The Trip

Colour, 35 mm
Japan, 1973, 12 min
Section: Tribute to Kihachiro Kawamoto

Synopsis

The only one of Kawamoto’s films screened in the retrospective to be set in the present, The Trip diverges from the director’s other puppet films in its animating technique. The film presents traditional airport images, but as it shifts to the animated plane it becomes unusually internalized: thus extensive tourism, symbolized by Japanese tourists taking in western architecture through the lenses of their cameras, is replaced by a spiritual search for an inner alter ego. At certain points, the director was inspired by the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia - during her wanderings, his protagonist comes across tanks, self-immolation and an endless number of variations on the self-ascribed male principle.