by Chris MaGee
Did I really just write that title? Guess I did. My apologies… Here’s a bit of a treat for anyone who’s going to be going to the Emerging Auteur Animators programme at the Worldwide Short Film Festival tonight, or for those folks who aren’t for that matter. Tonight they will be featuring “A Country Doctor” by one of the most respected animators in Japan Koji Yamamura, so I thought I’d give everyone a taste of his work by posting his 2002 Academy Award nominated short film “Atama Yama (Mt. Head)”.
Yamamura’s films have been shown in over 30 countries with full retrospectives of his work taking place in 20, and “Atama Yama” is probably his best known work. It tells the story of a stingy man who never wastes anything. After having eaten a bowl of cherries he can’t bring himself to throw out the pits, so he crunches those down too with the end result being that he grows a cherry tree out of the top of his head. Wanting to retell a classic rakugo story (a comic monologue told by a trained storyteller) Yamamura enlisted Takeharu Kunimoto, a well known shamisen player and storyteller to narrate the piece.
Thanks to Cathy Munroe Hotes of Nishikata Film Review for making me sit down to watch this fantastic little film. If after watching it you find yourself like me and want to know more about Koji Yamamura then check out his website here.
Did I really just write that title? Guess I did. My apologies… Here’s a bit of a treat for anyone who’s going to be going to the Emerging Auteur Animators programme at the Worldwide Short Film Festival tonight, or for those folks who aren’t for that matter. Tonight they will be featuring “A Country Doctor” by one of the most respected animators in Japan Koji Yamamura, so I thought I’d give everyone a taste of his work by posting his 2002 Academy Award nominated short film “Atama Yama (Mt. Head)”.
Yamamura’s films have been shown in over 30 countries with full retrospectives of his work taking place in 20, and “Atama Yama” is probably his best known work. It tells the story of a stingy man who never wastes anything. After having eaten a bowl of cherries he can’t bring himself to throw out the pits, so he crunches those down too with the end result being that he grows a cherry tree out of the top of his head. Wanting to retell a classic rakugo story (a comic monologue told by a trained storyteller) Yamamura enlisted Takeharu Kunimoto, a well known shamisen player and storyteller to narrate the piece.
Thanks to Cathy Munroe Hotes of Nishikata Film Review for making me sit down to watch this fantastic little film. If after watching it you find yourself like me and want to know more about Koji Yamamura then check out his website here.
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