NIAFF 2023 Archive/アーカイブ: Director Rintaro's Talk / りんたろう監督トーク

 

Renowned animator Rintarō (りんたろう, b. 1942) premiered his latest animation at the debut Niigata Animation Film Festival (NIAFF) in March 2023. It seems fitting that he should have been a guest at the first NIAFF, because he started off his career as an in-betweener on the first colour anime feature length film The White Snake Enchantress (白蛇伝/Hakujaden, 1958), also known in English as Legend of the White Serpent.

One of the reasons that Niigata was chosen as a location to host an animation festival for feature length films is that Niigata is the birthplace of two animation pioneers who worked on Hakujaden: Hiroshi ŌKAWA (大川博, 1896-1971) and Kōji FUKIYA (蕗谷虹児, 1898-1979). Ōkawa (sometimes transliterated as OHKAWA), who has been called “The Man Who Aimed to Become Disney” by historian Nobuyuki TSUGATA, was the producer of Hakujaden and Fukiya contributed to the early technology used at Tōei Animation during the making of Hakujaden. In honour of their achievements, NIAFF awards the OHKAWA/FUKIYA PRIZE for technical contributions to animation.

Rintarō calls his work a manga eiga – an earlier term for animation – literally “cartoon film” and it takes its inspiration from early Japanese cinema and animation history.  Manga Cinema dedicated to Sadao Yamanaka: Nezumikozo Jirokichi (山中貞雄に捧げる漫画映画『鼠小僧次郎吉』, 2023)  is an adaption of the story of the legendary Edo period thief and folk hero, sometimes called Jirokichi the Rat in English. It is based on the script of  Nezumikozō Jirokichi Zenpen: Edo no maki (鼠小僧次郎吉 前篇 江戸の巻, 1933), the first of a trilogy of films written and directed by Sadao YAMANAKA (山中 貞雄, 1909-1938). Yamanaka was a pioneering film director whose brilliant career was cut short when he was drafted into the army and died in Manchuria. All but 3 of his early films, including this trilogy were lost, and with this work Rintarō and his team, including character designer Katsuhiro ŌTOMO (大友克洋) and composer Toshiyuki HONDA (本多俊之), sought to pay homage both to Yamanaka and to the art of silent cinema. In this clip from the NIAFF 2023 Video Archives, Rintarō talks to animation expert Ryūsuke HIKAWA (氷川竜介) about why he decided to do this project. Some of the highlights of the discussion are how much animation has changed so much since Rintarō first started in the industry, how young people today don’t know a lot about silent cinema – a medium that Alfred Hitchcock called the purest form of cinema, and his collaboration with Toshiyuki HONDA on the music for the film. Please use the captions auto-translate function for the language of your preference.

In the run up to the second instalment of NIAFF in March 2024, the festival is sharing highlights of last year’s festival every Tuesday on its YouTube Channel. Subscribe to see more. Nezumikozo Jirokichi is distributed internationally by MIYU.

2024 Cathy Munroe Hotes

Niigata International Animation Film Festival 2024

After a successful inaugural year, the Niigata International Animation Film Festival (NIAFF) is returning in 2024 with an even more ambitious program of events. The festival will be held March 15 – 20, 2024. 

What makes this animation festival special is its focus on feature length animation films instead of short films. There will also be Special Presentations such as invitational screenings with invited guests; a program featuring World Trends such as new production methods, female animators and a focus on Asia; a Retrospective and an All-Night Movie Marathon. 

Shortly before the New Year, the Niigata Anime and Manga Festival (がたふぇす/ GataFes) announced that their festival would be held concurrently with NIAFF on March 16 and 17. 

On the 28 November 2023, NIAFF announced that the 2024 Jury would be headed by Nora TWOMEY (Ireland). An Oscar-nominated director, Twomey in the co-founder and creative director of Cartoon Saloon. Her most renowned works include The Secret of the Kells (Tomm Moore/Nora Twomey, 2009) and The Breadwinner (Twomey, 2017). 

Michael FUKUSHIMA (Canada) joins Twomey on the jury. He is acclaimed for his work as a producer at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) from 1997 – 2021. His is currently serving as OCADU’s Experimental Animation Executive Producer-in-Residence. You can learn about his 1992 animated documentary about his father’s traumatic life experiences on my website here: Minoru: Memory of Exile. 

Rounding out the jury is Yūichirō SAITŌ (Japan), producer at STUDIO CHIZU, which he co-founded with acclaimed anime director Mamoru HOSODA. The works Saitō has collaborated with Hosoda on include The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006), Summer Wars (2009) Wolf Children (2012 and the Oscar nominated Mirai (2018). 

 I have joined the NIAFF team as their international press liaison, so keep an eye on my social media (@nishikataeiga on most platforms) for upcoming announcements. In the run-up to the festival, NIAFF’s official YouTube Channel is posting the highlights from 2023 which I will also post here. 

 2024 Catherine Munroe Hotes

Hiroshima Animation Season 2022: Day 1

The first day of Hiroshima Animation Season 2022 was the easiest for me to negotiate because there were fewer scheduling conflicts than on other days. While on one hand it is wonderful for an animation festival to be jam-packed with excellent films and events, on the other hand it forces hardcore animation devotees like myself to make difficult screening choices. 

As with the original Hiroshima International Animation Festival, the central venue was JMS Aster Plaza with its two large concert halls and community spaces. The new festival opened up screening venues to include local businesses and institutions such as the Hiroshima City Cinematographic and Audio-Visual Library, Yokogawa Cinema, and Salon Cinema. I had hoped to be able to squeeze in seeing some of the anime classics on the big screen such as The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon (わんぱく王子の大蛇退治, 1963) and The White Snake Enchantress (白蛇伝, 1958), but it was simply impossible. Even though I was unable to partake in these offsite screenings, I feel that it was a good idea to include local businesses. These screenings were more likely than the central venue to draw in local crowds and engaging with the local community is an important part of any festival. From what I understand, many of these events were well-attended, which bodes well for future collaborations with local establishments. 

The first thing I noticed on Day 1 was that instead of stalls run by animators and artists from elsewhere in Japan, all of the vendors were local businesses selling their crafts and other wares. One really big problem for the festival is that the JMS Aster is not close to many restaurants and the one in-house restaurant takes its Obon summer holiday during the festival. It was great to see stalls selling coffee, baked goods, and even fresh hamburgers, so that we could grab a quick bite between screenings. 

I began the festival with one of the Hiroshima Animation Season Classics screenings: Karel ZEMAN’s Inspirace (水玉の幻想, 1949) and Invention for Destruction (CZ: Vynález zkázy / JP: 悪魔の発明, 1958). Inspirace had no dialogue and needed no subtitles and Invention for Destruction was shown with Japanese subtitles only. There were several screenings without English subtitles that offered a “whispering” where one could sit in a section of the theatre where an interpreter would live “whisper” the proceedings in English to those who could not understand the Japanese. As someone with sensitive hearing, I found this really obnoxious. Even though I sat far from the whispering section, I could still hear the whispering and it felt like someone was rudely talking during the screenings and events where it was happening. I don’t understand Czech and I can’t read Japanese quickly enough for the subs, but as I was familiar with the film, and I just focussed on enjoying the animation on the big screen. Zeman’s films may be more than 60 years old now but they have not lost their ability to inspire wonder at their technical brilliance. 

After briefly considering hopping on a streetcar to the Cinematography Library to see The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon, I decided to listen to my stomach instead and headed to the legendary local restaurant Otis! with its delicious Tex-Mex and vegetarian dishes. The walls are filled with the signatures and drawings of animation guests past as the venue opened in 1987 and is an easy walk from the JMS Aster. I was delighted to find the interior and the hosts unchanged from my last visit in 2014, and I found fellow animation researchers Jason Cody Douglass (Yale) and Chris Taylor (John Hopkins) at a table inside. We discussed our viewing plans for the festival and just as I was about to pay my tab, I heard my name spoken behind me by the stop motion animator Masaaki MORI (森まさあき). 

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I first discovered Mori’s work when he participated in the Kihachirō KAWAMOTO omnibus work Winter Days (冬の日, 2003) with his delightful clay pig figures. Mori retired from Tokyo Zokei University last year and I went to see his retirement exhibition on the Zokei campus (see the above instagram post). Since joining JAA late last year, I have encountered Mori often and we seem well on our way to becoming fast friends. In Otis!, Mori introduced me to Yoshimi KAKURAI (加倉井芳美) and Masaaki OIKAWA (及川雅昭) , the PR rep and producer for TECARAT studios. Unfortunately, director and stop motion animator Takeshi YASHIRO (八代健志) could not come to Hiroshima due to the production of Hidari – you can follow the exciting progression of this new stop motion animation on Tecarat’s Instagram. 

I had not yet met Yashiro, but my Nippon Connection selection for this year featured his Noburō Ōfuji Award-winning short animation Pukkulapottas and Hours in the Forest (プックラポッタと森の時間, 2021) and I had been fascinated by his adaptation of Nakashi NIIMI’s Gon, the Little Fox, which I saw at a stop-motion animation in Kichijoji shortly after I moved back to Japan in 2019. 

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Even though Yashiro was not at the festival – I was able to meet Gon the fox! Such a beautifully crafted puppet: 

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 After getting to know more about Tecarat Studios, we headed to the Opening Ceremony and Golden Carpstar Award Ceremony, which I will discuss in my next post. 

Coming Soon: Hiroshima Animation Season: Day 1 Opening Ceremony

2022 Cathy Munroe Hotes

Urashima Tarō (浦島太郎, 1918)

Urashima Tarō (浦島太郎, 1918)

dir. Seitarō KITAYAMA (北山清太郎)

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Seitarō Kitayama’s 1918 short animation Urashima Tarō (浦島太郎, 1918) was considered lost for over 60 years until it was rediscovered along with Jun’ichi Kōuchi’s The Dull Sword (なまくら刀 / Namakura Gatana, 1917) in an Osaka antique shop in 2008 by visual culture historian Natsuki Matsumoto (source).  It is the only extant work of at least 8 animated shorts that were made in Japan in 1918.  The film was digitally restored from Matsumoto’s 35mm tinted silver nitrate positive copy and was screened at the NFC in 2008 as part of a programme called Cinema Lost and Found 2008 (発掘された映画たち２００８) .  It  and can now be viewed online in the NFC’s Animation Film Archives as part of their celebration of the centenary of animation production in Japan.

The animation is an adaption of the well known folk tale of the same name.  The earliest known record of the name Urashima Tarō is in an otogizōshi (御伽草), a kind of illustrated prose narrative, from the Muromachi era (c. 15^th century).  However, the story itself dates back even further to the Nara period, where it appears in such works as the Nihon Shoki (The Chronicles of Japan) and the Man’yōshū (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves) under the name Urashimako.  

It is a kind of a Rip Van Winkle tale but instead of falling asleep, the main protagonist goes out to sea on the back of a turtle.   After many adventures (there are many variations of the tale), he returns home to find that hundreds of years have past.   In Japanese culture, Urashima Tarō is a short hand expression for that feeling one has returning home after a long absence and feeling out of place. 

It was clever of Kitayama to choose a familiar story, because with such a short animation (under 2 minutes running time) he did not have a lot of time to waste on exposition.  The short begins with Urashima Tarō with his back to the camera walking to the sea with a fishing rod slung over his shoulder.  In the next shot, he paddles his boat from bottom screen right to top screen left.  The next shot using an iris matte to focus on Urashima Tarō fishing peacefully in his boat.  This is followed of an extreme long shot of Urashima Tarō struggling in his boat, in now choppy waters, with menacing figures of large fish under the water.

He falls to the sea floor, where is appears to cry until he is rescued by a large turtle who tells him to climb onto his shell.  The sequence of Urashima Tarō travelling on the turtle’s back is shot using silhouette animation.  He appears to arrive at a palace where he is escorted by humanoid figures with fish heads.  Cut to a princess standing in the window who appears to beckon in a friendly manner.  Iris in.  Iris out to outside of the palace.  A large bubble exits the palace door and floats upwards.  Urashima Tarō bursts from the bubble back onto the shore.  His costume is the same but he is now an elderly man.  He appears to laugh.  End title cards.

Without the benefit of the benshi narrator, who would have accompanied the film when it was first screened, the nuances of the story have been lost.  The facial expressions, gestures, and use of the absurd (fish headed people) suggest the film was meant to be humorous.  The choice of red tinting (the NFC describes it as “pink”) is unusual because red was usually used in silent films to indicate scenes of fire or immense passion.  Logically one would expect the underwater sequences to have been tinted in blue and the island sequences in yellow to indicate sunlight.  Perhaps light red was the only tint available to Kitayama at the time – although Jun’ichi Kōuchi did use a blue/green tint and a yellow tint for The Dull Sword (1917).  I will update if I find any information about the use of tinting in Japan during this period.

Although the film is very short, Kitayama manages to demonstrate a number of techniques including cutouts, silhouette animation, irises, and the use of three layers of space.  As we only have two extant films from the many made during 1917 and 1918, this film is an important glimpse into the abilities of Kitayama and his fellow animators at this time.

I am not sure what name is indicated by the initials Y.N. in the end credit.  The NFC lists the production company as Nikkatsu Mukojima Studio (日活向島), for whom he worked until he established his own studio Kitayama Eiga Seisakusho (北山映画製作所) in 1921.  The studio was unfortunately destroyed by the Great Kantō Earthquake in 1923 leading Kitayama to give up animation and move to Osaka where he worked as a newsreel cameraman (Learn more).

2017 Cathy Munroe Hotes

Tadahito Mochinaga Exhibition at the National Film Center (Tokyo)

Tadahito Mochinaga: Puppet Animation Filmmaker

人形アニメーション作家 持永もちなが只仁

National Film Center, Tokyo

13 May – 10 September, 2017

http://www.momat.go.jp/english/fc/exhibition/mochinaga/

 

The National Film Center in Tokyo has been closed for renovations but will be reopening in May.  As part of their celebrations of thecentenary of Japanese animation the museum will feature an exhibition celebrating the career of legendary puppet animation pioneer Tadahito Mochinaga.  The exhibition will start with his contributions to early pre-war anime in Japan, such as assisting Mitsuyo Seo in the production of Ari-chan (1941).  Among his many innovations during the production of this film, he constructed the first multiplane animation table in Japan. 

In 1945, Mochinaga moved to China where he set up an animation studio and mentored young artists who would go on to become the top animators in the country.  Upon his return to Japan in 1953, he began producing educational puppet animation shorts.  One of these films, Little Black Sambo (1956) came to the attention of the American film producers Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Saul Bass and led to Mochinaga’s company doing the stop motion for some of America’s best loved television holiday classics such as Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) and The Little Drummer Boy (1968). 

Mochinaga was a mentor to Japan’s puppet animation masters Kihachirō Kawamoto and Tadanari Okamoto, who in turn would inspire a future generations of stop motion animation in Japan.

The exhibition will feature original puppets, drawings, and notes.  There are also film screenings to be held July 22-23, 2017.  More information TBA at a later date.

To learn more about Mochinaga, read:

MOM Productions and the Making of Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer

Rankin/Bass Christmas Specials: Made in Japan

The Little Drummer Boy

Little Black Sambo

Little Black Sambo and the Twins

2017 Cathy Munroe Hotes