Winter Days (2003)

Original title

冬の日

Directed by

Kihachirō Kawamoto

Genre

poetry

Country

Japan

Runtime

40 min

Rating

6.0 of 10 from 20 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

35 animators from around the world each created a short sequence for one stanza of a 17th century collaborative poem by Bashō. The film weaves these short vignettes together into a single visual poem with no dialogue. The animation styles range widely from puppetry to stop motion.

contemplativemeditativeepisodicdreamlikequietstylizedwhimsicalartistic

What happens

Winter Days (冬の日, Fuyu no Hi) is a 2003 Japanese anime film directed by Kihachirō Kawamoto. It is based on one of the renku (collaborative linked poems) in the 1684 collection of the same name by the 17th-century Japanese poet Bashō. The creation of the film followed the traditional collaborative nature of the source material – the visuals for each of the 36 stanzas were independently created by 35 different animators. As well as many Japanese animators, Kawamoto assembled leading names of animation from across the world. Each animator was asked to contribute at least 30 seconds to illustrate their stanza, and most of the sequences are under a minute (Yuri Norstein's, though, is nearly two minutes long). The released film consists of the 40-minute animation, followed by an hour-long 'Making of' documentary, including interviews with the animators. Winter Days won the Grand Prize of the Japan Media Arts Festival in 2003. Bashō's hokku, or opening verse, of the 36-verse poem: (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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