Short Animation Iizuna Fair

Material: USB with original box with illustration

Sumito Sakakibara was born in 1980 in Tokachi, Hokkaido. In 1996, he went to England alone. After working as an overseas student at the Agency for Cultural Affairs, he completed his doctoral program in animation at the RCA (Royal College of Art) in 2004. After returning to Japan, I made my production base in Nagano Prefecture.

It is known for its animated video works such as “Floating Tower,” which won the Japan Media Arts Festival Grand Prize, “É IN MOTION No. 2,” which received rave reviews at the DOMANI exhibition (2015), and “Solitarium,” which was presented at the 30th anniversary exhibition “Spectrum,” and the film was screened at museums, art festivals, etc., and invited to screen at many overseas film festivals, etc. Also, “Iizuna Fair-,” which was created in 2021, was announced as the first exhibition after the Nagano Prefectural Museum of Art renovation in 2021, and is still being screened as a permanent exhibition. He is an animation artist who has received numerous awards and invitations for this film at animation festivals around the world, and his talent is attracting worldwide attention.

USB for the animation “Iinawa Fair” produced in 2021. We will give it to you in a USB box with an original illustration. The work is less than 12 minutes long. It is still on permanent display at the Nagano Prefectural Museum of Art. Set in Iinawa Plateau, this is the second picture scroll depicting the activities of the land and people from a bird's-eye perspective, such as dontoyaki, fairs, and lion dances on the theme of festivals.

The characters continue to perform their respective roles, and while the work unfolds like a picture scroll, it is also like a single stage at the same time, and it is as if we were quietly watching the activities from a high audience seat in the theater.

What is depicted there is a pure, bare, and sometimes cruel appearance of a human being repeated over time, and a straight gaze. It's an absurd, yet extremely human scene that certainly exists in reality. People just live casually, playing their respective roles.

It is also said that people are the first to be caught by their own interests. Countless characters continue to move at the same time in Sakakibara's animation. In the midst of that, who would you turn your eyes to?