Posts tagged with ‘japanese animation’
KEIICHI TANAAMI ANIMATION RETROSPECTIVE SCREENINGS: Toronto, Winnipeg, Montreal
TORONTO SCREENING
Saturday April 23rd – 8pm
CineCycle (behind 129 Spadina Ave)
$8 / $5 students
Keiichi Tanaami, born in 1936, is one of the preeminent pop artists of postwar Japan, producing a broad range of works since the 60s including experimental film and animation, woodblock printing, illustration, and editorial design. Tanaami’s imagery is provocative and playful, rooted in the realm of avant garde 60s pop psychedelia. In 1967 Tanaami took his first trip to New York where he discovered the works of Andy Warhol. These experiences opened him up to new artistic directions and in 1975 he became the first Art Director of Playboy Monthly (Japanese Edition). He has worked as a professor at Kyoto University of Art and Design since 1991, and his work continues to be exhibited around the world.
Screening in Toronto for the first time, these 10 animated works offer an introduction to Tanaami’s various styles and a trip through the eye-popping world of free form Japanese psychedelia. This event will also celebrate his newest release, A Portrait of Keiichi Tanaami: 14 Films 1975-2009, a beautiful edition containing a hard cover book with never-before published drawings for animated films, 14 films from 1975-2009, and two documentaries about the man himself, available for purchase at the screening.
This event is a fundraiser to aid the victims of the earthquake in Japan and has been made possible by the generosity of: Keiichi Tanaami, CaRTe bLaNChe, Toronto Animated Image Society, and CineCycle.
All proceeds will go to the Red Cross Japan Earthquake Fund
Presented by:
ANGURA! / Toronto Animated Image Society / CaRTe bLaNChe
WINNIPEG SCREENING - Friday May 6th at Plastic Paper: Winnipeg’s Festival of Animated, Illustrated + Puppet Film
MONTREAL SCREENING - Saturday May 21st at Blue Sunshine Psychotronic Film Centre
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
Micro Interviews with 12 Japanese Animators
It’s been a great year for SECONDS UNDER THE SUN, a touring programme of short Japanese art animation I put together in order to get unknown or under-appreciated work in front of eager audiences. It has screened in Toronto and Winnipeg, and will be featured this Saturday in Montreal’s newest micro-cinema Blue Sunshine. SECONDS features 12 established and emerging animators that employ techniques from sand to hand-drawn, stop motion puppet to digital. It highlights artists from a variety of generations and the subject matter covers a range of emotional landscapes: quiet contemplation of the miniscule, death in the family, grotesque humour, and the ineffable space within relationships.
Here are the bios of the participating artists and some bite-sized interviews for your reading enjoyment!
2010 New Year’s Greeting, 30sec (2010)
Komoko-chan’s Coffee, 4min 17sec (2008)
Born in 1978, Naomi Nagata makes music videos and her own works in stop- motion animation using sand and paper cut outs. Since 2002 she has been involved in event planning and operation as a member of the animation screening group “animation soup”.
Favourite childhood toy: When I was child, I liked playing outside more than playing with toys. But, when I play inside, my favorite toy was Family Computer.
Do you like coffee? Yes.
How long it takes you to brush your teeth: Hmm….about 5 to 10 minutes.
The Demon, 8min (1970)
Born in 1925, from an early age Kihachiro Kawamoto was captivated by the art of doll and puppet making. After seeing the works of maestro Czech animator Jiri Trnka, he first became interested in stop motion puppet animation and during the 50s began working alongside Japan’s first stop motion animator, the legendary Tadahito Mochinaga.
LOST UTOPIA by Mirai Mizue
An animation using the Paradise Lost tale of Adam and Eve as the motif.
New indie DVD label CALF frolics in the green pastures of Japanese art animation
Nobuaki Doi read many minds when he founded CALF, an independent DVD label with a mission to connect Japanese art animators to their international audiences. The label plans to unleash the first release at the end of August with a starting lineup of Mirai Mizue, TOCHKA, Atsushi Wada and Kei Oyama. This is pure kid-in-a-candy-store news!
Check out the CALF website for more info on these amazing artists and when their DVDs will be hitting the virtual shelves.
Interview with psychedelic animator Keiichi Tanaami by Jonathan Ross on BBC3’s Japanorama
