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|
| Festival Year |
Festival Section |
| 2011 |
The Birth of Anime: Pioneers of Japanese Animation |
| Film Title |
FUTATSU NO SEKAI |
| Alternative Title 1 |
[Due mondi] |
| Alternative Title 2 |
[Two Worlds] |
| Alternative Title 3 |
|
| Country |
Japan |
| Release Date |
1929 |
| Production Co. |
Yokohama Sinema Shokai |
| Director |
Yasuji Murata |
| Format |
|
Speed (fps) |
| 35mm |
|
18 |
| |
|
|
| Footage |
|
Time |
| 988 ft. |
|
15' |
| Archive Source |
National Film Center, Tokyo |
| |
|
| Print Notes |
Didascalie in giapponese, con sottotitoli in inglese / Japanese intertitles, with English subtitles. |
| Other Credits |
| anim: Yasuji Murata |
| |
| Program Notes |
| Aesop’s fables, with their animal characters and brief, pointed narratives conveying clear moral messages, constitute ideal material for animated shorts. In the United States, Paul Terry’s Aesop’s Fables straddled the silent and early sound eras, running from 1921 to 1933. Japanese animators too seized on the Greek writer’s sardonic stories, which had been known in Japan since the late 16th century, when they were introduced to the country by Portuguese missionaries. Sanae Yamamoto, the director of Ubasuteyama, had realized a version of the story of the Tortoise and the Hare entitled Kyoiku otogi manga: Usagi to kame in 1924. Two Worlds is a version of another of Aesop’s best-known fables, The Ant and the Grasshopper, contrasting the industrious ant with the idle grasshopper, and concluding that “He who sings in summer will cry in winter”. This tale, or its retelling by the French fabulist La Fontaine, also formed the basis for animations by George Méliès, Ladislas Starewitch, and Lotte Reiniger. -- ALEXANDER JACOBY & JOHAN NORDSTRÖM |
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