REWIND FEATURE: Tokyo International Film Festival 2016
TIFF 2016 - Part Two: A Special On-Stage Talk Show with animation directors Mamoru Hosoda and Daisuke “Dice” Tsutsumi
Mamoru Hosoda (right) and Daisuke “Dice” Tsutsumi (center)
At this year’s Tokyo International Film Festival, a retrospective of animation director Mamoru Hosoda is being held, featuring many of his feature length directed works. His first two films “Digimon Adventure” (1999) and “Digimon Adventure: Our War Game! AKA Digimon: The Movie” (2000) captured the imagination of young children into the then-popular Digimon craze. The animated adaptation of Yasutaka Tsutsui’s celebrated time-travel novel ”The Girl Who Leapt Through Time” (2006) was a sleeper hit that received critical acclaim and various awards worldwide. His first original story ”Summer Wars” (2009) also received acclaim and was a much loved sizable hit in Japan with 1.23 million admissions - more than 5 times that of his previous film. His next film was the first with his independent Studio Chizu - “Wolf Children” (2012) which was another huge success with 3.44 million in admissions in Japan. His latest film was “The Boy and the Beast” (2015) which he both wrote the screenplay and a full novel. With 4.59 million admissions, it was the highest grossing Japanese film of 2015. His last four films have all received the Japanese Academy Award for Best Animated Film, and also have received countless awards from foreign and domestic festivals and award shows, making Hosoda one of the most acclaimed and successful filmmakers of the 21st century.
While Hosoda is appearing at Q&A events following the screenings of his films during the festival, one particular event was held not for his own film - but for an event featuring Hosoda and animation director Daisuke “Dice” Tsutsumi. Tsutsumi was an art director and animator at Pixar Animation Studios, working on films such as “Toy Story 3” and “Monsters University”. It was during his time at Pixar that he organized a screening for “The Wolf Children” while Hosoda was visiting, and the friendship blossomed from there. Following his departure from Pixar, Tsutsumi created the animation studio Tonko House, where he co-directed the Academy Award winning animated short film “The Dam Keeper” (2014). His latest film is the animated short “Moom” (2016) and for this special talk show event, both short films were screened back to back following a stage appearance with the two directors and a moderator.
“Moom” is an adaptation of the illustrated children’s book by Genki Kawamura and Yûki Mashiko, originally released in 2014. The story deals with discarded goods and the memories attached to them and was drawn with watercolor paint, but for the short film, it was entirely animated with 3D CGi. “The Dam Keeper” was an original short featuring anthropomorphized animals - with the story about a pig who is picked on at school for being “dirty” and a new kid, a fox who loves to sketch and befriends the pig. Unlike the3D animation of “Moom”, “The Dam Keeper” is a 2D animated short, but done in a style that looks closer to an illustrated book with a style that looks closer to crayon colored art. Both short films were co-directed by Tsutsumi along with former Pixar artist Robert Kondo.
During the on stage greeting, the filmmakers talked about a wide variety of topics, including a few unexpected surprises. Tsutsumi said that the main reason he left Pixar to become a director with his own studio was a comment by Hosoda, which Hosoda himself was quite surprised about. Following the screening of “The Wolf Children” at the Pixar studios, they went out for Korean food and it was there that Hosoda said that Tsutsumi should one day become a director in his own right. This made Hosoda quite happy that he could give some inspiration to the creativity and positive direction Tsutsumi had taken. Tsutsumi talked quite a lot about Pixar - how he started there, the work environment, and the importance of creativity being collective input working and thinking together rather than a fully individual task. Also discussed were the troubles of financing, budgeting, and timing the task of completing animated work, especially as an independent studio - both for Tsutsumi and for Hosoda’s production houses. Overall it was an interesting and fascinating look into the minds of two fascinating filmmakers, and it was wonderful that an internationally renowned director would take a part of his own film retrospective to include an event to feature a different director who should be watched for in the future. Very interested to see what Tsutsumi and Tonko House will be creating in the future.