FIRST ANIMATION FESTIVAL

第1回アニメーションフェスティバル

Tanaami was tackling an enormous workload during this period, and at the same time was vigorously at work to realize his long-held dream of making animation. Tanaami created his first animated piece in 1965.

"In the 1960'S, events that traversed and intersected many diverse genres took place regularly at the Sōgetsu Art Center in Akasaka. Happenings staged by Yoko Ono, videos by Nam June Paik, and experimental American films hit the stage one after the next. The Sōgetsu Art Center was truly the ‘shrine' of the avant-garde. For the young artists searching for ‘new forms of expression' at the time, each one of those activities was inspiring. It was around that time that I heard the news that the First Animation Festival, developed by the Animation Group of Three (Yōji Kuri, Ryōhei Yanagihara, Hiroshi Manabe), whose works I had seen at Sōgetsu, was to take place in 1964.

I wanted so badly to make animation, I begged Yōji Kuri's Experimental Animation Studio to help me create ‘Marionettes in Masks'. It was the first studio I saw in person at the animation stand, we looked over the frame tables I had spent all night drawing up and then started shooting. Every day was an uphill battle, as I had no comprehension of any filmmaking terminology or technique, not even the 24 frame per second timing or the movement of the pictures to go along with that overlapping; shooting frames fading in and out and so on. Up until that point, my everyday work had almost exclusively dealt with still images, and still unable to fully grasp that sense of time, filming came to an abrupt end. This was back when the word animation itself was not yet commonplace."

"At this point in time, I entertain absolutely no notion that design could transform the world. Politics are a force design is not. I'm talking about demonstrations and placards. Making a placard isn't going to stop the war.

This is how I know that designers think of themselves as social elites. I comprehend mass society as a measure of oneself. To that end, we must first tear apart the way of thinking known as design. I think it's complete nonsense that we are still stuck on the impotence of modern design."