MINI-MINI-POKKE NO OKINA NIWA DE / In the Big Yard Inside the Teeny-Weeny Pocket
2022 · 7m · Japan
Directed by yoko yuki
Genres: animation, experimental
Tones: contemplative, surreal, whimsical
An experimental animation built from diary-like sketches in which the act of observation becomes the subject: watching and being watched by the small creatures and incidents of daily life. The film weaves together days of recording and experimenting into a charming, rhyme-like meditation on perception.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Japanese diary animation under YAMAMURA KOJI's eye, no narrative, just looking and being looked at — yeah, fine, this is the formally weird stuff I'm actually here for. The title alone earns a point.
Yuki working under Yamamura Kōji's supervision places this firmly in the Japanese art-animation lineage that produced Kawamoto and Kuri, and the description — observation as mutual gaze — is genuinely promising. A diary-rhyme structure is the rarest formal achievement.
Supervised by Koji Yamamura — one of the most rigorous independent animators alive — and at 6:37 this is diary-animation as praxis, not just aesthetic. The line about being watched by what you watch is the kind of perceptual game that experimental animation does best.
Reviews
Entertainingly chaotic — a film that emerges as an experimental montage of diary-like sketches that defies classical animation convention.
Festivals
- Locarno Film Festival 2022
- Sundance Film Festival 2023