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Ottawa Animation Fest to Show 10th One Piece Film
posted on by Heather Skinner
The Ottawa International Animation Festival announced that it will screen the Canadian premiere of Munehisa Sakai's One Piece Film Strong World and the North American premiere of Keita Kurosaka's independent anime film Midori-ko this month. The festival's "Time Out of Mind" program will also showcase independent films and shorts such as "Broken Down Film" and "Jumping" by manga/anime pioneer Osamu Tezuka. The festival will be held October 20-24.
One Piece manga creator Eiichiro Oda personally oversaw One Piece Film Strong World in honor of the film franchise's 10th anniversary. It went on to become Japan's top anime film of the first half of 2010 and top the DVD and Blu-ray Disc sales charts.
Midori-ko is the latest film by Kurosaka, the auteur animator who created 2003's Winter Days. This pencil-on-paper creation "tells the story of a young woman who, while working to develop a 'dream food' that will end [Tokyo's] hunger crisis, encounters a mysterious creature that transforms her life."
The “Time Out of Mind” program is divided into four parts: "The Genius of Osamu Tezuka," the two parts of the "Secret World of Japanese Indies," and "Handsoaps and Fools: the Films of Atsushi Wada and Kei Ōyama." Yoshihiro Shimizu, General Manager for Tezuka Productions, will present the shorts by his studio's founder.
The program will also screen Koji Yamamura's Academy-Award-nominated short "Mt. Head," "The Magic Ballad" short about a magic fox by Tadanari Okamoto ("Mizu no Tane"), the "Demon" retelling of the Japanese medieval legend Konjaku Monogatari by the late Kihachiro Kawamoto (Sangokushi), and the experimental "Love" film about an obsessed woman by Yoji Kuri (Gokiburi-chan).
The festival's student film programs will screen several graduate and undergraduate works, including the online hit "Fumiko's Confession" by Hiroyasu Ishida.
