Kawamoto the Puppet Master: Screening Details

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    Absurdities, Legends and Fairy Tales PG

    Dir: Kihachiro Kawamoto, 1hr 12 mins, Subtitled

    The second programme of Kawamoto's short films celebrates the fantastic, the mystical and the arcane. In Breaking of Branches Is Forbidden (Hana-ori 1968), Kawamoto's first film after returning to Japan, a young acolyte with a fondness for rice wine is instructed to guard a beautiful cherry blossom tree. A young girl embarks on a spiritual journey within an anonymous Western city in the surreal collage animation The Trip, (Tabi, 1973), and in the bewitching Dojoji Temple (1976) a young pilgrim is pursued by a fair maiden.

    Breaking Branches Is Forbidden (Hana-ori)

    1968, 14 mins

    Kawamoto’s first stop-motion animation after returning to Japan from Prague, is a playful tale about a young acolyte with a fondness for sake (rice wine) after the head monk of his temple instructs him to guard a beautiful cherry blossom tree.

    The Trip (Tabi)

    1973, 12 mins

    Surreal cutout (kiri-gami) animation following a young girl’s spiritual journey to an anonymous Western city, a bizarre dreamscape cluttered with elements from works by Salvador Dali, René Magritte, Giorgio de Chirico and MC Escher. The citations of Chinese poet Su Tong-Po (1037-1101) hint at a deeper Buddhist allegory, in a film, which also references the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, offered as Kawamoto’s ode to his mentor, Trnka, who died in 1969.

    A Poet's Life (Shijin no shogai)

    1974, 19 mins

    A worker is fired from a factory for demanding a wage increase, while his mother, worn thin by poverty, is caught in her own spinning wheel and transformed into yarn. A neighbour takes the yarn and knits it into a jacket, which nobody will buy. Then a strange storm buries the town in snow, freezing rich and poor alike. A Kafka-esque kiri-gami animation based on a short story by Kobo Abe (1924-1993),

    Anthropo-cynical Farce (Kenju giga)

    1970, 8 mins

    A dog race is interrupted by a ringmaster, who attaches fish to the dog’s collars and makes them run in circles. The crowd is incensed, but the ringmaster insists that the audience is no better off than the dogs. In the end the ringmaster is assassinated and the race continues, but a single red rose sprouts from the ringmaster’s blood; a symbol of truth in a crazy world? An absurd circus is brought to life in one of Kawamoto’s few hand-drawn films.

    Dojoji Temple (Dojoji)

    1976, 19 mins

    One of Kawamoto’s most bewitching works, based on a famous Kabuki play, Dojoji Temple depicts a young monk on a pilgrimage tempted by a fair maiden, who transforms into a vicious sea serpent and pursues him until he seeks refuge in a distant temple. The serpent encircles the huge temple bell in which he hides, and the monk is reduced to ashes.

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