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Tales of the Street Corner The scene is set with a poster on a street corner, a girl who cherishes her teddy bear, a street lamp and a playful moth that is drawn to the lamp. These creatures and inanimate objects, each with their own dramas, get involved in a war and the story ends in a tragic climax. This is a private animated piece that expresses feelings rather than telling a story. The work illustrates that even a poster on the wall can have a vivid drama behind it, and brings the magic of animation alive for us. Male This is a story that takes place between the moment a man calls the police to confess to killing a woman and the time a police car arrives on the scene. During this period in the darkness, the emotions and facial expressions of the man, who has committed a murder, are followed through the eyes of cats. This is an animation telling a story using only images of the man and the eyes of cats. Memory This is an animated short film depicting the ambiguity, uncertainty, merits, and demerits of memory, showing how it glorifies reality. The story tells how the earth itself will eventually become a memory of the universe after humanity has perished. How will the initial reality change at the end? Collage is effectively used in this work. Mermaid A dreamy boy in a distant country saves a fish beached on the shore. When he lets it loose in a pool of water, the fish turns into a beautiful mermaid. The boy falls in love with the mermaid but it is just a fish to the people around him. They treat him as a weirdo but he yearns more and more for the mermaid. Awakening from a dream, he realizes the mermaid was a creation of his fancy and cries on the shore. This is a fantasy animation. The Drop A man adrift on the sea finds three drops of water on his raft's mast. He desperately tries to get at these drops to quench his thirst, but they will not fall into his mouth. This is a simple animation with a gag theme. It is one of Osamu Tezuka's independent films, made in no more that a week. He even drew the backgrounds himself. Pictures at an Exhibition This is an experimental fine art animation visualising Osamu Tezuka's impression of "Pictures at an Exhibition" a suite composed by Mussorgsky. It is an omnibus consisting of 10 short episodes, each with a different visual touch. The famous intermezzo from the suite links the episodes. Tezuka showed his journalistic sense in the satiric work, which may be considered Tezuka's version of "Fantasia." The Genesis This is a parody of "The Bible", a film directed by John Huston and released in 1966. It was made by filming drawings created by Osamu Tezuka and the staff of Tezuka Productions Manga Section in a picture-card chow style. Jumping As a girl skips down a street, her stride becomes bigger and bigger, and then she jumps over towns, a forest, the sea, going higher and further. Finally she reaches a country in wartime. This work is very interesting in that the girl's jump turns into a god's jump, to a point where she is watching over human destiny. This work surprised the entire world because the whole film was shot in one cut with 4,000 motion pictures. It received many awards. Broken Down Film This is a story of long, long ago in the American West. A brave cowboy heroically saves a beautiful girl in imminent danger from a villain. It is a classic scene but so classic that film prints are now worn-out. There are scratches and stains. The frames and sometimes jumbled. The hero not only has to fight against the villain but must also struggle against the film projecting him. The whole film is filled with jokes and nostalgia, paying homage to silent animated films. Push In a convenient world where vending machines offer just about everything, the hero procures whatever he needs from machines on his journey to see the creator. He tries to make a replacement purchase of the earth. But the creator declines his request, saying simply that there's no such thing as a brand new earth. The simplicity of the story illustrates the depths of Osamu Tezuka's despair at the earth's degradation, forming the gist of this 4-minute work. Muramasa The story about a haunted sword called "muramasa", which was found stuck in a wara-ningyo (straw figure). The Samurai who obtained it cut at wara-ningyo every time he found any in order to test the sharpness of the sword. But whenever he cuts, the figures immediately turn into humans. The story symbolizes a warning to protect the current state of peace that rests solely on nuclear deterrence. Legend of the Forest Accompanied by Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony, animals and fairies living in a forest preach the preciousness of life and give a warning to humans who continue destroying nature. Only the first and fourth movements out of four movements have been completed. With the first movement, a history of animation is shown, from the beginning with Emile Cohl, through Disney, to current TV animation. With the fourth movement, the antagonism between full animation and limited animation is woven into a story. Self Portrait This is Osamu Tezuka's last experimental piece. Nineteen animators from five countries competed in making animated pieces on their own faces, and these films were shown at animation festivals in each of the represented countries. Osamu Tezuka made a film in which his face turns into a slot machine and changes rapidly into another face.
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