KAWAMOTO Kihachirô

Filmography

  • Hana-Ori (Flower-Fold, 1968, 14 min.)
  • Kenju Giga (Cynical Farce, 1970, 8 min.)
  • Oni (Demon, 1972, 8 min.)
  • Tabi (Travel, 1973, 12 min.)

In a crowded city, a young Japanese woman dreams of taking a holiday to Europe. However, her journey in this foreign land turns out to be not so much a respite as a surreal nightmare, in which the repeated thwarting of her efforts to reunite with her lover from a past life come to echo the identification by the Buddha of the eight sufferings in the world. The method here is a combination of armatured and unarmatured cutout animation not dissimilar to La Planète sauvage, and employs a painting style seemingly influenced by that of Salvador Dalí.

  • Shijin no Shôgai (Poet's Life, 1974, 19 min.)
  • Dôjôji (1976, 19 min.)
  • Kataku (House of Flame, 1979, 19 min.)
  • Rennyo to Sono Haha (Rennyo and His Mother, 1981, 92 min.)
  • Self-Portrait (1988, 1 min.)
  • Fusha no Sha (Shoot Without Shooting, 1988, 25 min.)
  • Ibara-Hime matawa Nemuri-Hime (Briar-Rose or The Sleeping Beauty, 1990, 22 min.)

Though set in a stereotypical, fairy-tale mediaeval Europe, this is not a simple retelling but a highly erotic and somewhat feminist reinterpretation. It takes the form of a constructed "true story" lying behind all the myths, in which a christening gone awry is covered up by the now familiar tale of fairy-spells and spindle wounds. This prediction comes to be mirrored in the real life of the princess, whose encounter with a spinning wheel on her fifteenth birthday eventually leads to her becoming a cold and introverted woman who is nicknamed both "Briar-Rose" and "Sleeping Beauty". The story and Japanese narration come courtesy of 1960s screen siren KISHIDA Kyôko — her many other narration roles include Kawamoto's Fuyu no Hi and Shisha no Sho features, and, coincidently, Princess Tutu.

  • Fuyu no Hi (Winter Days, 2003, 40 min.)
  • Shisha no Sho (Book of the Dead, 2005, 70 min.)
  • Hisakata no Amefutakami (Amefutakami, in the Sky, 2006, 14 min.)

Linkography

Biography

Collected short films

Rennyo to Sono Haha (1981)

Fuyu no Hi (2003)

Shisha no Sho (2005)

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