Festival director and June’s old friend, Sayoko Kinoshita.

Sunday, August 22
OK, in the Grand hall at 9:15 am Animal Farm, by Halas & Batchelor. How nostalgic seeing it again. It brought back memories of and chatting with John and Joy Batchelor at the London, Zagreb and Annecy festivals. It was followed by Korean Empress Chung, subtitled in English and Japanese. What an odd coincidence, I chatted with the producer, Nelson Shin, who worked at Hanna-Barbera Studio and lives in Thousand Oaks, California.

Japanese Pom Poco was the next feature, however I left to start watching Animation for Peace in the next hall. The first, touching film, a world premiere, Ryukyu Okaku Made in Okinawa by Renzo Kinoshita. It gives one chance to think about peace. I quote from Sayoko’s feelings about the making of the film, “Renzo and I rented a flat in Okinawa for three months. We went to the library, museums and interviewed people and from this we put together this story. Renzo made the storyboards but before he made the film, he passed away in 1997. That year I did the storyboard exhibition in Annecy. Power to make the film was rage. To finish it was always hanging over me. At the time, the Iraq war started. I had no reason to procrastinate any more. I started completing it so that it would be in time for this festival. I want to show my feeling of rage to as many people as possible.”

The 17-minute film shows a man leisurely lying on the beach under a palm tree, watching boats go by. Within a few minutes, we see warships replacing pleasure boats, artillery trucks rumbling by. Chaos ensues of course. I guess the world is destroyed while a lone man relaxes on the beach. The second film, The Train, was produced by Babak Nazari from Iran, a devastating discourse war and it was chilling to hear over the credits the voice of George W. Bush saying, “and God Bless America.”

Of the 14 Animation for Peace films, four came from the U.S. The Epitaph Tree by ByoungJik Lee, Bid `em In by Neal Sopata, Rock the World by Sukwon Shin and Henry’s Garden by Moon Seun, All of the films for peace were haunting indeed and makes one ponder mankind’s future on this planet.

One short that impressed me in the Best of the World screening was one from Juan Solanas of France. It was called The Man Without a Head. A well-dressed man seeing a beautiful girl — lord only knows how he can see her without a head or eyes. No matter. He not only buys flowers to give her, he enters a shop that sells heads. He tries on heads that are black, white, and evil and smiling, none of which he likes. So he what does he do? Without a head, he presents the flowers to girls of his dreams, she accepts happily and they walk hand-and-hand into the sunset.

The presentation of Animal Farm and a Halas & Batchelor retrospective brought back dear memories to June. © The Halas & Batchelor Collection Limited. Courtesy of the Animation Research Centre Archive.

It was helpful to have met Bakhtier Kakarov from Tajikistan who spoke an accented but articulate English. His film The Donkey, had been shown in the World Animation class. It was my hope to meet and converse with Abolfazi Rasani, the Iranian puppet filmmaker. His film, Work & Thought, is a curious but fascinating, almost unfathomable, philosophical film based on two aspects of one’s personality that are complements of each other. One is useless without the other. Abolfazi could not speak English. Thus his friend — and becoming mine — Bakhtier did the interpreting. Thus we had a lively conversation.

Monday, August 23
This final day films started at 9:15 in the morning. I had to make the decision of watching Belleville Rendez-Vous, the French film by Sylvan Chomet and When the Winds Blows by Jimmy Murakami or 13 more Animation for Peace films. Being so intrigued, I saw Belleville Rendez-Vous.

I had heard about it and never seen Jimmy Murakami’s When the Wind Blows a wonderful commentary on peace produced decades ago, just as à propos now. Jimmy, Marcell Jankovics and Nelson Shin conducted a seminar later that day on how to make feature animation, an enlightening and interesting afternoon. Preceding that was a Halas & Batchelor retrospective culminating in a question-and-answer period with Vivian Halas. With conflicting programs in three theaters, I was unable to watch Best of the World and Hiroshima Awarded Films.