With the support of the Embassy of Japan in Portugal, we pay homage to the Japanese animated cinema screening short films from the 1920s and 1930s, from the collection of the National Film Archive of Japan. Through a careful selection of magnificent films, we will introduce you to some of the pioneering artists and their works that contributed to the foundations of Japanese animation.

Japan has a long tradition of animated cinema, with its own language and to celebrate its 100th anniversary of Japanese animation, believed to have first been shown publicly in 1917. The NFC-National Film Archive of Japan provided a website in 2017 – with films that have been digitized and restored.

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Despite its long tradition, only when in 1973 the animation “Belladonna of Sadness” was shortlisted to the main competition at the Berlin Film Festival and in 2002 Ghibli’s animation “Spirited Away” won the Golden Bear award of the Berlin Film Festival, Japanese animations have entered the public view and gradually gained a place in the world film industry. With a language of its own, early Japanese animator’s works were produced by a small team of artists, as a homemade handicraft business, where animators experimented with inexpensive ways – such as drawing directly onto the strips of film from which they were projected - to bring their visions to life. 

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But these pioneers and practitioners, seeking to explore the aesthetic potential of a variety of media and techniques, have remained all but invisible to audiences beyond specialist festival circuits.