Complementing the solo animated feature entry Ghost Cat Anzu, another Japanese work will represent animation in the Short Film section of the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight sidebar: Extremely Short (Totemo mijikai), by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Kōji Yamamura (Mr. Head). Based on a short story by Hideo Furukawa, the project follows a man on a quest to find “the shortest thing in Tokyo” — the last breath of a dying man. The Directors Fortnight describes the film:
“Somewhere between calligraphy, embryology and words from beyond the grave, a convulsive poem wraps itself around the Japanese syllable ‘da’ — a breath that could just as well be the first as the last.”
In addition to writing the original prose poem, Furukawa recorded the narration for the film. The author and the animator’s collaboration was spearheaded by Michael Emmerich, UCLA’s Tadashi Yanai Professor of Japanese Literature. Emmerich is also director of the Yanai Initiative, a joint venture between UCLA and Japan’s Waseda University which aims to bring attention to contemporary Japanese writers. “This seemed like a way to get Japanese literature out there to reach audiences who wouldn’t otherwise encounter it, and to highlight independent animators who are doing really interesting work,” Emmerich said of the film project in an interview with the UCLA Humanities blog. “When professors teach literature and art, we’re really partnering with our students to try and transform the way we all experience those artworks. We want to learn to see them differently. Creating the chance for a work of literature to be reimagined through animation is just another way of doing that — inviting people to engage with the art in a new way.” Extremely Short is the first film in the planned series of “Bungaku Bideo” (Japanese for “literature videos”) commissioned by the Yanai Initiative. The second, based on a Japanese prose poem by Makoto Takayanagi, is already in development. https://vimeo.com/930134858
