Self Portrait 1 min, 1988 The Demon 8 mins, 1970 The Trip 12 mins, 1973 A Poet’s Life 19 mins, 1974 House of Flame 19 mins, 1979 To Shoot Without Shooting 25 mins, 1988 Briar Rose or the Sleeping Beauty 22 mins, 1990
At the age of eighty, Kihachiro Kawamoto is considered a living treasure in Japan, with over thirty years spent creating some of the world’s most sublime and atmospheric stop motion animated works. Captivated by the art of doll and puppet making from an early age, Kawamoto first became interested in animation after seeing the works of maestro animator Jiri Trnka. He started making commercial animations for TV in 1958, but it was not until 1963, after a year studying under Trnka, that his puppets began to take on a life of their own. Making all the figures that appear in his works himself, Kawamoto draws heavily on his country’s rich cultural heritage. His haunting films The Demon, Dojoji Temple and House of Flame are influenced by the traditional aesthetics of Noh, Bunraku doll theatre and Kabuki. Kawamoto has also experimented with cut-out (kirigami) or collage techniques in the Dali-esque The Trip and the cryptic A Poet’s Life, and worked on two co-productions, To Shoot Without Shooting in China, and Briar Rose…, for which he returned to Trnka’s studios in Prague. Though barely known overseas, Kawamoto’s works have attracted praise among animation connoisseurs for decades, and with recent commercial works in the field dominated by merchandise tie-ins and 3D CGI, his painstakingly hand-crafted worlds seem even more magical than ever. JS
