Posts tagged with ‘animation’

3rd Annual Shinsedai Cinema Festival: July 21-24

Escape the heat tomorrow for the opening of the 3rd Annual Shinsedai Cinema Festival. Programmed by Chris MaGee (Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow) and Jasper Sharp (Midnight Eye), the festival showcases the best of Japanese independent film. My must-see screenings are the feature length animation by Keita Kurosaka Midori-ko (Fri Jul 22 - 9pm) and the CALF Animation Showcase (Sun Jul 23 - 1pm), which features many new works by artists from my Seconds Under the Sun programme (2009-2010). 

See you there!

Puppet Master and Experimental Animator Kihachiro Kawamoto Passes Away at 85

Kihachiro Kawamoto (1925 - 2010)

 I first came across Kihachiro Kawamoto’s animation in 2002 when doing research for an essay on the folktale Dojoji, a story in which a woman spurned by a monk transforms into a white serpent and chases after him in a heated rage. The tale originated in China as early as 981 A.D. and reappeared throughout Japan’s history again and again in various forms; from religious parable to Noh and Kabuki plays, literary supernatural tale in Ueda Akinari’s Ugetsu Monogatari (Tales of Moonlight and Rain), to film and finally animation. Kawamoto’s Dojoji (1976) is where this tale finds the true form it had been pursuing all those years. 

Kawamoto began working in the medium in the 1950s and honed his skills at the Kratky Studios in Prague under the mentorship of celebrated Czech animator Jiri Trnka. Kawamoto applied these techniques to animated retellings of ancient folktales, contemporary short stories, Noh, Kabuki, and Bunraku plays. His world of puppets without strings describes the permeable divide between the real and supernatural. It is this restraint, to balance the intent of complete realism and uncontrolled fantasy that creates, as Chikamastu Monzaemon the famous Bunraku playwright says, “a certain something in the slender margin between the real and the unreal.” 

The Exquisite Short Films of Kihachiro Kawamoto on DVD from KimStim

Jasper Sharp’s interview with Kawamoto on Midnight Eye

Bigger, Better and Bolder - SHINSEDAI CINEMA FESTIVAL 2010

If you don’t live in or around Toronto, you just might want to revise your summer plans and book a trip to check out this year’s SHINSEDAI CINEMA FESTIVAL: The New Generation Film Festival happening July 22-25. 

For the 2nd year, programmers Chris MaGee and Jasper Sharp are bringing an amazing collection of films that span the genre spectrum and will be sure to introduce audiences to fresh hard-to-see cinematic fare from independent Japanese filmmakers that take great risks to see their projects through to the screen. 

Some highlights include: Gen Takahashi’s Confession of a Dog, Momoko Ando’s Kekera: A Piece of our Life, Kenji Mizoguchi’s The Water Magician (w/ live score by VOWLS), and Dome Animation - a touring collection of animated shorts by students of Tokyo’s Image Forum. Check out the full schedule here.

To watch film trailers check out the Shinsedai YouTube Channel.

Tickets go on sale on JUNE 23!