![]() Yamamura also talks in the documentary about the importance of having an appropriate title, and mentions he himself has been praised (by his senior when he was still a graduate student) for providing good titles to his films. As this scene is quite dramatic, we decided to include this at the very beginning of the documentary, just before the title itself, to add impact and grab the viewer’s attention. In Franz Kafka’s ‘A Country Doctor’, a door is forcibly kicked open. The door shuts firmly, and both the figure and door disappear from view. A fantastical figure appears, and enters through the door. In a fantastic sky, a small blue door suddenly appears in the right-hand corner of the frame. Head (2002), the film for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, we have a mysterious figure disappearing behind a curtain. A particularly intriguing image of a door opening is found in his later work Satie’s ‘Parade’ (2016). In Japanese-English Pictionary (1989), for example, Yamamura even has a clipboard announcing the appearance of a brown door, first shut, then opening, as if one is entering a different world. In our documentary, we include numerous instances taken from Yamamura’s films where doors appear as gateways to fantasy. I want to express that with my animation.” Doors represent this linkage, and are a means of crossing the boundary between reality and fantasy, linking a non-existing, fantastical world with the normal, everyday one. Yamamura’s reply is informative: “Reality and what people think the non-existing world is,” he observed, “are linked in my world. In our own film, Ortansia puts it to Yamamura that doors represent a core element in his work. Notable is his Franz Kafka’s ‘A Country Doctor’ (2007), where expression is articulated through the inspirational use of a brush used for Japanese calligraphy, and people’s twisted movements express their psychological state of mind. The depictions of these fantasies are made possible by the animator’s professional skill. Within the film itself, Ortansia opens the doors which lead to the different fantasies Yamamura created for the viewer. This blog will reflect firstly on why did we title the documentary Doors to Fantasy? This name was chosen as it reflects what I believe to be an important feature of Yamamura’s output: doors as entrances or gateways to fantasy. A discussion of his most recent film, Dozens of Norths (2022), his first full-length animation film, is also included. During the course of the film, Ortansia interviews the animator on his life, work, ideas and skills, and the viewer is introduced to both his early works and more recent output as part of this audiovisual journey through episodes of Yamamura’s life and films. It is divided into various sections, each with its own heading, including: ‘Metropolis’, ‘Personal Story’, ‘Daily Routine’, ‘East and West’, ‘At the Cinema’, ‘Souvenir’, ‘A Particular Profession’, ‘Birth of a Character’, and ‘Rewards’. ![]() Our resulting documentary on his animated works is somewhat straightforward, both in structure and narrative, and deliberately so. ![]() ![]() 2), we visited Yamamura twice at his studio near Jiyugaoka in Tokyo. Together with our interviewer Ortansia, a Japanese scholar of Oriental religion and philosophy, and also a composer (Fig. Our attention was particularly drawn to the films of the Academy Award nominated animator Yamamura Koji, who is also a professor at the Tokyo Arts University. Watching Yamamura’s films, we became interested in finding out more about him and his work, which in turn led to us to make our documentary, Doors to Fantasy (2022) (Fig. At the height of the Covid pandemic, my father, co-director Noel Williams and I, together with scholars and students of Japanology here in Tokyo, had ample opportunity to study and research a range of Japanese films, including a number of short Japanese animations. ![]()
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