MOVOP Animation Screenings & Exhibition

 

MOVOP is a collective of young animators under 30 who want to re-evaluate contemporary animation practices. The members of the collective include Fukumi NAKAZAWA (中澤ふくみ), Lina MACHIDA (まちだりな), Nana KAWABATA (川畑 那奈), Riku TAKAHASHI (高橋李空) / DOKUZEN, MARU AKARI, Hiroki KURASAWA (倉澤 紘己), and Aiko OKAMURA (岡村 あい子). 

 MOVOP is a neologism combing the English expressions ‘move up’ (上にあがる) and ‘move on’ (進む) and the Czech word ‘potok’ meaning brook or stream (小川). The letter ‘O’ between the letters M/V/P is also meant to evoke the gaps between frames that create the illusion of movement in animation.

The collective seems to be pushing back against the trend for animation to be completely online and digital. In their declaration, they talk about making things with their own hands and to create an archive of their works in physical form. They also want to create real spaces for young animators to engage in debate and discussions about animation practices with their peers.

In November, they published the inaugural edition of their e-zine on their website. I first heard about MOVOP because of physical postcards and flyers their distributed at the New Chitose Airport International Animation Festival in November. The first weekend of March, MOVOP will be holding their first screenings and exhibition at Digiti Minimi and co-hosted by Tampen. 

Program A 

 Kukkiri to Boyata / くっきりとぼやけた 

 dir. Lina MACHIDA / まちだリな, 5’23”, 2024 New work! 

 w_lk 

dir. Riku TAKAHASHI / 高橋李空 / DOKUZEN, 2’58” 

 The Day It was an Excursion / えんそくだったひ 

 dir. Hiroki KURASAWA / 倉澤紘己, 5’49”, 2023 

 Deforming after Transforming (変形して奇形する) 

 dir. Fukumi NAKAZAWA / 中澤ふくみ , 8’47”, 2021 

 lier 

dir. MARU AKARI, 1’, 2024　New work! 

 The Ship of Synapse 

Riku TAKAHASHI / 高橋李空 / DOKUZEN, 2’, 2023 

 Weather Map 

dir. Nana KAWABATA / 川畑那奈 ,9’09", 2021

Program B 

Mimimi and the Aliens (みみみとうちゅうじん) 

dir. Hiroki KURASAWA / 倉澤紘己, 5’55”, 2024　New work! 

 kagra 

dir. Riku TAKAHASHI /高橋李空 / DOKUZEN, 2’58” 

 melt 

dir. MARU AKARI, 30”, 2020-2023 

 Carrots Don’t Wait (ニンジンは待ってくれない / Ninjin wa Matte kurenai) 

dir. Lina MACHIDA / まちだリな, 7’36”, 2023

 The Point of Permanence (永久点 / Towa-ten) 

dir. Nana KAWABATA / 川畑那奈, 10’04”, 2024 New work! 

 #_ hashtag underber 

dir. MARU AKARI, 6’, 2022 

 Exhibition 

Aiko OKAMURA (岡村あい子) 

Yume-utsutsu 『夢現』 

Jiga『自我』　New work! 

Fukumi NAKAZAWA (中澤ふくみ) 

Kandokoro wo Zurasu『勘どころをずらす』　New work! 

New work! Tadaka ga Yonde iru『ただかが呼んでいる』 

On the Saturday at 14:00 there will be a Guest Talk Event with Yū ISEKI (井関悠), the curator of the Contemporary Art Center, Art Tower Mito, artist Hirotoshi IWASAKI (岩崎博俊), and dancer / choreographer Nobunashi KON (のばなしコン). On Sunday at 14:00 there will be a Talk Event with member of MOVOP.

Tickets are available via the Peatix app: 

https://movop-event.peatix.com/view  

 For more information visit the MOVOP website / social media: https://movopanimation5.wordpress.com/ 

https://www.instagram.com/movop_ 

https://twitter.com/movop_

Cathy Munroe Hotes

Ghibli Museum Special Exhibition: Painting the Colours of Our Films / 三鷹の森ジブリ美術館「映画を塗る仕事」展

The current exhibition at the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka examines the “integral role” of colour as a form of expression in the films of its founders, Isao Takahata (高畑勲, 1935-2018) and Hayao Miyazaki (宮崎駿, b. 1941). The exhibition highlights the techniques used to ensure that even a limited range of colours “can give characters a real sense of vitality and even convey their emotions.” This is something that the exhibitors contrast with the current mainstream digital colouring and computer animation, emphasizing “the wisdom and ingenuity of Studio Ghibli staff who spared no effort to respond to the ever-increasing demands of the directors while working within the limitations of animation paint.” 

 Takahata and Miyazaki, were steadfastly committed to their philosophy of “carefully depicting characters and their everyday life and giving them a reality that is different from live action films.” For them, this was the crucial to winning over the hearts of their film audiences. During the process of film production, this meant the careful selection of particular scenery to represent reality, the use of lighting to depict time and weather, and the precise selection of colour to express minute details such as texture. 

This exhibition aims to demonstrate the commitment to expression using colour by Takahata and Miyazaki. It showcases original cel drawings painted by the late colour designer Michiyo Yasuda (保田 道世, 1939-2016). Yasuda began working with Takahata and Miyazaki when they were at Toei Animation on projects such as Hols: Prince of the Sun (太陽の王子 ホルスの大冒険, 1968) and The Wonderful World of Puss 'n Boots (長靴をはいた猫, 1969) and followed them to Topcraft for the making of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (風の谷のナウシカ, 1984). She then stayed on during the formation of Studio Ghibli and where she worked dedicatedly until her official retirement after the release of Ponyo (崖の上のポニョ, 2008). Despite her retirement, she was coaxed into working on Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises (風立ちぬ, 2013). 

In 2011, Yasuda’s achievements were recognized with the Animation Lifetime Achievement Award at the Japanese Movie Critics Awards (日本映画批評家大賞) and with the posthumous Meritorious Service Award at the Tokyo Anime Awards in 2017. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 2009, Yasuda said “What I like best is when I am building up the colours in my head, thinking of how to get the tone worked out. Colour has a meaning, and it makes the film more easily understood. Colours and pictures can enhance what the situation is on screen.” 

 Ghibli Museum Special Exhibition: Painting the Colours of Our Films 

三鷹の森ジブリ美術館「映画を塗る仕事」展 

How to reserve tickets

Where: Museo d’Arte Ghibli at the the Ghibli Museum, 1-1-83 Shimorenjaku, Mitaka, Tokyo, 〒181-0013 (take the bus from Mitaka Station on the JR Chuo Line) 

When: 17 Nov 2018 – Nov 2019 Organiser: Tokuma Memorial Cultural Foundation for Animation 

Sponsors: Nisshin Seifun Group, Marubeni Electricity Inc. 

This text has been adapted from the official press release of the Museo d’Arte Ghibli.

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

Mutoscope (ミュートスコープ, 2011)

Many animators take an interest in early cinema technologies and often experiment with them.  In fact, their first “animations” are often flip books drawn on the corners of school workbooks.  References to early technologies can be found in many animated films, from Taku Furukawa and Kōji Yamamura’s  experiments with the Phenakistoscope (see: Odorokiban and Omake) to Toshio Iwai’s 3D Zoetropes of Toy Story (made with Gregory Barsamian, who does a lot of art inspired by early animation/cinema) and Bouncing Totoro at the Ghibli Museum Mitaka. 

The animator / artist Hirotoshi Iwasaki (岩崎宏俊, b. 1981), who just this week won the Grand Prix for Non-Narrative Short at HAFF for his latest work Dark Mixer (2014), built a Mutoscope out of iron in 2011.  The Mutoscope is an early cinema device which was patented in 1894 by the American inventor Herman Casler (1867-1939).  Instead of projecting on a screen, the Mutoscope creates the perception of movement in the same way that a flip book does except, rather than being bound like a book, the large cards (7 x 4.75cm) are attached to a circular core.  These were coin operated machines that could be viewed by an individual through a single lens, as the poet Jared Carter describes in his 1993 poem “Penny Arcade”: “The light goes out, the ratchet handle stops, / along the tightrope stretched across the falls / the cards collapse.  Another penny crawls / into the slot.  The light blinks on.  She hops, / she keeps her balance with a parasol /and strikes an hourglass pose.” (read the whole poem)

Mutoscope from Hirotoshi Iwasaki on Vimeo.

Iwasaki’s Mutoscope is a pared down version of the original – just the mechanical structure of the device without it being encased in a coin-operated viewing device.  Instead of the approximately 850 cards used in the original machines, Iwasaki made just 16 images that repeat.  Interestingly, 16 frames per second is the minimum frame rate needed for the phenomenon of persistence of vision to work.  With projected film, anything slower would cause a flicker that soul be distracting to the spectator.  I don’t know if this is why Iwasaki chose 16 frames, but it seems likely. 

According to his official website, he made four sets of 16 images for the device: Phantom, Wave, Moon and Bottom.   The Mutoscope was exhibited as part of his exhibition Invisible Time at Gallery Terra Tokyo from 6 June – 23 July 2011.  The event description reads:

“Iwasaki constantly tries to turn invisible existence - time, space and memory - into perceivable objects. He uses moving images to make palpable what was formerly invisible, transcending language barriers and producing a poetic atmosphere. This exhibition showcases works that focus on the theme of “time” - in our memory, in a mirror, at the bottom of a well.”  (Source: TAB)  Footage of Phantom and Wave in action can be seen on Iwasaki’s Vimeo and Youtube channels.

2015 Cathy Munroe Hotes

Karma (カルマ, 1977)

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

- from “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold (1867)

I first became aware of the work of Nobuhiro Aihara (相原信洋, 1944-2011) through his collaborative experimental animated shorts made with legendary pop artist Keiichi Tanaami. Their styles complemented each other well, but one could always distinguish which sequences had been done by Aihara by his distinctive use of swirls and waves.  Even the poster Aihara designed for Hiroshima 2010 used a fresh take on his swirls, bringing together the iconic The Great Wave off Kanagawa (Hokusai, c.1830/3) with colourful figures representing the many nations that come together at the international festival. 

In his early experimental short Karma (カルマ, 1977), Aihara uses water as his central motif.  The film is hand drawn and appears to be shot on 16mm using a blue filter.  At first we can only see tiny specks on the screen, coming and going like snow flurries.  The specks gradually grow larger and take the shape of bubbles, then even larger into rivulets of water on a transparent surface.  The illustration technique is so expertly rendered that it almost looks like a photograph of a window on a rainy day.   

A close up on a large drop is timed to splash when the music kicks into high gear.  The soundtrack (uncredited) is the atmospheric  “Aegean Sea” by Greek psychedelic / progressive rock band Aphrodite’s Child from their double album 666 (1972).  As with all music by Vangelis, the composition is designed to create a certain mood and evoke certain imagery in one’s imagination.  This is why Vangelis has had such success as a film composer (Chariots of Fire, Blade Runner, etc).  “Aegean Sea” conjures up imagery of the ebb and flow of tides with the way the music crescendos and decrescendos and the way the memorable electric guitar melody weaves in and out of the otherwise tranquil instrumentation.

Just as the music ebbs and flows, so does the animation in this experimental film.  Aihara transforms the droplets of water into large spheres and that multiply like organic cells dividing.  Some of the spheres are empty, some are coloured blue, and still others are filling with patterns of waves.   It’s a constant flow of wave inspired imagery which climaxes with a full screen like a kaleidoscope of shapes unfolding then folding back on themselves until the imagery gradually ebbs away, concluding on the simple outline of a circle which itself slowly fades away. 

The title of the film adds an extra layer of meaning to the film, which Aihara has left us to deduce for ourselves.  Karma, the law of moral causation, is one of the fundamental doctrines in Buddhist thought.  According to Buddhism, nothing is purely accidental.  Everything that happens to an individual, is the direct result of past or present actions.  In Aihara’s animation, the way in which drops of water and spheres flow into one another creates an unending sequence of cause and effect.  It is a visual interpretation of the flow of karma from past lives into the present, and onwards, unceasing into the future. 

On February 27^th, 2007, Osaka-based sound artist Tetsuya Umeda (梅田哲也, b.1980) performed in collaboration with a screening of Aihara’s Karma as part of a CO2 exhibition (CO2=Cineastes Organisation Osaka). Instead of “Aegean Sea”, Umeda created sound using a floating sphere and a fan.  Footage of this event can be found on YouTube and still images of the event have been posted on the blog New Manuke.  

Karma was shot on 16mm and appears on the DVD Japanese Art Animation Film Collection 11: The Animation Group of Three and Experimental Anime (日本アートアニメーション映画選集11　アニメーション三人の会と実験アニメ, 2004), which can be found in the video archives of university libraries such as Musabi and Tamagawa.  The entire 12 DVD collection日本アートアニメーション映画選集　全１２巻 can be ordered from Kinokuniya, but it is unfortunately well out of the price range of the average individual. 

Cathy Munroe Hotes 2014

RongRong & Inri’s "Tsumari Story" at Mizuma Art Gallery

Mizuma Art Gallery (Ichigaya Tamachi)

June 11 (Wed.) - July 12 (Sat.) 2014/ 11:00-19:00

closed on Sun. Mon. and Holidays

Opening this evening, Mizuma Art Gallery is presenting a solo exhibition of the Chinese-Japanese artistic team RongRong & Inri (荣荣和映里). 

RongRong (b. 1968) is a Chinese photographer from Fujian Province who made a name for himself in the 1990s for his portraits of life in the East Village of Beijing.  Inri (b. 1973), who is from Kanagawa, began her career as a portrait photographer for a Japanese newspaper before pursuing an independent career starting in 1997.  Since meeting in 2000, this husband and wife team have become known for their collaborations together. 

RongRong & Inri are based in Beijing but have exhibited their work together worldwide. In 2007, they established the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in Beijing’s Caochangdi District - the first private art centre in China dedicated to photography. They continue to be at the centre of Beijing’s photographic art world.  For example, since 2010 they have been organizers of the Caochangdi PhotoSpring Festival in collaboration with Arles International Photography Festival in Southern France. In recent years they have also held numerous exhibitions in Japan: they held a solo show at Shiseido Gallery (2011), participated in the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale (2012), and their works have also been acclaimed as part of last years ‘LOVE’ exhibition at the Mori Art Museum and in the collection exhibition of Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography.

This exhibition will revisit work shown in 2012 at Echigo-Tsumari, with the addition of new pieces created this year. In Tsumari Story they will use experimental forms of prints to exhibit their work. If one compares the location of Tsumari in Niigata Prefecture, adjacent to the Sea of Japan, this is a region markedly different to the Pacific Ocean side of the country. Perhaps because its transport network was comparatively late to upgrade, it has somewhat escaped the homogenization effected by globalization. Even today, the unique characteristics of its culture remain prominent. During its long winters, large volumes of white snow may totally cut off road access. There, time flows according to its own rhythm, allowing for the creation of unique stories.

It has been suggested that the origin of the name of this mountainous region of Niigata lies in the phrase “dontzumari” (meaning ‘dead end’, or ‘impasse’), which takes it beyond a place name to being an aspect of Japanese culture - or possibly a symbol for the whole of Japan, existing as a chain of islands surrounded by the sea. “It is only once you have escaped everything and you reach the final impasse, that you find the love you were searching for”: this artwork was created in a place in which such folklore as this remains.  As such, in today’s ever-shrinking world of increasing homogenization, perhaps this work bears the power to leave behind a unique and deep impression.

In the encounter of a man and woman and their children, RongRong & Inri’s photographs have at the centre of their creative process “the circle of life”.  Within their tales, perhaps we may feel a premonition of the future that is to come. In this age of growing awareness of the land on which we live, the Mizuma Art Gallery warmly invites you to view the exhibition of RongRong & Inri’s story.

This post is an edited version of a press release by Mizuma Art Gallery.  For more on Rong Rong & Inri see their profile on Art Speak China.

cmmhotes 2014

Japan in Germany 9: Shinro Ohtake at documenta 13

See more photos 

The first weekend in August, my husband and I visited documenta 13 in Kassel.  The amount of art, live performances, and film on offer at documenta 13 is simply overwhelming, so we picked out a few artists whose work we definitely wanted to see and saw a number of other interesting works incidentally while wandering through the installation spaces.

Soil-erg.2012 by Claire Pentecost

My husband, being a conservation biologist, was interested in American artist Claire Pentecost’s installation of soil shaped like gold bars at the Ottoneum.  The concept of soil being as valuable as gold is very relevant to our times as we enter the post-oil era. (b. 1956, artist profile) (artist website)

Image of a metronome in Kentridge's "The Refusal of Time"

I happily stood in line for ages to get into the William Kentridge (b. 1955) installation “The Refusal of Time” (2012) in the Hauptbahnhof North Wing.  Kentridge’s animation has been highly influential – one can see the influence in the charcoal animations of Japanese experimental animator Naoyuki Tsuji, for example (see: Angel).  “The Refusal of Time” is projected on 5 screens with a mechanical machine in the middle.  It explores the various ways humanity has tried to capture time: metronomes, pressurized clocks, time zones, music, and so on.  There were elements of animation (stop motion, drawn) and live action with Kentridge himself even appearing in some scenes.  It is a complex work and I wish I could have spent the whole day in the installation just to be able to take in the diverse elements at work in it.  Learn more about the installation in this interview with the artist.

Also high on my list of things to see were the paintings of Canadian artist Emily Carr (1871-1945, CBC article) on display at the Neue Gallerie.  I had previously only seen a couple of her paintings in person at the McMichael Gallery in Ontario.  It is such a different experience to see her work in person than reprinted in books – they create a certain atmosphere that is hard to put into words.  The seven paintings on display were of her later work and the influences of Fauvism and Cubism were very evident.  Dark and hauntingly beautiful pieces.

As much as I love Emily Carr, she seemed a bit out of place in the documenta.  She seemed to have been selected to balance out the two Australian artists sharing a room with her – Margaret Preston (1875-1963) and Gordon Bennett (b.1955) – whose work is also influenced by aboriginal art.  All three were surrounded by conceptual and installation art – which represents the bulk of documenta works.  The neighbouring room, for example, featured the work of Geoffrey Farmer (b. 1967), which was perhaps the most popular installation at the documenta.  “Leaves of Grass” has been featured widely on magazine covers and newspaper articles – it has mass appeal not only because of the immensity of the project but also because of the popular subject matter: pictures cut from 5 decades of Life magazine (see Guardian review).  The link to Carr is that Farmer is also from British Columbia and attended the art college named after her – but it terms of style and subject matter these two could not be more different.

Japan was represented at documenta 13 by Shinro Ohtake (b. 1955, official website).  Ohtake is known as a collector from his ongoing series of “Scrap Books” (1977-) to the strange collages and ephemera decorating the “I Love Yu” Bathhouse in Naoshima, Kagawa Prefecture (article).  Ohtake’s “Mon Cheri: A Self Portrait as a Scrapped Shed” installation in Karlsaue Park shares much in common with the “I Love Yu” Bathhouse.  “Mon Cheri” is an example of a “snack bar” – the kind of hut one might find frequented by eccentric locals at an off-the-beaten track seaside town.  The neon sign was apparently found by Ohtake ten years ago and the Scrapped Shed was inspired by a defunct snack bar in Uwajima.

We could hear the Mon Cheri snack bar before we could see it as we traversed through the expansive grounds of Karlsaue Park.  At first the music was tinny and difficult to recognize, but as we got closer the song changed and I heard the familiar strains of Kyu Sakamoto’s rendition of the Jimmy Jones hit “Good Timin’.”  The snack bar has been installed under an impressively huge tree, and boats of various kinds are strewn around the bar on the ground and in the tree.  There is also a small caravan next to the snack bar. The snack bar is covered with newspaper and magazine clippings from both Japan and Germany.  The bar was wall-to-wall with a collection of junk from bicycle tires to a guitar and even miniature video screens displaying abstract videos. 

The junk in the tree caused a number of German commentators to suggest that this was a reference to the devastating tsunami of March 2011, but the title of the installation suggested to me that this was a much too literal interpretation.  As a self portrait, it seemed to me that the artist sees himself as being formed from the random detritus of popular and disposable artifacts of modern culture.  One could detect a sense of humour in the way in which the objects and clippings had been assembled – Ohtake appears to both love all this junk and be aware that all these things are simply fleeting in their nature.

Judge for yourself by checking out my photo album of Ohtake’s installation.

documenta 13 runs until September 16. 

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Another Glimpse at the Yayoi Kusama documentary Princess of Polka Dots

Filmmakers Heather Lenz and Karen Jonson are sharing another glimpse at their documentary in progress Kusama: Princess of Polka Dots which examines the life and career of the extraordinary artist Yayoi Kusama.  Today they posted a new video on Youtube:

This 7-minute clip was put together for the Kusama retrospective at the Tate Modern in London (9 February – 5 June 2012).  I have been impatient to see this film since I first discovered their 2007 trailer:

However, it would seem that they are still trying to raise enough tax-deductible donations to cover the costs of archival image licensing and the cost of post-production.  You can support this promising documentary by donating money here.  If they can secure financing they hope to get the film out to festivals sometime this year.

I also learned this week through a posting on Brainpickings that Kusama has illustrated Alice in Wonderland.  A brilliant pairing of art and fiction which has gone directly onto my birthday wishlist for this year:

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

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