Winter Days (2003)
★ 5.9 (19) · 39 min
Directors: Aleksandr Petrov · man Břetislav Pojar · man Co Hoedeman · man Isao Takahata · man Jacques Drouin · man Keita Kurosaka · man Kihachiro Kawamoto · man Koji Yamamura · man Mark Baker · man Raoul Servais · man Reiko Okuyama · woman Reiko Yokosuka · woman Shinichi Suzuki · man Wang Borong Yuichi Ito · man Yuri Norstein · man Yôji Kuri · man Yōichi Kotabe · man
An animated film 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 in 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 (Yuriy Norshteyn's, though, is nearly two minutes long).