Tribute to Japanese Animation: Puppets in Animation and Beyond: a Work by Tadahito Mochinaga and Tadanari Okamoto

A genuine pioneer in the genre, Tadahito Mochinaga (1919-1999) trained the next generation of animators, including Kihachirô Kawamoto. He brought us such notable works as Sambo’s Tiger Conquest, one of ten animated films he made between 1956 and 1959.

Tadanari Okamoto (1932-1990), one of the artists trained by Mochinaga, is a major figure in auteur animation in Japan. Starting in 1964, he produced more than forty films over a 25-year period, and his limitless imagination is known for having put a wide range of techniques, materials, and styles to the test.

"If I had to name one country with a true culture of animation, it would definitely be Japan." A seemingly obvious declaration made by French director Georges Lacroix in 1999, the year when the Annecy Festival celebrated Japanese animation for the very first time. Twenty years later the Festival pays homage to this truly singular cinematographic style through both a retrospective and a look to the future to reveal several hidden gems still relatively unknown in the West.

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