Koji Yamamura
A man is walking along the beach. Then a demon, the man’s pain, appears and chases him. The pain is unbearable, coursing through his entire body. He somehow manages to get away, but eventually, he returns to the ocean even though he knows that the demon will appear again if he goes there.
The film expresses the sense of being left behind. It stems from the realities of my childhood and how they did not match up with what I was feeling back then.
It's winter but my heart and the classroom are hot. Unexpectedly I got my hands on a star fruit, but I never told anyone about the taste.
Bird poo fell in love with the hill but the hill is taken away high above the clouds. Poo is devastated. But then, a triangular telescope falls from the sky and it's showing what the hill is seeing.
When it shrinks, it expands. It floats and it sinks. It separates but connects. When I think I’m watching them, they're actually watching me. A charming animation rhyme that weaves together the many days of observing, recording, and experimenting.
One cold and damp morning, two weasels were wandering the quiet streets. They get separated at one point but are reunited. Just then, bells and alarms began to ring through the city, and dawn came.
Kaibun are palidromes in which words sound the same when read backwards and forwards. Sometimes the meaning changes, and sometimes not. I brought this playful and poetic world to life.
The mouse finds a prism and it reveals to him a magnificent rainbow like he's never seen before. He tries to show his friends but for some reason it won't reappear. It seems beauty has a mind of its own.
It should have been an ordinary day, but it was very different from usual. There was a large crowd in front of my grandma’s house. Where did people come from and where are they going? I was peeping at them behind the window, but the big tree obstructed my view.
Alice goes alone. She opens the doors like she let her legs do the leading and she finds various houses by various people. This work expresses the landscape or the figure of love that we're keen from the bottoms of our hearts, with(using) various images and motifs.
Far away from her hometown, the little fox studies in a foreign country. The monotonous days and bare relationships make her increasingly homesick. But one day, she finds the curiosity that she had once lost and takes a new step.
When I touched the sack of cod roe for the first time, it felt exactly like my thighs. It was light pink and so soft. Maybe my whole world is made of squishy fish eggs.
There are three "Motifs". The complete differences between them make themselves self-doubt. The melody begins, and the music motif could not resist the impulse to dance, but the others also catching up ... Am "I" also a "Motif"? This film uses a Fugue from Bach, tries to unify similar concepts that exist in different forms, including music, visual arts, and narrative.
Yasu is a cat over 20 years old. He's still alive and kicking in the house he was left behind.
Commemorating the 700th anniversary of Dante's death, the film is a reinterpretation of Dante and Beatrice's reunion story, from "Vita Nova" to the three parts of the "Divine Comedy" (Hell, Purgatory and Heaven). Where are we, young people, now? Where should we go? Since 2020, it has become clear that young people are free to choose anything. We can even choose to live or die. The new world is coming. Let's jump into it with love for ourselves and for others.
Inspired by the Fifteenth canto of the Divine Comedy, in which Dante meets his teacher, Brunetto Latini.
I'm the only one who can't live without an oxygen tank in the underwater world. No matter how suffocated I feel, I preserve peace and harmony by pretending the selfish girl and my friends with complicated family backgrounds don’t bother me.
Everyone has a sense of justice. The protagonist thinks her ideas are right and voices her opinions through protests for social justice. One day the demonstration turns violent. Maybe we could live in peace if self-righteousness were to disappear.
No doubt negative enery is going to accumulate in my body today, tomorrow and the day after. When that happens, I'll have my own way of release.
Deep down the alley the black cat has entered is a town where nonhuman beings live in peace. The cat returns to his home to rest when suddenly he hears a strange sound coming from next door.
My deceased great-grandmother had been a part of my life as a portrait on the wall. I searched for ways to substantiate her life inside me and decided to photograph and develop pictures of her at two different ages.
A white lump appears at a landfill site with an ocean view and slowly heads for the sea. It is anxious to find a place to return.
The angel of wind exhales, sending fluffy dandelion seeds into a slow dance. Wind and light guide the downy seeds into the magical world of botany.
Mizuki Kiyama's short animation utilizes a paint on glass technique to render a young girl's visit to a neighborhood sento (bath house) with her mother with dazzling sensuous wonder. Evoking childish fascination at daily rituals, this quotidian act amidst feminine intimacy becomes a space of otherworldly fantasy.
Ivory consumption in Japan is a bit of a problem. It needs to be stamped out.
Shiroinu writes down the day’s events before he goes to sleep. One day, he opens a drawer buried in the snow and finds old diary entries. He realizes that he’s forgotten the sensations and emotions from that time to the extent that he feels like he’s reading about someone else’s life.
The painter Kuwagata Keisai lived over 200 years ago. He created 'Ways to Sketch', a series of picture books illustrating humans and animals, all richly expressed. One day he was sketching out a carp, just at that moment he slept and he became a carp in dream. A carp was enjoy to swimming, but a fisherman caught that carp...
Lion Nanny rides the train and embarks on a life journey while interacting with those around her.
Bloopers in sports are different from the blunders we make in everyday life but they tend to share similar physical movements. The title comes from an old Japanese saying about recovering from bad happenings.
We go to sleep in hopes for a better tomorrow. The moment of truth nears as our eyes slowly open to the new day...
There's a pet caterpillar named Larva in my class. I don't like bugs but Larva is sweet and we become friends. But one day, I am faced with a horrible choice.
Everyone crosses the Red Bridge and yet no one likes him. One day, he falls into the deep valley.
A visitor shows up in the middle of the night at the countryside house that Miyako shares with her father. Miyako goes to wake up her father, but the creature enters the house. Miyako stands frozen.
This video installation is an experiment that imagines the canvas as a box and animates images within that space.
In the moments before death, one of the Battling Gods recalls his defeat in a magnificent fight. That battle transcended meta worlds, time and parallel universes as the Battling God faced off with another of his kind. All living creatures celebrated their fight with cries of joy.
Mimi is fed up with her pathetic self. One day she walks along looking at the ground like usual when she notices a suspicious flyer.
The borderland between sleeping and waking is the moment when the daughter melds into her father.
The Rakugo story of PARROT is told by a Rakugo-ka, or a lone storyteller formed of Japanese characters.
Brothers eating dinner, a girl watering the plants, a boy awakening in the night… The daily scenery from the house where they all lived at one point or another.
A speeding car leaps onto the highway of Time and hurtles forward -- its velocity is limitless.
Fluffy turtles, fluffy monkeys, fluffy lizards. Discover the world populated by these mysteriously charming imaginary creatures. They have adorably fluffy bodies and are becoming an ever more common sight in daily life.
This film depicts evolution from birth of life to whale in the sea with music and images by dedication to the American contemporary composer George Klum's "Vox Balaenae (1971)" .There are 4 part, Proterozoic, Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic.
One rainy day, a squid falls on a crosswalk. A businessman and a homeless man see the squid and get lost in their own fantasies.
Big cities are glutted with information. Unconscious curiosity, hidden under apparent indifference, invites us into a noisy loop.
An animated archive of imaginary monsters written by a fictitious mosterologist in Medieval Europe.
A motorbike yearns to return to its good old days. One day it takes a courageous leap to its own future.
An one-armed mountaineer encounters a lost arm on a mountain of salt. Who did it belong to? Why was it left there?
A Japanese-produced animated film using Antonio Vivaldi's Four Seasons as its soundtrack. The four seasons all have separate animation directors. Its production was partly crowdfunded. The film premiered in Kitakyushu in 2017 along with a live performance of the Four Seasons and this performance was recorded and distributed to supporters of the project.
One day the protagonist watches a movie with friends. She finds the film to be boring and reveals her discontent, but somehow nobody agrees with her.
Many arms cling to a man. He doesn’t like it but he believes the situation will never change.
This is the story of Pluto, a planet that has been removed from the solar system and is wandering alone in the vastness of space, and its satellite, Charon, which hovers around Pluto.
You always stumble before reach. The glass in your hand gets chipped every time. Then everything should start again from the start. There are, however, things you can discover only through repetition. The answer resides in yourself.
Memories from the ancient times have been engraved on his body. "Where do we come from?"he asks,"Where are we going?" Would the light guide us there? This is a journey of blind pursuit for wisdom.
A Parade for three managers and four performers. Sketchy drawings in a neatly arranged palette, involving quotes from the French composer Erik Satie, set to the music of Parade performed by the Dutch Willem Breuker Kollektief
A woman pours milk from the top of the mountain. At the foot of the mountain a man milks and pours it into a tank. One evening his pigeon doesn’t come back as usual, and finally it brings back small miracle from a woman. 1st year work 2016, Tokyo University of the Arts, Graduate School of Film and New Media, Department of Animation
The beach is packed in a Chinese resort. People are enjoying the summer holidays. An abrupt thundershower makes them run around in a flurry.
Amii runs and runs on a bloodstained earth, through dark forests and warm fields. She keeps running in fear.
Numbers stations were prominently used during the Cold War. A boy was tuning the radio in the snow mountain and happened to tune the shortwave of codes.
On a summer day an strange man who teaches Russian at the beach took me to a town. The familiar town looked totally fresh from a different point of view. The man should be there at the beach tomorrow.
Half asleep with my eyes closed, my conscience flies beyond time and space and I transform myself to all the life forms existing. I become the universe and the universe becomes me, until I fall asleep.... It is a song to pray for the existence of heart and soul at an awakening.
The borderline of water, a body, or a bathtub gets more and more unclear. All are mixed together in the lukewarm water.
A mysterious yellow ball falls down into the present city across time and space. It involves many people and unfolds various dramas.
Mother secretly threw a letter of her daughter in the snow ocean. The daughter in suspicion, followed her mother and sneak into a boat. She waits for a thaw with unreached feelings
Various visions of life and death, as seen from an operation table. Did the operation succeed ? Is the patient still alive ?
A game to find image in a chance. In this Aleatoricism there are much more potentials than what I have moved.
He lives his life everyday like it's nothing special. Today he eats, gets dressed, and heads out once again.
The two of them, all alone at home. All alone with her father's corpse. Memories, ideals, and reality all sink beneath the muck. Everyone is alone. Everyone is in solitude.
‘Mrs. KABAGodZILLA had a daughter whose feet and arms looked just like her own.’ Mother and child were always together, but the mother's hospitalization makes the daughter remember the past, and think a little about what lies ahead.
Guiltee is an art university student who is slacking off on her school work and feels horrible about it. Plus, she's confused about her family and Christianity, and she can't even get her ex-boyfriend to accept a small present she bought for him.
The father tells his daughter Nunu a lie that there is a cow in her milk cup. She believes it and drinks up milk, but there isn't any cow. Her father tells her a variety of lies, which Nunu finds increasingly difficult to believe.
A festival cut/compilation of the animated segments made by Yamamura Kouji for a TV documentary by NHK, Kojiki Girl Travelogue (古事記ガール 日向路を旅する). The 4 episodes that compose The Hyuga Episode of Kojiki are: #1 The Cleansing (禊/ Misogi, 3’17”) #2 Sun Goddess Amaterasu (天照大御神/ Amaterasu Ookami, 2’11”) #3 Flowering Tree (木花之佐久夜毘売/ Konohananosakuya-bime, 2’31”) #4 Umisachi and Yamasachi (海佐知山佐知/ Umisachi Yamasachi, 3’30”)
Created using "Etching on film" from the NFB's McLaren's Workshop Application.
Koji Yamamura's allegory the immutability of time, love and devotion, and the unbreakable nature of the parent-child bond, into interlacing story.
"Anthology with Cranes" is a 17th Century scroll painting by Sotatsu Tawaraya, measuring over 13 meters long. Koji Yamamura attempts to decipher this painting by interpreting it as animation.
A huge pig lies by a house. The family of the house go about their everyday life, pretending to ignore the pig’s existence.
A hapless country doctor describes with breathless urgency a night-time summons to attend a young patient. Events soon take on a surreal aspect as "unearthly horses" transport him instantaneously to the bedside. The doctor, preoccupied with personal distractions and grievances against those he is employed to care for, fails to find what is revealed to be a vile, fatal wound. He is humiliated by the villagers, who are "always expecting the impossible from the doctor," and doomed to an endless return trip, losing everything.
A seaside school. In the corridor stands the principal, beloved of the high-spirited youngsters. Gazing at a picture of a whale drawn as a child, the head teacher is swept away with sentiment into a flashback from the past.
An short movie that is illustrated in black and white using rather simple animation. The story is told by a narrator with a lovely British voice that reminded me of Malcolm McDowell and he does all the voices of all the characters as well. The story is about an ageless old crocodile that is quite nasty--even for a croc! Because he's older and lazy, he mostly just sits around doing very little.
Winter Days is a 2003 animated film, directed by Kihachirō Kawamoto. It is based on one of the renku (collaborative linked poems) in the 1684 collection of the same name by the 17th-century Japanese poet Bashō. The creation of the film followed the traditional collaborative nature of the source material – the visuals for each of the 36 stanzas were independently created by 35 different animators. As well as many Japanese animators, Kawamoto assembled leading names of animation from across the world. Each animator was asked to contribute at least 30 seconds to illustrate their stanza, and most of the sequences are under a minute (Yuriy Norshteyn's, though, is nearly two minutes long).
A miserly man eats the pits of some cherries he can't stand throwing out. A tree starts growing from the top of his head. He cuts it off; it grows back. After a while, he gives up and lets it grow, but the crowds that gather on top of his head to enjoy the tree (and leave huge mounds of trash) eventually drive him to uproot the tree. This leaves a crater on top of his head, which fills with water, which becomes a popular lake.
The first short in the series Karo and Piyobupt by Koji Yamamura
The third and last installment in the Karo and Piyobupt series by Koji Yamamura
The second short in the series Karo and Piyobupt by Koji Yamamura
A normal day turns into a day of adventure when an elevator that carries a boy does not stop where it should.
North is everywhere solitary. Here is all North. This is a record of the people I met in these Norths.
This film is an allegory towards clumsy people. Having met egocentric people, I go down the stairs of melancholia. I get swallowed up by the waves that I myself create. I know life is not only bad... But who am "I"? What am "I"?
