A Creative Animation Tells the Story of Maximilien Robespierre, One of the Most Influential Figures of the French Revolution

in Animation, Art, Fashion, History | January 13th, 2023

Robe­spierre is an immor­tal fig­ure not because he reigned supreme over the Rev­o­lu­tion for a few months, but because he was the mouth­piece of its purest and most trag­ic dis­course.

                                 — François Furet, Inter­pret­ing the French Rev­o­lu­tion

 

Cal Arts ani­ma­tion stu­dent Michelle Cheng’s char­ac­ter design primer, above, draws atten­tion to the many hats an ani­ma­tor must be pre­pared to wear when bring­ing to life a fig­ure who actu­al­ly exist­ed:

Artist…

Researcher…

Cos­tume design­er…

Hair­styl­ist…

Psy­chol­o­gist…

Her choice of Max­im­i­lien Robe­spierre, one of the most influ­en­tial fig­ures of the French Rev­o­lu­tion, sug­gests that Cheng enjoys a chal­lenge.

As his­to­ri­an Peter McPhee writes in The Robe­spierre Prob­lem: An Intro­duc­tion:

Was Robe­spierre the first mod­ern dic­ta­tor, ici­ly fanat­i­cal, an obses­sive who used his polit­i­cal pow­er to try to impose his rigid ide­al of a land of Spar­tan ‘virtue’? Or was he a prin­ci­pled, self-abne­gat­ing vision­ary, the great rev­o­lu­tion­ary mar­tyr who, with his Jacobin allies, suc­ceed­ed in lead­ing the French Rev­o­lu­tion and the Repub­lic to safe­ty in the face of over­whelm­ing mil­i­tary odds?

Cheng believes an ani­ma­tor’s first job is to under­stand any giv­en character’s role in the larg­er sto­ry, and her research sug­gests that “there is nev­er just one sto­ry.”

In the end, ani­ma­tors make choic­es based on the nar­ra­tive they wish to push, enlist­ing palettes and styles that will sup­port their favored approach.

Cheng went into this assign­ment per­ceiv­ing Robe­spierre to be “a prime exam­ple of sit­u­a­tion­al irony, a fanat­i­cal dic­ta­tor who had sent hun­dreds of peo­ple to the guil­lo­tine only to be guil­lotined him­self in the end.”

This, she read­i­ly admits, is a two-dimen­sion­al under­stand­ing.

Though he only lived to thir­ty-six, the man evolved. Robe­spierre, the sym­bol of the Reign of Ter­ror, is dis­tinct from Robe­spierre the indi­vid­ual cit­i­zen.

This dual­i­ty led her to con­coct a range of Robe­spier­res — evil, good, and neu­tral.

A not par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­tin­guished-look­ing fel­low, he was wide­ly acknowl­edged to be fas­tid­i­ous about his appear­ance.

All three ani­mat­ed char­ac­ters are garbed in the neo­clas­si­cal fash­ion typ­i­cal of a pro­gres­sive gen­tle­man of the peri­od — shirt, breech­es, stock­ings, waist­coat, coat, a lacy cra­vat, and a curled wig. 

Cheng, in con­sul­ta­tion with fel­low Cal Arts ani­ma­tor Janelle Feng, equipped the “evil” ver­sion with an omi­nous, fig­ure-con­ceal­ing black cloak lined in blood red. Angles and points are empha­sized, the face draws on his oppo­nents’ sin­is­ter descrip­tions of his habit­u­al expres­sions, and sub­tle nods to punk and Goth cater to mod­ern sen­si­bil­i­ties.

The “good” ver­sion employs rosy Roco­co hues to lean into the Robe­spierre his friends and fam­i­ly knew — a poet who loved his pet pigeons.

His­to­ry pre­vents Cheng from ditch­ing his sig­na­ture wig entire­ly, but she grant­ed her­self some lee­way, soft­en­ing it for a more nat­ur­al look.

This Robe­spierre is as dreamy as any Miyaza­ki hero.

Between these two poles is the “neu­tral” Robe­spierre, per­haps the most chal­leng­ing to depict.

Feng took the lead on this one, seek­ing to strike a bal­ance between his report­ed­ly unpre­pos­sess­ing appear­ance and his rev­o­lu­tion­ary fire.

She retained the striped coat of his most icon­ic por­trait, but updat­ed it to a cool green palette. His nick­name — the Incor­rupt­ible —  is embod­ied in his firm com­port­ment.

The video draws to a close with a review of the var­i­ous ways Robe­spierre has been depict­ed in art and film over the years, a vivid reminder of Cheng’s asser­tion that “there is nev­er just one sto­ry.”

See more of Michelle Cheng’s ani­ma­tions on her lemon­choly YouTube chan­nel.

See more of Janelle Feng’s French Rev­o­lu­tion era designs here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

14,000 Free Images from the French Rev­o­lu­tion Now Avail­able Online

Enter a Dig­i­tized Col­lec­tion of 38,000 Pam­phlets & Peri­od­i­cals From the French Rev­o­lu­tion

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch Restored Versions of Classic Fleischer Cartoons on Youtube, Featuring Betty Boop, Koko the Clown & Others

in Animation, Film, History | December 30th, 2022

Quite a few gen­er­a­tions of Amer­i­can chil­dren have by now grown up know­ing the names of Max and Dave Fleis­ch­er — albeit know­ing even bet­ter the names of the char­ac­ters they ani­mat­ed, like Bet­ty Boop, Pop­eye the Sailor, and Super­man. The kids who first thrilled to Max Fleis­cher’s ear­ly “Out of the Inkwell” series, which he start­ed in the late nine­teen-tens and con­tin­ued into the late nine­teen-twen­ties, would nat­u­ral­ly have seen them in a movie the­ater. But most of us under the age of eighty would have received our intro­duc­tion to the live­ly, whim­si­cal, and often bizarre world of the broth­ers Fleis­ch­er through the tele­vi­sion, a medi­um hun­gry for car­toons prac­ti­cal­ly since its incep­tion.

Now view­ers of all ages can enjoy Fleis­ch­er car­toons on Youtube, and in new­ly restored form at that. “The Fab­u­lous Fleis­ch­er Car­toons Restored team is ded­i­cat­ed to pre­serv­ing Fleis­cher’s films by restor­ing them from orig­i­nal prints and neg­a­tives,” writes Boing Boing’s Rusty Blazen­hoff, adding that “Adam Sav­age’s Test­ed vis­it­ed the Black­hawk Films scan­ning facil­i­ty in Cal­i­for­nia and spoke with restora­tion expert Steve Stanch­field about the process of bring­ing these clas­sic films back to life.”

The charm of Fleis­ch­er car­toons may still feel effort­less a cen­tu­ry after their cre­ation, but any­one famil­iar with ani­ma­tion knows how painstak­ing that cre­ation would have been; by the same token, bring­ing the sur­viv­ing films back to pris­tine con­di­tion is a more com­pli­cat­ed job than most view­ers would imag­ine.

The cur­rent offer­ings on Fab­u­lous Fleis­ch­er Car­toons Restored’s chan­nel include Bet­ty Boop and Pudgy in “Hap­py You and Mer­ry Me,” Bim­bo the Dog in “Teacher’s Pest,” and even the short but lav­ish Tech­ni­col­or fan­ta­sy “Some­where in Dream­land,” which bright­ened up the grim days of the Great Depres­sion for all who saw it. The restor­ers have also worked their mag­ic on Fleis­ch­er hol­i­day car­toons like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Rein­deer” and “Christ­mas Comes But Once a Year” (includ­ing with the lat­ter a side-by-side com­par­i­son of the new restora­tion with the exist­ing six­teen-mil­lime­ter DVD print). Yes, Christ­mas has just passed, but it will come again next year, and bring with it the lat­est gen­er­a­tion’s chance to be delight­ed by Fleis­ch­er car­toons crisper and more vivid than the ones with which any of us grew up.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch a Sur­re­al 1933 Ani­ma­tion of Snow White, Fea­tur­ing Cab Cal­loway & Bet­ty Boop: It’s Ranked as the 19th Great­est Car­toon of All Time

The Harlem Jazz Singer Who Inspired Bet­ty Boop: Meet the Orig­i­nal Boop-Oop-a-Doop, “Baby Esther”

The Orig­i­nal 1940s Super­man Car­toon: Watch 17 Clas­sic Episodes Free Online

The Trick That Made Ani­ma­tion Real­is­tic: Watch a Short His­to­ry of Roto­scop­ing

Einstein’s The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Explained in One of the Ear­li­est Sci­ence Films Ever Made (1923)

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made: 1939 Doc­u­men­tary Gives an Inside Look

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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NYC’s Iconic Punk Club CBGBs Comes Alive in a Brilliant Short Animation, Using David Godlis’ Photos of Patti Smith, The Ramones & More

in Animation, Life, Music, Photography | December 19th, 2022

Atten­tion young artists: don’t let your day job kill your dream.

In the mid-70s, David Godlis kept body and soul togeth­er by work­ing as an assis­tant in a pho­tog­ra­phy stu­dio, but his ambi­tion was to join the ranks of his street pho­tog­ra­ph­er idols — Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Gar­ry Wino­grand, and Lee Fried­lan­der, to name a few.

As Godlis told Ser­gio Burns of Street Pho­tog­ra­phy, “the 60’s and 70’s were great for pho­tog­ra­phers:”

The 35mm cam­era was kind of like the new afford­able tech­nol­o­gy of the day. Like hav­ing an iPhone you couldn’t talk on. Cool to look at, fun to use. Pho­tog­ra­phy was only just begin­ning to be con­sid­ered an art form. Which left plen­ty of room for invent­ing your­self. The movie Blow-Up showed off the kind of cool lifestyle that could be had. Pho­tog­ra­phy seemed both adven­tur­ous and artis­tic. There were obvi­ous­ly a mil­lion career paths for pho­tog­ra­phers back then. From the sub­lime to the ridicu­lous. But plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ties to exper­i­ment and find your own way.

Still, it’s a tough propo­si­tion, being a street pho­tog­ra­ph­er whose day job gob­bles all avail­able light.

Or rather, it was until Godlis blun­dered into New York’s late, great punk club, CBGB’s, and resolved to “take street pic­tures at night with­out a flash, and make all these peo­ple look as inter­est­ing as a Ramones’ song sounds.”

In broth­ers Lewie and Noah Klosters’ won­der­ful hybrid ani­ma­tion, Shots in the Dark with David Godlis, we see things fall into place as Godlis exper­i­ments with expo­sure times, dark­room chem­i­cal ratios, paper grade, and the street­lights lin­ing the Bow­ery.

He wound up with a brac­ing per­son­al style…and some of the most icon­ic shots in rock his­to­ry.

The Klosters, who were grant­ed full access to Godlis’ dig­i­tal archive (a request Lewie Klosters likened to “ask­ing the pres­i­dent for the nuke codes”), breathe extra life into this bygone scene by hand-cut­ting and pup­peteer­ing images of such stal­warts as The Ramones, Pat­ti Smith, Tele­vi­sion, Richard Hell, Talk­ing Heads, Alex Chilton, and Blondie.

Those who inhab­it­ed the scene in an off­stage capac­i­ty are also giv­en their due, from the door atten­dant and the bar­tender with the Dee Dee Ramone hair­cut to own­er Hilly Kristal, his dog, and the cool kid patrons pack­ing the leg­en­dar­i­ly filthy estab­lish­ment.

This seems to be a reflec­tion of the irre­press­ible, and end­less­ly curi­ous Godlis’ world view. As Lewie, who had 16 hours of audio inter­view to draw from, told the Vimeo blog’s Ina Pira:

Ken Burns could make his next 20 hour doc­u­men­tary on Godlis alone. If you ever bump into him, and you will — he’s every­where all at once in the Vil­lage, ask him about some of our favorite sto­ries that hit the cut­ting room floor: Jager at the Revlon Bar, the bum piss­ing out the win­dow, when he was held at gun­point in Boston, about Merv and the Heinekens, and see­ing Bob Dylan win­dow shop­ping. Just to name a few.

The final moments of Shots in the Dark with David Godlis are bit­ter­sweet. The film­mak­ers’ sub­ject sums it up best:

 Noth­ing lasts for­ev­er, but you also have to know what will be of inter­est when it’s gone.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

CBGB’s Hey­day: Watch The Ramones, The Dead Boys, Bad Brains, Talk­ing Heads & Blondie Per­form Live (1974–1982)

Pat­ti Smith Plays Songs by The Ramones, Rolling Stones, Lou Reed & More on CBGB’s Clos­ing Night (2006)

AC/DC Plays a Short Gig at CBGB in 1977: Hear Met­al Being Played on Punk’s Hal­lowed Grounds

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Avant-Garde Animated Films of Walter Ruttmann, Still Strikingly Fresh a Century Later (1921–1925)

in Animation, Film | December 19th, 2022

Though regard­ed by many as near-impos­si­bly dif­fi­cult to judge, avant-garde art can be put to its own test of time: does it still feel new ten, twen­ty, fifty, a hun­dred years lat­er? Now that most of Wal­ter Ruttman­n’s short ani­mat­ed films have passed the cen­tu­ry mark, we can with some con­fi­dence say they pass that test. A few years ago, we fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture his Licht­spiel Opus 1, the first avant-garde ani­ma­tion ever made. Now, with this playlist, you can watch it and sev­er­al of its suc­ces­sors, which togeth­er date from the years 1921 through 1925.

“A trained archi­tect and painter,” writes Car­toon Brew’s Amid Ami­di, Ruttmann “worked as a graph­ic design­er pri­or to becom­ing involved with film. He fought in WWI, suf­fered a ner­vous break­down and spent time recov­er­ing in a sana­to­ri­um.”

It was after that har­row­ing expe­ri­ence that he plunged into the still-new medi­um of ani­ma­tion, and he evi­dent­ly brought the com­bined aes­thet­ic refine­ment of archi­tec­ture, paint­ing, and graph­ic design with him. His four-part Opus series (top) shows us “how abstract ani­ma­tion doesn’t become dat­ed as quick­ly as rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al ani­ma­tion because its cre­ation is not pred­i­cat­ed upon the styl­is­tic trap­pings of its era.”

This also holds true for Ruttman­n’s adver­tis­ing work, includ­ing the three-minute Der Sieger just above. Por­tray­ing “the strug­gles of a durable Excel­sior tire that climbs entire build­ings and wraps itself around the sun to pro­tect it from tri­an­gu­lar shapes with mean-look­ing faces,” as this sum­ma­ry of a talk by film schol­ar Michael Cow­an puts it, the short “is a per­fect exam­ple tes­ti­fy­ing to how a lot of avant-garde artists — con­trary to pop­u­lar belief — nev­er lost sight for a cer­tain applic­a­bil­i­ty of their art in that their con­cepts of form also implied a cer­tain idea of ‘form­ing’: the poten­tial to take dif­fer­ent shapes through mor­ph­ing, to find order­ing prin­ci­ples, or even to com­mu­ni­cate the ide­o­log­i­cal impe­tus of form­ing a nation­al body.”

That last holds espe­cial­ly true for Ruttman­n’s “lat­er work with­in the con­text of Nation­al Social­ism”: an unfor­tu­nate-sound­ing con­text, though it must be not­ed that he dis­pleased Adolf Hitler enough to be per­son­al­ly removed by the dic­ta­tor from the project that would become Leni Riefen­stahl’s Tri­umph of the Will. His artis­tic phi­los­o­phy may have been com­pat­i­ble with sell­ing tires, but it seems not to have served the much more bom­bas­tic and lit­er­al form of Nazi pro­pa­gan­da. That is, of course, to Ruttman’s cred­it, as is the fresh­ness his ear­ly ani­ma­tions still exude these hun­dred or so years lat­er. As Amid writes, “the graph­ic forms used in his film are the same build­ing blocks — raw and unadorned — used by artists today.” But how many artists today use them with such ele­gance?

Relat­ed con­tent:

The First Avant-Garde Ani­ma­tion: Watch Wal­ter Ruttmann’s Licht­spiel Opus 1 (1921)

The First Mas­ter­pieces of Abstract Film: Hans Richter’s Rhyth­mus 21 (1921) & Viking Eggeling’s Sym­phonie Diag­o­nale (1924)

Opti­cal Poems by Oskar Fischinger, the Avant-Garde Ani­ma­tor Despised by Hitler, Dissed by Dis­ney

The Exper­i­men­tal Abstract Films of Pio­neer­ing Amer­i­can Ani­ma­tor Mary Ellen Bute (1930s-1950s)

Spheres Dance to the Music of Bach, Per­formed by Glenn Gould: An Ani­ma­tion from 1969

The Gold­en Age of Berlin Comes to Life in the Clas­sic, Avant-Garde Film, Berlin: Sym­pho­ny of a Metrop­o­lis (1927)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How Will AI Change the World?: A Captivating Animation Explores the Promise & Perils of Artificial Intelligence

in Animation, Artificial Intelligence, Technology | December 13th, 2022

Many of us can remem­ber a time when arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence was wide­ly dis­missed as a sci­ence-fic­tion­al pipe dream unwor­thy of seri­ous research and invest­ment. That time, safe to say, has gone. “With­in a decade,” writes blog­ger Samuel Ham­mond, the devel­op­ment of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence could bring about a world in which “ordi­nary peo­ple will have more capa­bil­i­ties than a CIA agent does today. You’ll be able to lis­ten in on a con­ver­sa­tion in an apart­ment across the street using the sound vibra­tions off a chip bag” (as pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.) “You’ll be able to replace your face and voice with those of some­one else in real time, allow­ing any­one to social­ly engi­neer their way into any­thing.”

And that’s the benign part. “Death-by-kamikaze drone will sur­pass mass shoot­ings as the best way to enact a lurid revenge. The courts, mean­while, will be flood­ed with law­suits because who needs to pay attor­ney fees when your phone can file an air­tight motion for you?” All this “will be enough to make the sta­blest genius feel schiz­o­phrenic.” But “it doesn’t have to be this way. We can fight AI fire with AI fire and adapt our prac­tices along the way.” You can hear a con­sid­ered take on how we might man­age that in the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed video above, adapt­ed from an inter­view with com­put­er sci­en­tist Stu­art Rus­sell, author of the pop­u­lar text­book Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: A Mod­ern Approach as well as Human Com­pat­i­ble: Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and the Prob­lem of Con­trol.

“The prob­lem with the way we build AI sys­tems now is we give them a fixed objec­tive,” Rus­sell says. “The algo­rithms require us to spec­i­fy every­thing in the objec­tive.” Thus an AI charged with de-acid­i­fy­ing the oceans could quite plau­si­bly come to the solu­tion of set­ting off “a cat­alyt­ic reac­tion that does that extreme­ly effi­cient­ly, but con­sumes a quar­ter of the oxy­gen in the atmos­phere, which would appar­ent­ly cause us to die fair­ly slow­ly and unpleas­ant­ly over the course of sev­er­al hours.” The key to this prob­lem, Rus­sell argues, is to pro­gram in a cer­tain lack of con­fi­dence: “It’s when you build machines that believe with cer­tain­ty that they have the objec­tive, that’s when you get sort of psy­cho­path­ic behav­ior, and I think we see the same thing in humans.”

A less exis­ten­tial but more com­mon wor­ry has to do with unem­ploy­ment. Full AI automa­tion of the ware­house tasks still per­formed by humans, for exam­ple, “would, at a stroke, elim­i­nate three or four mil­lion jobs.” Rus­sell here turns to E. M. Forster, who in the 1909 sto­ry “The Machine Stops” envi­sions a future in which “every­one is entire­ly machine-depen­dent,” with lives not unlike the e‑mail- and Zoom meet­ing-filled ones we lead today. The nar­ra­tive plays out as a warn­ing that “if you hand over the man­age­ment of your civ­i­liza­tion to machines, you then lose the incen­tive to under­stand it your­self or to teach the next gen­er­a­tion how to under­stand it.” The mind, as the say­ing goes, is a won­der­ful ser­vant but a ter­ri­ble mas­ter. The same is true of machines — and even truer, we may well find, of mechan­i­cal minds.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Dis­cov­er DALL‑E, the Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Artist That Lets You Cre­ate Sur­re­al Art­work

Experts Pre­dict When Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Will Take Our Jobs: From Writ­ing Essays, Books & Songs, to Per­form­ing Surgery and Dri­ving Trucks

Sci-Fi Writer Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964: Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, Instan­ta­neous Glob­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Remote Work, Sin­gu­lar­i­ty & More

Stephen Fry Voic­es a New Dystopi­an Short Film About Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence & Sim­u­la­tion The­o­ry: Watch Escape

Stephen Hawk­ing Won­ders Whether Cap­i­tal­ism or Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Will Doom the Human Race

Hunter S. Thomp­son Chill­ing­ly Pre­dicts the Future, Telling Studs Terkel About the Com­ing Revenge of the Eco­nom­i­cal­ly & Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly “Obso­lete” (1967)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Story of Akiko Takakura, One of the Last Survivors of the Hiroshima Bombing, Told in a Short Animated Documentary

in Animation, Art, History, Life | November 21st, 2022

André Hör­mann and Anna Samo’s short ani­ma­tion, Obon, opens on a serene scene — a qui­et for­est, anda red torii gate fram­ing moon­light on the water.

But then we notice that the water is choked with bod­ies, vic­tims of the bomb­ing of Hiroshi­ma.

Akiko Takaku­ra, whose rem­i­nis­cences inspired the film, arrived for work at the Hiroshi­ma Bank just min­utes before the Eno­la Gay dropped the atom­ic bomb “Lit­tle Boy” over the city, killing some 80,000 instant­ly.

Takaku­ra-san, who had been clean­ing desks and moon­ing over a cute co-work­er with her fel­low junior bank employ­ee Sato­mi Usa­mi when the bomb hit, was one of the 10 peo­ple with­in a radius of 500 meters from ground zero to have sur­vived .

(Usa­mi-san, who fought her way out of the wreck­age with her friend’s assis­tance, lat­er suc­cumbed to her injuries.)

Ani­ma­tor Samo, whose style harkens to tra­di­tion­al wood­cuts, based her depic­tion of the hor­rors con­fronting the two young women when they emerge from the bank on the draw­ings of sur­vivors:

With­out craft or artistry to hide behind, the draw­ings told sto­ries unfil­tered, made me hear shak­ing voic­es say­ing: this is what hap­pened to us.

Takaku­ra-san attempt­ed to cap­ture one such image in a 1974 draw­ing:

I saw one corpse with burn­ing fin­gers. Her hand was raised and her fin­gers were on fire, blue flames burn­ing them down to stumps. A light char­coal-col­ored liq­uid was ooz­ing onto the ground. When I think of those hands cradling beloved chil­dren and turn­ing the pages of books, even now my heart fills with a deep sad­ness.

Takaku­ra-san was 84 when writer/director Hör­mann trav­eled to Japan to meet with his­to­ri­ans, nuclear sci­en­tists, peace researchers and elder­ly sur­vivors of the atom­ic bomb. Over the course of three 90 minute ses­sions, he noticed a qual­i­ty that set her apart from the oth­er sur­vivors he inter­viewed :

…the sto­ries that she told me there was always a glim­mer­ing light of hope in the midst of all of the hor­ror. For me, it was a sigh of relief to have this moment of hope and peace, it was beau­ti­ful. It is impos­si­ble to just tell a sto­ry that is all pain. Ms. Takakura’s sto­ry was a way for me to look at this dark piece of his­to­ry and not be emo­tion­al­ly crushed.

Her per­spec­tive informs the film, which trav­els back­ward and for­ward through­out time.

We meet her as a tiny, kimono-clad old woman in mod­ern day Japan, whose face now bears a strong resem­blance to her father’s. Her back is criss­crossed with scars of the 102 lac­er­a­tions she sus­tained on the morn­ing of August 6, 1945.

We then see her as a lit­tle girl, whose father, “a typ­i­cal man from Mei­ji times, tough and strict,” is unable to express affec­tion toward his daugh­ter.

This changed when the 19-year-old was reunit­ed with her fam­i­ly after the bomb­ing, and her father asked for for­give­ness while ten­der­ly bathing her burned hands.

To Hör­mann this “tiny moment of hap­pi­ness” and con­nec­tion is at the heart of Obon.

Ani­ma­tor Samo won­ders if Takaku­ra-san would have achieved “peace with the world that was so cru­el to her” if her father hadn’t tend­ed to her wound­ed hands so gen­tly:

What does an act of love in a moment of despair mean? Can it allow you to you go on with a nor­mal life, drink tea and cook rice? If you have seen so much death, can you still look peo­ple in the eyes, get mar­ried and give birth to chil­dren?

The film takes its title from the annu­al Bud­dhist hol­i­day to com­mem­o­rate ances­tors and pay respect to the dead.

As an old woman, Takaku­ra-san tends to the fam­i­ly altar, then trav­els with younger cel­e­brants to the riv­er for the release of the paper lanterns that are believed to guide the spir­its back to their world at the festival’s end.

The face that appears in her glow­ing lantern is both her father’s and a reflec­tion of her own.

Read an inter­view with Akiko Takaku­ra here.

To Chil­dren Who Don’t Know the Atom­ic Bomb

by Akiko Takaku­ra

8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945,
a very clear morn­ing.
The moth­er prepar­ing her baby’s milk,
the old man water­ing his pot­ted plants,
the old woman offer­ing flow­ers at her Bud­dhist altar,
the young boy eat­ing break­fast,
the father start­ing work at his com­pa­ny,
the thou­sands walk­ing to work on the street,
all died.
Not know­ing an atom­ic bomb would be dropped,
they lived as usu­al.
Sud­den­ly, a flash.
“Ah ~
Just as they saw it,
peo­ple in hous­es were shoved over and smashed.
Peo­ple walk­ing on streets were blown away.
Peo­ple were burned-faces, arms, legs-all over.
Peo­ple were killed, all over
the city of Hiroshi­ma
by a sin­gle bomb.

Those who died.
A hun­dred? No. A thou­sand? No. Ten thou­sand?
No, many, many more than that.
More peo­ple than we can count
died, speech­less,
know­ing noth­ing.
Oth­ers suf­fered ter­ri­ble burns,


hor­rif­ic injuries.
Some were thrown so hard
their stom­achs ripped open,
their spines broke.
Whole bod­ies filled with glass shards.
Clothes dis­ap­peared,
burned and tat­tered.

Fires came right after the explo­sion.
Hiroshi­ma engulfed in flames.
Every­one flee­ing, not know­ing where
they were or where to go.
Every­one bare­foot,
cry­ing tears of anger and grief,
hair stick­ing up, look­ing like Ashu­ra*,
they ran on bro­ken glass, smashed roofs
along a long, wide road of fire.


Blood flowed.
Burned skin peeled and dan­gled.
Whirl­winds of fire raged here and there.
Hun­dreds, thou­sands of fire balls
30-cen­time­ters across
whirled right at us.
It was hard to breathe in the flames,
hard to see in the smoke.

What will become of us?
Those who sur­vived, injured and burned,
shout­ed, “Help! Help!” at the top of their lungs.
One woman walk­ing on the road
died and then
her fin­gers burned,
a blue flame short­en­ing them like can­dles,
a gray liq­uid trick­ling down her palms
and drip­ping to the ground.
Whose fin­gers were those?
More than 50 years lat­er,
I remem­ber that blue flame,
and my heart near­ly bursts
with sor­row.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The “Shad­ow” of a Hiroshi­ma Vic­tim, Etched into Stone Steps, Is All That Remains After 1945 Atom­ic Blast

This 392-Year-Old Bon­sai Tree Sur­vived the Hiroshi­ma Atom­ic Blast & Still Flour­ish­es Today: The Pow­er of Resilience

Haunt­ing Unedit­ed Footage of the Bomb­ing of Nagasa­ki (1945)

Watch Chill­ing Footage of the Hiroshi­ma & Nagasa­ki Bomb­ings in Restored Col­or

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A Tour of Studio Ghibli’s Brand New Theme Park in Japan, Which Re-Creates the Worlds of Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, and Other Classics

in Animation, Travel | November 16th, 2022

Two and a half years ago, we fea­tured the con­cept art for Stu­dio Ghi­b­li’s theme park here on Open Cul­ture, and just two weeks ago it opened its doors. Locat­ed on the grounds of Expo 2005 in Japan’s Aichi Pre­fec­ture (a three- to four-hour train trip west from Tokyo, or a two-hour train trip east of Osa­ka), Ghi­b­li Park com­pris­es sev­er­al themed areas like the Grand Ware­house, the Hill of Youth, and Don­doko For­est. Just hear­ing those names sure­ly fires up the imag­i­na­tions of many a Ghi­b­li fan, even before they hear about the park’s vis­i­tor-ready recon­struc­tions of every­thing from Cas­tle in the Sky’s ruined gar­dens to Whis­per of the Heart’s antique shop to My Neigh­bor Totoro’s Cat­bus.

“Unlike Dis­ney­land, Ghi­b­li Park does not fea­ture roller coast­ers or rides,” writes My Mod­ern Met’s Margheri­ta Cole. “Instead, it wel­comes vis­i­tors to immerse them­selves in life-size sets that are har­mo­nious­ly inte­grat­ed with nature.” You can get a sense of how this con­cept has been exe­cut­ed in the fif­teen-minute video at the top of the post from Japan-based trav­el vlog­gers Didi and Bryan.

In it, they pass through the afore­men­tioned spaces as well as oth­ers includ­ing Cin­e­ma Ori­on, which screens ten short films once only view­able at the Ghi­b­li Muse­um, and the Siberia milk stand, which offers the epony­mous sponge cake from The Wind Ris­es, Ghi­b­li mas­ter­mind Hayao Miyaza­k­i’s final ani­mat­ed fea­ture — or rather, his penul­ti­mate ani­mat­ed fea­ture.

The repeat­ed­ly un-retired Miyaza­ki returned to the stu­dio in 2016 to begin a film called How Do You Live?. Though the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic slowed down its pro­duc­tion by forc­ing him and his col­lab­o­ra­tors to work from home, it seems not to have thrown the new theme park’s con­struc­tion far off track. In three years’ time, Cole writes, “Ghi­b­li Park will open its last two sec­tions — Mononoke no sato (‘Mononoke Vil­lage’) and Majo no tani (‘Val­ley of the Witch’) — which are ded­i­cat­ed to the films Princess Mononoke and Kik­i’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice, respec­tive­ly. There may even be a future ride in store, as some of the con­cept art appears to depict spin­ning teacups inspired by Kik­i’s cat Jiji.” That will require care­ful design­ing: a cer­tain oth­er ani­ma­tion stu­dio with long-stand­ing theme parks has a teacup ride of its own — and lit­tle patience for appar­ent imi­ta­tors, no mat­ter the artis­tic heights to which they soar.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Releas­es Tan­ta­liz­ing Con­cept Art for Its New Theme Park, Open­ing in Japan in 2022

A Vir­tu­al Tour Inside the Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Muse­um

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Makes 1,178 Images Free to Down­load from My Neigh­bor Totoro, Spir­it­ed Away & Oth­er Beloved Ani­mat­ed Films

Hayao Miyaza­ki, The Mind of a Mas­ter: A Thought­ful Video Essay Reveals the Dri­ving Forces Behind the Animator’s Incred­i­ble Body of Work

Watch Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Char­ac­ters Enter the Real World

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How Did They Build the Great Pyramid of Giza?: An Animated Introduction

in Animation, Architecture, History | October 21st, 2022

The Great Pyra­mid of Giza is a mir­a­cle of geom­e­try, con­struc­tion, and plan­ning ahead.

Pharaoh Khu­fu’s rel­a­tive — like­ly nephew — Hemienu, was put in charge of the project as soon as Khu­fu suc­ceed­ed his father, Pharaoh Sne­feru cir­ca 2550 B.C.E.

Hemienu, an engi­neer, priest and magi­cian whose hon­orifics includ­ed Mem­ber of the Elite, Vizier, King’s Seal-Bear­er, Priest of Bastet, Priest of Shes­me­tet, High Priest of Thoth, and, most impor­tant­ly, Over­seer of All Con­struc­tion Projects of the King, picked wise­ly when choos­ing the Great Pyra­mid’s site  - a rocky plateau on the Nile’s west bank made for a far stur­dier foun­da­tion than shift­ing sands.

His­to­ri­an Soraya Field Fio­rio’s ani­mat­ed TED-Ed les­son, above, details how the 25,000 work­ers who took 20 years to make Hemienu’s vision a real­i­ty were not enslaved labor, as they have so often been por­trayed — a rumor start­ed by Greek his­to­ri­an Herodotus — but rather, ordi­nary Egypt­ian cit­i­zens ful­fill­ing a peri­od of manda­to­ry gov­ern­ment ser­vice.

Some toiled on the admin­is­tra­tive end or in a sup­port capac­i­ty, while oth­ers got to spend ten hours a day haul­ing lime­stone on mas­sive cedar sleds.

A team of 500 ham­mered out the Pyramid’s gran­ite sup­port beams using dolerite rocks, a task so time con­sum­ing that Hemienu put them to work imme­di­ate­ly, antic­i­pat­ing that it would take them 12 years to pro­duce the nec­es­sary mate­ri­als.

Con­struc­tion sched­ules are always an iffy bet, but Hemienu had the added stress of know­ing that Khu­fu could take his leave well before his glo­ri­ous, gold­en tipped tomb was ready to receive him.

This is why there are three bur­ial cham­bers with­in the Great Pyra­mid. The last and grand­est of these, known as the King’s Cham­ber, is an impres­sive pink gran­ite room at the heart of pyra­mid, where its roof sup­ports over four hun­dred tons of mason­ry. An enor­mous red gran­ite sar­coph­a­gus weigh­ing well over 3 tons is locat­ed in the mid­dle of this cham­ber, but alas, the lid has been ajar for cen­turies.

Khu­fu is not with­in.

What became of him is a mys­tery, but if Scoo­by-Doo taught us any­thing of val­ue in our pre-TED-Ed child­hood, it’s that mys­ter­ies exist to be solved.

Sev­er­al years ago, an inter­na­tion­al team of archi­tects and sci­en­tists Egypt sur­veyed the Great Pyra­mid and its Giza neigh­bors at sun­rise and sun­set, using infrared ther­mog­ra­phy, which seemed to indi­cate the exis­tence of an as yet unex­plored cham­ber.

TED-Ed’s les­son plan directs those inter­est­ed in plumb­ing these and oth­er mys­ter­ies fur­ther to the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic doc­u­men­tary, Unlock­ing the Great Pyra­mid and Egyp­tol­o­gist Bob Brier’s book, The Secret of the Great Pyra­mid: How One Man’s Obses­sion Led to the Solu­tion of Ancient Egypt’s Great­est Mys­tery, both of which are root­ed in the work of French archi­tect Jean-Pierre Houdin, below.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Who Built the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids & How Did They Do It?: New Arche­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence Busts Ancient Myths

Take a 3D Tour Through Ancient Giza, Includ­ing the Great Pyra­mids, the Sphinx & More

What the Great Pyra­mid of Giza Would’ve Looked Like When First Built: It Was Gleam­ing, Reflec­tive White

A Drone’s Eye View of the Ancient Pyra­mids of Egypt, Sudan & Mex­i­co

Pyra­mids of Giza: Ancient Egypt­ian Art and Archaeology–a Free Online Course from Har­vard

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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