At long last, a certain dream of mine for almost four years now has come true—namely, for Group TAC’s long-forgotten classic film The 11 Cats, which was originally released on this very day 40 years ago, to receive English subtitles! Even better, the film is now available for viewing in a better-quality version that was previously online, and best of all, it even comes with English-subtitled versions of director Shirō Fujimoto’s three best episodes for TAC’s legendary anthology series, Manga Nihon Mukashibanashi, which showcase his unique talent as an illustrator and even painter in his own right.

Download these films directly from Google Drive!

…or, watch them on Youtube!

Had I been told back in the late summer of 2016 that I, and two other friends I’ve made since then (Meizhan and Kenji, the latter of whom contributed a guest article to this very blog last year), would ultimately be the ones to undertake this project, I would not have believed it. Yet so much has changed since then, and I like to think I’ve grown immensely as a person and writer, so here we are…

Ben Ettinger has already written a nice primer on The 11 Cats and the creative figures behind it, so for this article, I would like to delve even further into the historical context behind the film’s making and what said creative figures were up to at the time, as well as offer certain insights on the film and the MNMB episodes—and Fujimoto’s own directorial vision, for that matter—that have hitherto not been brought up in a public space. Additionally, I would like to recount the tumultuous events that led up to this very day, including a look at the enormous difficulties I encountered in creating at least a semi-restored version of the film. (more…)

Last year marked the 65th anniversary of the founding of Zagreb Film, which for a few decades was home to one of the premiere animation studios on the international scene. The Zagreb School of Animation was distinguished by its emphasis on an artist’s unique vision, its variety of approaches to filmmaking and design, its deliberate use of stylized animation, its experimentation with unconventional soundtracks, and, perhaps most crucially, its focus on making fun of the absurdities, foibles, and cruel realities of life from the little man’s perspective.

To continue this blog’s previous ill-fated format of Capsule Reviews, I will try to discuss the films of the studio’s most visionary artists over a few articles. For this first entry, I will focus on the three great directors who defined the studio’s early years, namely creative leader Dušan Vukotić, live-action filmmaker Vatroslav Mimica, and modern artist Vlado Kristl. Owing to the sheer volume of films, I may not go quite as in-depth as I have in previous articles; nevertheless, I would like to shed some light on an important corner of animation and film history that is, alas, largely neglected among general audiences nowadays. A few reviews, labeled with [popka], have been written by my dear friend Benjamin Wang; additionally, in a change from this blog’s previously-exclusive focus on animation, we have discussed some of Vukotić’s and Mimica’s live-action films, as they were very much a continuation of their work in animation. (more…)

The Indian-Canadian animator Ishu Patel is emblematic of the spirit of pioneering, unconventional, and personal animated filmmaking that characterized the most brilliant talents at the National Film Board of Canada, through which he created six films over a period of two decades. In each of those six films, Patel adopts a novel visual style and storytelling mode to express his vision, often drawing not from other animators but from his own ingenuity, resourcefulness, and experiences growing up in rural India and afterwards. Even now, his works are easily among the most inspired in animation, with their beautiful artistry typically backed up by equally powerful, allegorical, universally-appealing stories and compellingly offbeat soundtracks.

Patel had no intention of becoming an animator from a young age; indeed, not until he had begun a career at the National Institute of Design at Ahmedabad was he first exposed to international animation, particularly the short films of the NFBC. Realizing that animated films could be the work of a single visionary, and that his own interests and skills (particularly in illustration, photography, and design) were all involved in making animation, Patel began devoting his time and energy to using the materials and equipment at the NID to learn animation, often by experimenting, shooting tests, and watching other animators’ films; his being self-taught in this manner undoubtedly accounts for the singular quality of his work once he established himself as a director at the NFBC in the mid-1970s. (more…)

Among the most prolific Polish animators of the past century, and certainly one of the most accessible, is Witold Giersz. His defining trait, in several of his more ambitious films, is his painterly, visuals-focused approach to animation: his characters are unabashedly the medium with which they were created, whether paint or crayon or even tissue, brought to vivid life. He moreover instills a gentle, biting humanism into several of his films: he depicts how people can be idiotic, imprudent, and spiteful, if not downright malicious, but does so with such warmth and humor that it’s clear he does not think humans as a whole are irredeemable so much as they are well-meaning, if ultimately flawed in a variety of ways and often prone to being doomed by their own vanities and those of others. (more…)

For the first few years of his independent career, Tadanari Okamoto largely stuck with stop-motion; even during this early period, however, he already had a penchant for experimenting with different materials and designs. In his first three films alone, based on stories by science fiction writer Shinichi Hoshi, the rather pedestrian puppets of his Noburō Ōfuji Award-winning A Wonderful Medicine, which nevertheless featured delightfully sloppy-looking, mostly hand-drawn FX animation, gave way to the plastic toy-like puppets of its follow-up Welcome, Aliens and then the low-relief wooden puppets of Operation Woodpecker. His desire to try different forms of animation and subject matter became more apparent in the three animated music videos he created for the Song Series from 1968 to 1970, as evidenced by the rugged, wooden aesthetic of Back When Grandpa Was a Pirate and the unabashedly paper-constructed (and also Ōfuji Award-winning) Home, My Home, and said videos reflected the increasing importance of music in his films; his sleek Ōfuji Award-winning 1970 film The Flower and the Mole, meanwhile, featured brief sequences of 2D hand-drawn animation, indicating a willingness to extend into different animated mediums.

1971 would be a landmark for Okamoto in that regard. All three of his works that year—Chikotan, My Bride and two more music videos—were his first to be produced entirely in drawn animation, and Chikotan would be the first of his extended films in which the music was truly on an equal footing with the animation. Moreover, these musical works were the first in which a pronounced melancholic tone was prominent, with Chikotan, in particular, becoming outright tragic at its climax, in contrast to the relative lightheartedness of his earlier films. These works remain among the most unappreciated of Okamoto’s early career, with memorable scores, a heartfelt atmosphere, and beautifully-crafted art design and animation that, over 45 years later, continue to impress in their vitality. (more…)

Animation and music, when crafted and combined well, make for an exhilarating duo. Innumerable cartoons from the Golden Age of American animation, in particular, relied on the visuals working in tandem with the music. Animation itself is a wide-ranging medium, capable of several different modes of expression, and a particularly intrepid filmmaker can spend an entire career experimenting with a variety of forms and styles.

Perhaps the greatest living representative of both these ideas is the Japanese independent animator Kōji Nanke. Almost all of his work has been music videos, particularly for NHK’s Minna no Uta, and within these confines he has often created beautiful gems that not only try out different animated mediums and artistic styles with utmost craftsmanship, but do so with the relationship between the visuals and the music in mind. In Nanke’s best work, the animation and the music are inseparable from each other even as the former is recognizable as his vision, to riveting effect. (more…)

Here is the second half of my in-depth (though not exactly comprehensive) look at the films of the great Czech animator Břetislav Pojar. The first half can be found here.

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This is the second part of an interview that was originally published on Autodesk.jp on September 16th, 2016. Click here for part 1. Thanks to @frog_kun for providing the translation. © 2017 On The Ones

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