'Overseas Animation @ Tollywood' and 'Animations: Creators and Critics' and 'Atamayama'

I just learned that there is a something called Overseas Animation @ Tollywood, a film festival of short animated countries from around the world in at a small theatre in Shimokitazawa, near Tokyo. Here is the official website. Be sure to check out the pictures of the programmes (even if you cannot read Japanese): A, B, C, D, E, F. You can watch the trailer here on YouTube.

In other news, a website called Animations: Creators and Critics has been launched by 5 creators and 2 critics sometime in the middle of May 2007:

• Yamamura Kouji 山村浩二

Best known for his work Atamayama 頭山 which, according to Wikipedia Japan, is an adaptation of the most surrealist rakugo 落語 out there: A man, who has eaten a sakura seed, has a sakura tree grows on the top of his head. His neighbours make a fuss of holding a hanami or flower-viewing session on the top of his head and call his head 'Atamayama'. Find it all a heck of a bother, the man cuts off the tree, which opens a big hole in his head. Then rain falls and the hole in his head becomes a pond, and his neighbours come to fish in that pond. In the end, the man drowns himself in the pond of his head.

Quite surreal indeed. I wish to could get hold of Atamayama somewhere. His official website is here. The other creators among the members are:

• Arai Chie 荒井知恵

• Oyama Kei 大山慶

• Wada Atsushi 和田淳

• Nakata Ayaka 中田彩郁

Their works, as I learn from their profiles, seem non-mainstream. I do not have much time to translate the details but please do not hesitate to give me a shout if you recognize any of these names.

The critics are Nyugen Ilan, a French scholar specialized in animation, and Doi Nokuaki 土居伸彰, a Ph. D student specialized in animation at the graduate school of Tokyo University.