Watch: Mesmerizing Animated Short ‘Iizuna Fair’ by Sumito Sakakibara

Watch: Mesmerizing Animated Short ‘Iizuna Fair’ by Sumito Sakakibara

by Alex Billington
October 23, 2023
Source: Vimeo

This entrancing animated art is currently available to watch online for only a limited time – don’t miss your chance to view it. Iizuna Fair is a magnificent art piece created by Japanese artist Sumito Sakakibara, commissioned by the Nagano Prefectural Art Museum in Japan. After premiering in 2021 & winning awards at festival it’s now being project onto their massive 26m screen, which you can visit for yourself in Nagano, but for everyone else who can’t make it they’ve published it online. It’s only available for 3 months only – from September 15th until December 15th this fall. “In the midst of the frenzied night, a man finds himself lost in the crevasse of time.” It’s a rumination on time and memory and regret and grief, set mostly around a fair in the town of Iizuna (see Google Maps). While the artwork can play as a short, it’s designed to run in a continuous loop, which adds an extra meta layer of meaning about our experience with life on this planet. I like the fight with the dragon right in the middle – though there’s many beautiful details to examine closely.

Thanks to the exeptional Colossal for the tip on this being available online (from 15th Sep ~ 15th Dec). Intro from Vimeo: “In the midst of the frenzy night a man finds himself lost in the crevasse of time. It was not the grotesque beings nor the monsters, but it was he who ‘was here, but wasn’t here’. He was the phantom. Buried under memories full of inhibition and promises that never kept – words washed up on the shore – time keeps him at a distance from the ‘place’. And he hears poems coming on the waves from the other side ryhming and lapping against the shore.” Iizuna Fair is an “animation installation” running in a continuous loop. It’s created and painted and animated by Japanese artist / filmmaker Sumito Sakakibara based in Nagano – to see more of his work visit his Vimeo page or stop by his official website. With music by Sumito Sakakibara / Namo Sakakibara. It was commissioned by the Nagano Art Museum – showing on their 26m wide L-shape screen. For more info on the project, visit Vimeo. To watch more shorts, click here. Thoughts?

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