Yamamura Animation

A segment for Image Forum Festival 2005's Tokyo Loop

A miserly man eats the pits of some cherries he can't stand throwing out. A tree starts growing from the top of his head. He cuts it off; it grows back. After a while, he gives up and lets it grow, but the crowds that gather on top of his head to enjoy the tree (and leave huge mounds of trash) eventually drive him to uproot the tree. This leaves a crater on top of his head, which fills with water, which becomes a popular lake.

A hapless country doctor describes with breathless urgency a night-time summons to attend a young patient. Events soon take on a surreal aspect as "unearthly horses" transport him instantaneously to the bedside. The doctor, preoccupied with personal distractions and grievances against those he is employed to care for, fails to find what is revealed to be a vile, fatal wound. He is humiliated by the villagers, who are "always expecting the impossible from the doctor," and doomed to an endless return trip, losing everything.

Short by Koji Yamamura

A very old crocodile is shunned by his family after eating one of them.

Koji Yamamura's allegory the immutability of time, love and devotion, and the unbreakable nature of the parent-child bond, into interlacing story.

Here, everything is The North. This is an account of the people I met in The North. However, my fragmented memory doesn't capture the essence at all.

One night Mr. K went for a walk with his pet...

A child whose head is numerals, a child who winds his own face and has it under his arm. What was left is his identity, a child whose eyes are provided by fishes, a child who cannot say anything because of a zipper across his mouth. Ecology and philosophy of children with sadness and humor.

Using the constellation as a motif, the heavens and the earth, metamorphose all the creatures.

Somewhere between calligraphy, embryology and words from beyond the grave, a convulsive poem wraps itself around the Japanese syllable ‘da’ – a breath that could just as well be the first as the last.

Buildings, black crows, a flood of bar codes, clone-looking businessmen, shopping-addicted ladies...these images which probably symbolizes excessive, standardized and overcrowded modern cities are condensed in this animation. Various techniques, like modified photo, drawing animation, 3D object and permeating lighting are combined onto a multi-planed (line drawing) stand, with a challenge to express a unique sense of unity and compression.

A polar bear who is very bored with various marine animals in the deep blue sea. It continues an ancient tradition of "Caricatures of Frolicking animals" in scroll painting-style; this time, "Frolicking Sea Animals," in animation form, with a play on Japanese and English language word-plays: "Hokyoku-Guma Suggoku Hima. / Polar bear bears boredom", "Kawauso Kawaisou./Other otter, poor otter," etc.

A series of nine flipbook-like vignettes showcasing simple revelations of movement and color. Koji Yamamura's animation refers back to the phenakistoscope, one of the earliest mechanisms used to make drawings move.

Short by Koji Yamamura

The first short in the series Karo and Piyobupt by Koji Yamamura

Created using "Etching on film" from the NFB's McLaren's Workshop Application.

This film depicts evolution from birth of life to whale in the sea with music and images by dedication to the American contemporary composer George Crumb's "Vox Balaenae (1971)" .There are 4 part, Proterozoic, Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic.

A seaside school. In the corridor stands the principal, beloved of the high-spirited youngsters. Gazing at a picture of a whale drawn as a child, the head teacher is swept away with sentiment into a flashback from the past.

A normal day turns into a day of adventure when an elevator that carries a boy does not stop where it should.