Kotatsu Japanese Animation Festival

Today I attended the Kotatsu Animation Festival at Chapter Arts Centre. It was a three day festival, but due to weather and nanowrimo I was only able to get there today (the last day).

On the previous two days there were a couple of workshops and screenings of the Studio Ghibli film, Ponyo, but today was the day that interested me most.

In the afternoon there was a showing of several short Japanese animations, not just in the popular anime style but also handcrafted and artistic films. We were also shown an episode of the anime Samurai Champloo and saw guest speakers Midoriko Hayashi (organiser of independent animation screenings in Japan) and Tetsuji Kurashige (university lecturer and independent film maker).

One of the first selection of films we saw (the "anime style" selection) was She and Her Cat by Makoto Shinkai.

I really enjoyed the short as it was a simple "slice of life" film, yet had so much power to it. The storyline is simple yet sweet and the music adds to the piece without being overpowering of feeling out of place. The concept of the film being from the cat's perspective is clever and allows you to see the story of a seemingly quiet and overlooked woman: You aren't told the whole story, but you understand what is happening.

The next type of film was the "Handcrafted" short films. Unfortunately, none of these were available online, but they were all very clever and interesting. The first was a short that started with a small origami caterpillar which ate and grew, using bigger pieces of paper until it turned into a chrysallis and then a butterfly. This was short and effective and reminded me of the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Of the other two handcrafted films, one was aimed more at children and was knitted, and looked very sweet, and the other was quite a scary tale of a demon, with jerky yet stylized stop frame animation.

The final type of short film was "artistic". The first was an amusing and cute tale called The Mechanism of Spring and showed how everything links together in spring time and builds each other. It features heavily on connections and was very well recieved. The second film was hand drawn with graphite pencil. It was done entirely on one piece of paper and the characters were rubbed out and redrawn as they moved across the page. This was very effective and gave the impression of showing the marks that people leave in the world, even on everyday occasions such as a lunch break. Although I was not impressed particularly with the art style used, and the storyline was a little non-existent it was still really interesting and a clever technique.

The final film in the art style was very peculiar and nobody knew what was going on, even with subtitles. It was most odd.

The organiser of the event, Eiko Ishii Meredith, also showed us a trailer of her own short film which is the making. I look forward to seeing the full version.

In the evening, there was a showing of Summer Wars, a 2009 film which had been highly aclaimed and submitted for Oscar Nomination. It looked very interesting, but due to the weather I had to leave, as if I saw it I may not have been able to get home. It was a shame, but I hope to see the film sometime in the near future when it's released.

http://www.kotatsufestival.com/

http://www.chapter.org/