in Spellbound (Alfred Hitchcock, 1945). 

According to the Gakken 70^th Anniversary website, this film won a West German film festival prize 西独逸映画祭入賞.  Unfortunately, it does give the German name for this prize and I have as yet been unable to find more information about where the film might have screened in Germany at that time.  I have eliminated the Berlinale, the International Film Festival Mannheim-Heidelberg, and Oberhausen by checking their archives.  I will update if I learn more information. 

2016 Cathy Munroe Hotes

The Dove and the Ant (ありとはと, 1959)

The Dove and the Ant (ありとはと / Ari to Hato, 1959) is a short animation adapted from the tale of the same name from Aesop's Fables (イソップ寓話).  It was released in the United States in 1962 by Coronet Instructional Films under the title The Ant and the Dove.  The Japanese translation of this fable traditionally puts the ant first in the title, but in English it is more common for the dove to be named first.  Coronet went with the literal translation of the Japanese title, but I prefer to use the standard English title of the fable.

A narrator tells us that this story takes place in a forest.  With a cheerful soundtrack melody in the background, a cute little ant wearing a hat is rolling a coin back to his hole. Exerting some effort (“Yoisho! Yoisho!”), he rolls the coin into a long tunnel that looks like it has been decorated with graffiti by a child.  He eventually adds the coin to a pile of loot in his living room and goes back outside in search of more treasures. 

The ant encounters a snail and takes a ride on its back.  The snail climbs a tree stump where the ant discovers a dragonfly.  The dragonfly takes the ant for a ride.  They pass by the dove and the ant calls out a greeting “Hato-san konnichi-wa!”  Suddenly, he slides off the dragonfly and lands in the water.  The ant cannot swim and calls for help.  The dove hears the ant’s cries and flies to help.  Along the way, the dove picks a leaf which she drops near the ant.  The ant crawls on the leaf and floats to safety.  The ant calls out his thanks.

No worse for his adventure, the ant returns to collecting treasures.  The next day, a hunter is spotted in the forest.  He shoots at a tree and has an apple fall comically onto his head.  Curious and concerned, the ant follows the hunter’s every move.  He suddenly realises that his friend the dove, who is sleeping in the tree, is in danger of being shot.  He grabs some tweezers and runs up the body of the hunter.  The cry the hunter makes when the ant plucks one of his leg hairs startles the dove who flies to safety.  The ant is relieved and skips his delight as the hunter leaves disappointed.  The tale ends happily.  The final curtain is of grass, with a ladybug in the foreground for good measure. 

This animation was produced by Shinichi Kanbayashi (神林伸一) and directed by Kazuhiko Watanabe (渡辺和彦).  The technique used is stop motion using cutouts and 2D puppets.  The Gakken version adds more wildlife to the forest scene (the snail, the dragonfly), likely in order to teach children about forest wildlife.  Insects are a popular theme for all ages in Japan, and preschoolers learn about them at an early age.  My children’s nursery school in Tokyo had a pet beetle in the classroom, for example.  No credit is given onscreen for the narrator, but I had the impression that one female voice did both the ant and the narration.  It is a sweet film, suitable for a preschool audience.  The “shots” fired by the hunter are only implied not actually heard, so it is unlikely that children would be disturbed by this tame portrayal of hunting. 

2016 Cathy Munroe Hotes

A Poet’s Life (詩人の生涯, 1974)

A Poet’s Life (詩人の生涯/ Shijin no Shōgai, 1974) is the only non-puppet animation of Kihachirō Kawamoto to win the Noburo Ofuji Award.  Apart from his Self Portrait (1988), Kawamoto’s adaptation of modern tales tended to be done using cut-outs or drawn animation styles such as Farce Anthropo-cynique (1970) based on the short story by experimental modernist Riichi Yokomitsu (横光 利一, 1898-1947) or Kawamoto’s original screenplay Travel (旅 / Tabi, 1973).  In interviews, Kawamoto usually explained that he was a firm believer in finding the right animation materials for telling the story.

This animated short is an adaptation of a story of the same name by the great modernist writer Kōbō Abe (安部 公房, 1924-1993), who is known for his surreal stories that explore the modern angst of individuals in society.  Unlike the colourful world of Kawamoto’s puppet films, A Poet’s Life is drawn in morose shades of grey and brown.  The flatness of the cut-out aesthetic mirrors the one-dimensionality of the dreary life of the factory workers in this modern tale of inequality.  The male main protagonist loses his job when he dares to complain to his boss about the terrible conditions that he and his fellow factory must endure. 

The man lies passed out on the floor of his home while his aged mother works diligently away on her squeaky spinning wheel.  The dialogue is related through the use of title cards, and we learn that the old woman feels as worn out and limp as a thread of cotton.  The cotton flies from her hands and as she reaches for it, she finds herself being terrifyingly turned into thread as well. 

The son awakes to find his mother has disappeared.  All that remains of her is the clothes that were on her back, but he is too exhausted to do anything about it.  A neighbour arrives and takes the newly spun yarn and knits it into a sweater.  But no one will buy the sweater, not only because they are too poor but also because it cries out as if in agony.  The young man, who continues his protest against the factory, has a feeling that the sweater should not be sold.  Eventually, the sweater ends up in a pawnshop.

High up on the hill overlooking the town, the factory owner lives with his family.  The wealthy man polishes his rifle while his wife wears a fur coat indoors.  Winter comes in the form of a beautiful sequence of falling snowflakes “made of crystallized dreams, spirits, and desires.”  The snow keeps falling and the temperatures drop steeply.  The families with foreign made sweaters manage to survive at first, the storybook-like title cards tells us, but the shelves of shops become empty.   As the situation becomes critical, the wealthy man order another 5000 foreign sweaters in “a new pattern ideological tiger stripes in black and white. . . or 50 atom bombs instead?”

The crisis is averted when the young man puts on the sweater knitted by his mother – now red with her blood.  He looks and the snow and comes to the realization that he is a poet: “Look! Aren’t these beautiful snowflakes the forgotten words of the poor? . . .  their dreams, spirits, desires. . .  ”  As he writes down these words, the snow melts, and the sun comes out.  Owner-less storerooms are opened and all the people get sweaters.

Visually, the film does an excellent job of representing the settings and characters of Abe’s story.  Compared to Kawamoto’s later puppet animation, however, this animation is less expressive with too much reliance on the text than on the visuals.  Although the text is very poetically written, I think the film would have been a lot stronger if it had relied on the animation to tell the story.  The red sweater is a particularly compelling visual motif because it is the only object that is brightly coloured in an otherwise monotone film.  Two decades later, Steven Spielberg would use this same technique in his Oscar-winning film Schindler’s List (1993) with the memorable image of a girl in the red coat.

Based upon a short story by

Kōbō Abe

Music

Joji Yuasa

Performers

Aki Takahashi

Yasunobu Yamaguchi

Backgrounds

Takashi Komae

Masami Tokuyama

Camera

Minoru Tamura

Sound

Isamu Katto

Sound Effects

Iwao Takahashi

Editing

Hisako Aizawa

Animation

Kihachiro Kawamoto

Yutaka Mikome

Takao Ishikawa

With the Assistance of

Akiko Konishi

Chitose Nasu

Hiromi Wakasa

Seiya Maruyama

Satoru Yoshida

Echo Studios

Screenplay/Direction

Kihachiro Kawamoto