DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
image
For Almost Forgotten Stories

Spotlight: International Animation

Sunday, October 28, 2007
2:00 p.m. Animation by Naoyuki Tsuji
Naoyuki Tsuji (Japan, 1992–2005)

Acclaimed Japanese animator Naoyuki Tsuji's early work includes surreal puppet animations and ink drawings. His most recent films feature beautiful, simple, even childlike charcoal drawings in which people and objects transform as in a dream, in turn graceful, forbidding, and haunting. A child is dropped from a cloud, a tiny figure enters a doorway in a man's torso, life begins in an embrace of wings. Tsuji comments, "One of the main characteristics of animation created using charcoal, oil, or pastel is the afterimage. With these methods it's easy to erase or draw over or add details to a previously drawn image, but the previous image never completely disappears. It's random, yet with direction, ordered towards the future." Tsuji's films have been included in past Cannes Film Festivals.

Wake Up (Samero, 1992, 4 mins, DVCam). For Almost Forgotten Stories (Kiekaketa monogataritachi no tame ni, 1994, 10 mins, DVCam). Rules of Dreams (Yoru no okite, 1995, 6 mins, DVCam). Experiment (1997, 4 mins, Color/B&W, DVCam). Feathers gazing into the darkness (Yami wo mitsumeru hane, 2003, 17 mins, 16mm). Trilogy About Clouds (Mittsu no kumo, 2005, 13 mins, 16mm). Children of Shadows (Kage no kodomo, 18 mins, 16mm).

• (Total running time: c. 70 mins, B&W, From Tidepoint Pictures, with thanks to Tetsuki Ijichi)