Sep 15, 2023

Get to Know Indie Film Directors Yoko Yuki

This series will feature some of the most interesting independent animators working today. Through their short films and other projects, these artists are changing the way we think about what the animation medium can do.

This week's profile is of Yoko Yuki, a Japanese artist.

In a word: Yuki's body of work is a beautiful, unsettling, haunting, kaleidoscopic explosion of color, figure, memory, and voice.

Where to begin: see you later, Mr. Banno! (2014). A free-spirited, gonzo-fueled, and ruminative recollection of a schoolteacher who turns from fear to ridicule. While images and dialogue are loosely intermingled, the film exists as a somewhat isolated work.

Next to watch: Zdravstvite (2015). In this stunning graduate student work, Yuri recalls an encounter with a strange Russian man on the beach of a Japanese seaside town. A flurry of color and design, combined with rapid-fire dialogue, reflects not only the strange encounter but also the frustration of having to reconstruct the memory before it passes.

Other key films: “Lost Summer Vacation” (2017), “Snow Falls in the Night” (2018), “Shalaborn” (2020), “Toyoichi” (2020).

Influences: “When I was in elementary school, my grandmother, a painter, lived in my neighborhood. She has passed away now, but I used to draw there as a child. I think I was also influenced by the Japanese manga artist Mochito Hagio, whom I read many times during my childhood."

says: “My work is inspired by concepts like the strange things that can happen in everyday life, like objects coming to life. Imagine how wonderful it would be if the pencil on your desk started breathing, talking to you, and dancing to make you smile. I believe that only animation can depict such an abstract imagination. In the process of visualization, I like to use realistic subject matter, but exaggerate and stylize it.”

What I am currently working on “I am currently working on a new animation. I am putting my feelings about houses and cats into it. I also plan to draw a manga this year. I want to focus on drawing and writing.”