At the height of the Covid pandemic, my father, co-director Noel Williams and I, together with scholars and students of Japanology here in Tokyo, had ample opportunity to study and research a range of Japanese films, including a number of short Japanese animations.
Read MoreIn Animating Truth: Documentary and Visual Culture in the 21st Century, Nea Ehrlich discusses a growing body of works broadly called animated documentaries. For the purposes of this open-access monograph, Ehrlich employs Sheila Sofian’s definition of the form as “any animated film that deals with non-fiction material” (36), expands it beyond the cinematic space and considers the use of animation outside of the theatrical setting.
Read MoreThe Fall of 2022 marked the 9th year of running of The Factual Animation Film Festival (FAFF). Following the success of 2021, this time the festival maintained its hybrid format offering both in-person and online events. Those who found themselves in Berlin on September 24th, could attend a screening at local Z-inema moderated by Marina Belikova, one the festival’s producers.
Read MoreFlee (Jonas Poher Rasmussen, 2021) is an animated documentary that explores the nature of memory and trauma by taking the viewer on an emotional journey. It uses animation to present the memories of Amin Nawabi, an Afghan refugee credited under a pseudonym. Encouraged by his anonymity, he tells director Jonas Poher Rasmussen his story (Grobar 2021).
Read MoreThe development of animated documentaries has expanded the functions of animation art, including recording the culture and life of ethnic minority communities or particular social groups and conveying their voices. Animations like The Stitches Speak (Nina Sabnani, 2009) and They Call Us Maids: The Domestic Workers' Story (Leeds Animation Workshop, 2018) endeavoured to make animation content represent the subjects’ views more accurately.
Read MoreIn today’s visual culture, animation is at an interesting turning point, poised between fiction and fact, perhaps combining the two. We are increasingly confronted with ubiquitous animated images, videos, and gifs, for example, on smartphones, computers, in airplanes, doctors’ offices, schools, and many more, which are all used uncritically to represent or express real events, feelings, processes, and interactions.
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