Winter Days

Although not as publicly renowned as his National Film and Television School contemporary Nick Park, Mark Baker has nonetheless garnered Oscar nominations for his animated short films The Hill Farm (1988), The Village (1993) and Jolly Roger (1998), and is widely regarded as one of the leading British animators to emerge since the 1970s. His work typically features a deceptively simple, almost childlike hand-drawn visual style, but this conceals a far more sophisticated, adult-oriented view of the world.

Born in London in 1959, Baker made 8mm animated films in his teens (including The King’s Jester, 1978), and studied animation at the West Surrey College of Art and Design, where he made The Three Knights (1982). He then spent a year animating television commercials for Richard Purdum Productions, after which he enrolled at the NFTS to study film animation. There, he spent much of the time making The Hill Farm almost single-handed. Dialogue-free, it depicts three very different groups making use of the same part of the countryside for farming, hunting and camping, and shows a vivid awareness of the essentially cyclical nature of country life. Completed in 1988, in addition to its Oscar nomination it won a BAFTA, the Grand Prix at the Annecy Animation Festival and many other awards – and was also highly praised by the great Russian animator Yuri Norstein.

After graduating in 1989, Baker worked as a freelance animator and director for various companies including TVC, Speedy Films, David Anderson Films and Pizazz Pictures. During this period he also worked on The Village, which Channel Four commissioned following widespread acclaim for The Hill Farm. Completed in 1993, it depicts life in a remote village whose inhabitants spend half the time trying to uncover each other’s dark secrets, and the rest ensuring that their own stay buried.

In 1994, Baker joined forces with fellow animation director Neville Astley to form production company Astley Baker (later renamed Astley Baker Davies with the addition of producer Phil Davies). In addition to more personal projects, they have created numerous commercials and title sequences, including Teenage Health Freak (Channel 4, 1993) and Sorry About Last Night (BBC, tx. 27/12/1995).
Jolly Roger (1998), a lively romp about a cowardly pirate, was the first of Baker’s films to make use of computer animation – though the artwork was originally hand-drawn on paper prior to scanning and digital manipulation. The 13-part BBC children’s series The Big Knights (2000), co-directed with Astley, returned to the territory of The Three Knights in its sending-up of traditional chivalric myths. Its vocal cast included Brian Blessed as Sir Morris, whose boisterous enthusiasm compensated for his lack of skill.

More recently, Baker and Astley have catered for even younger audiences in the BAFTA-winning Peppa Pig (2004-) and Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom (2007-). The first, about a cheeky piglet and her family, has been widely acclaimed as a model example of pre-school children’s animation, matching genuinely witty scripts to brightly-coloured, childlike designs that nonetheless unmistakably echo Baker’s earlier work. —Michael Brooke, BFI Screenonline

Jacobus-Willem (Co) Hoedeman was born in Amsterdam in 1940. After immigrating to Canada at age 25, he joined the National Film Board where he produced his first film, Oddball, in 1969. Since then, he has worked on over 20 productions, including a four-part series in which Ludovic the teddy bear discovers the seasons.

Hoedeman has earned over 80 international awards and honours throughout his career. The Sand Castle alone garnered 24 awards, including an Oscar in 1978 for best animated short. An animation wizard, Hoedeman creates works of great sensitivity. He’s an inquisitive and wonderfully inventive filmmaker who will use any technique to develop his all-encompassing vision of the world.

In Marianne’s Theatre, Hoedeman once again presents his unique vision without ever talking down to his young viewers. Given this candid approach, his films have always attracted and moved audiences of young and old alike. Indeed, his work is on par with the great classics of animation. —National Film Board of Canada

Born in 1925, from an early age Kihachiro Kawamoto was captivated by the art of doll and puppet making. After seeing the works of maestro Czech animator Jiri Trnka, he first became interested in stop motion puppet animation and during the 50s began working alongside Japan’s first stop motion animator, the legendary Tadahito Mochinaga. In 1958, he co-founded Shiba Productions to make commercial animation for television, but it was not until 1963, when he traveled to Prague to study puppet animation under Jiri Trnka for a year, that his puppets truly began to take on a life of their own. Trnka encouraged Kawamoto to draw on his own country’s rich cultural heritage in his work, and so Kawamoto returned from Czechoslovakia to make a series of highly individual, independently-produced artistic short works, beginning with Breaking of Branches is Forbidden (Hana-Ori) in 1968. Heavily influenced by the traditional aesthetics of Noh, Bunraku doll theatre and Kabuki, since the 70s his haunting puppet animations such as The Demon (Oni, 1972), Dojoji Temple (Dojoji, 1976) and House of Flame (Kataku, 1979) have won numerous prizes internationally. He has also produced cut out (kirigami) animations such as The Trip (Tabi, 1973) and A Poet’s Life (Shijin no Shogai, 1974). In 1990 he returned to Trnka’s studios in Prague to make Briar Rose, or The Sleeping Beauty. In Japan, he is best known for designing the puppets used in the long-running TV series based on the Chinese literary classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sangokushi, 1982-84), and later for The Story of Heike (Heike Monogatari, 1993-94). In 2003, he was responsible for overseeing the Winter Days (Fuyu no Hi) project, in which 35 of the world’s top animators each worked on a two-minute segment inspired by the renka couplets of celebrated haiku poet Matsuo Basho.

Yoichi Kotabe was born in Taipei, Taiwan on 15th September, 1936.

After World War II, went back to Japan and grew up in Hitachi, Ibaraki prefecture. Studied Japanese-style painting as a pupil of Seison Maeda at Tokyo University of the Arts from 1955.

After graduating from the university, joined Toei Animation Studio and had been worked with his master animators Akira Daikuhara, Mori yasuji, and Daikichiro Kusube since 1959.

Played a main role in key animatied drawings in such masterpieces of the studio as Little Prince and the Eight Headed Dragon (1963), Little Norse Prince Valiant (1968), Puss ‘n Boots (1969) followed by such early TV series titles as Ninja the Wonderboy (1964), Hustle Punch (1965).

In 1963, got married to Reiko Okuyama, his fellow animator.

Made his debut as animation director on the animated feature, Flying Phantom Ship (1969). Followed on Animal Treasure Island (1971) for which he created “waves” as well. In the same year, quitted Toei animation studio and transferred to A Production with Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki for the working Pippi Longstocking. Served as animation director in Panda! Go Panda! (1972), Red-Armored Suzunosuke (1972) although the project was broken.

With his mature technique, contributed greatly to the success of the TV series “The world masterpiece theater”, such films as HEIDI, From the Apennines To the Andes (1976) with Takahata, Miyazaki and his partner Okuyama, for both of which he served as character designer and animation director as well as Taro the Dragon Boy, for which he was requested to work on by Toei Animation Studio, in 1979.

Seeking to develop his own drawing stile, played main role in Chie the Brat of Tokyo Movie (1981). His credit title has been watched on the most Japanese masterpieces of animated films. In Nausica of the Valley of the Wind (1984) and The Grave of the Fireflies (1988) served in important scene though they were short nevertheless.

Since 1985, has belonged to Nintendo Co., Ltd. and joined the project of computer game creation of Super Mario Brothers. After quitted in 2007, he still continues with supervising Pokeon, both the feature films and TV series.

Worked on Winter Days in 2003 with Reiko Okuyama.

Since 2005, has been chairman of jury in “Hida International Animation Festival of Folktales and Fables”, and has been hold the post of lecturer at Toei Animation Institute since 2007.

Kotabe and Okuyama named their unit “Atelier REI” for “ANTELOPE”. —ANIDO

Yuriy Norshteyn was born in a Jewish family in the village of Andreyevka, Penza Oblast, during his parents’ World War II evacuation. He grew up in the Maryina Roshcha suburb of Moscow. After studying at an art school, Norshteyn initially found work at a furniture factory. Then he finished a two-year animation course and found employment at studio Soyuzmultfilm in 1961. The first film that he participated in as an animator was Who Said “Meow”? (1962).

After working as an animation artist in some fifty films, Norshteyn got the chance to direct his own. In 1968 he debuted with 25th October, the First Day, sharing directorial credit with Arkadiy Tyurin. The film used the artwork of 1920s-era Soviet artists Nathan Altman and Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin.

The next film in which he had a major role was The Battle of Kerzhenets (1971), a co-production with Russian animation director Ivan Ivanov-Vano under whose direction Norshteyn had earlier worked on 1969’s Times of the Year.

Throughout the 1970s Norshteyn continued to work as an animator in many films (a more complete list can be found at IMDB), and also directed several. As the decade progressed his animation style became ever more sophisticated, looking less like flat cut-outs and more like smoothly-moving paintings or sophisticated pencil sketches.

Norshteyn uses a special technique in his animation, involving multiple glass planes to give his animation a three-dimensional look. The camera is placed at the top looking down on a series of glass planes about a meter deep (one every 25–30 cm). The individual glass planes can move horizontally as well as toward and away from the camera (to give the effect of a character moving closer or further away).

For many years he has collaborated with his wife, the artist Franchesca Yarbusova, and the cinematographer Aleksandr Zhukovskiy.

Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, Norshteyn’s animations were showered with both state and international awards. Then, in a bitter twist of irony, he was fired from Soyuzmultfilm in 1985 for working too slowly on his latest film, a (presumably) feature-length adaptation of Gogol’s Overcoat. By that time he had been working on it with his usual small team of three people for two years and had finished ten minutes.

In April 1993, Norshteyn and three other leading animators (Fyodor Khitruk, Andrey Khrzhanovsky, and Edward Nazarov) founded the Animation School and Studio (SHAR Studio) in Russia. The Russian Cinema Committee is among the share-holders of the studio.

To this day, Norshteyn is still working on The Overcoat—his ardent perfectionism has earned him the nickname “The Golden Snail”. The project has met numerous financial troubles and false starts, but Norshteyn has said that it currently has reliable funding from several sources, both from within and outside of Russia. At least 25 minutes have been completed to date. A couple of short, low-resolution clips have been made available to the public. The first 20 minutes of the film have also toured among various exhibits of Norshteyn’s work in Russian museums. The full film is expected to be 65 minutes long.

Norshteyn wrote an essay for a book by Giannalberto Bendazzi about the pinscreen animator Alexandre Alexeïeff titled Alexeieff – Itinerary of a Master.

In 2005, he released a Russian-language book titled Snow on the Grass. Fragments of a Book. Lectures about the Art of Animation, featuring a number of lectures that he gave about the art of animation. That same year, he was invited as “guest animator” to work on Kihachiro Kawamoto’s puppet-animated feature film, The Book of the Dead.

On August 10, 2008, the full version of the book Snow on the Grass was released (the “incomplete” 2005 book was 248-pages). The book, which was printed in the Czech Republic and funded by Sberbank, consists of two tomes, 620 pages and 1700 color illustrations. The studio stopped working on The Overcoat for nearly a year while Norshteyn worked to release the book. —wikipedia

Břetislav Pojar (born October 7, 1923) is a puppeteer, animator and director of short and feature films.

Born in Sušice, Czechoslovakia, Pojar started his career in the late 1940s with his work on The Story of the Bass Cello (1949) based on the story by Anton Chekhov and directed by master Czech puppet animator Jiří Trnka. Pojar served as a puppeteer under his mentor Trnka. Pojar compiled an extensive body of work as a director and animator in Czechoslovakia, where he made films in both puppet animation to the more common stop motion animation.

In the mid-1960s, Pojar emigrated to Canada, where he began a long collaboration with the National Film Board. His Canadian work is some of his best known, and it has won awards at prestigious international film festivals.

Pojar’s work is characterized by strong social commentary, such as in Balablok, where armies of small circle- and square-shaped beings war with each other until they are all wounded into indistinguishable shapes. Often, Pojar’s shorts contain little or no spoken dialogue.

More recently, Pojar moved back to the Czech Republic in order to co-direct the collaborative animated feature film Fimfárum 2 (based on the stories of Jan Werich), which was released in 2006. —Wikipedia

Isao Takahata (born October 29, 1935) is one of the most famous directors of anime, or Japanese animated films.

Born in Ujiyamada (now Ise), Mie prefecture, Japan, he is a long-term colleague of Miyazaki Hayao and co-head at Studio Ghibli. His four animated films at Studio Ghibli have spanned a remarkable range of genres: war-film (Grave of the Fireflies), romantic drama (Only Yesterday), comedy (My Neighbors the Yamadas) and ecological adventure (Pom-Poko). Of these Grave of the Fireflies, in particular, is widely considered among the greatest animated films ever made.

Graduating from the University of Tokyo in 1959, Takahata joined the newly-created Toei Douga animation company where a short time later he met Miyazaki, and also directed his first feature film Horus: Prince of the Sun. Ostracized within the company after the financial failure of the film (despite its artistic success), he and Miyazaki left in order to work together, and collaborated on many other films. —filmbug