In collaboration with this year’s London International Animation Festival, two Japanese animation creators, Atsushi WADA and Sarina NIHEI, whose works will be shown as part of the festival, will come and talk about their creative processes as well as the ideas and inspirations behind their productions. As award-winning artists, both WADA and NIHEI have been recognised internationally for their work. During this talk, you will be able to hear directly from these talented creators as to how they have continued to flutter their wings of imagination and crystalise it into the fascinating motion pictures.

The talk will be moderated by Alex Dudok de Wit.

---

About the speakers

(Moderator) Alex Dudok de Wit is a journalist who writes chiefly about the art and business of animation. He is the Deputy Editor at Cartoon Brew, the most widely read animation news site, and an animation correspondent for Sight & Sound, the magazine of the British Film Institute. His writing has also appeared on the BBC and in Vulture, Little White Lies, The Telegraph, The i, The Independent, Time Out, and Index on Censorship. His first book, Grave of the Fireflies (BFI Film Classics), was published by Bloomsbury on May 6.

Sarina NIHEI is a freelance animation director from Japan. Being obsessed with Estonian animation, she decided to pursue a career in the field. She is a graduate of London's Royal College of Art. Her graduation film from the RCA, Small People with Hats, won prizes at festivals around the world including the Grand Prize at the 2015 Ottawa International Animation Festival, HAFF, and Best post-graduate film at the British Animation Awards 2016. More recently, her work has gathered the Special Distinction Prize at BIAF 2020 South Korea and Best International Short Film at Bit Bang Fest 2020 Argentina, among many others. Specialising in hand-drawn animation, she loves to make surreal stories.

Atsushi WADA graduated from the Osaka Kyoiku University, Image Forum Institute of Moving Image and Tokyo University of the Arts. He likes to portray comfortable movements and is always thinking about the Japanese traditional concept of ‘Ma’, the tension produced between movements. In a Pig's Eye (2010) won the Best of the Festival at London International Animation Festival, and the Best Film at Fantoche International Animation Film Festival. The Mechanism of Spring (2010) premiered at the Venice Film Festival and The Great Rabbit (2012) won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. His solo exhibition My Marsh was held in Yokohama Museum of Art in 2017 and in Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art in 2018. A new game animated by WADA, My Exercise, was released in 2020 and a new short film Bird in the Peninsula is in production.

---

This online event is free to attend but registration is essential. To reserve your space, please book your ticket here.