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Art TV Program Nichiyō Bijutsukan to Feature Late Ghibli Director Isao Takahata
posted on by Kim Morrissy
The September 8 episode of the NHK Art TV program Nichiyō Bijutsukan (Sunday Museum) will have a feature on the late Studio Ghibli director Isao Takahata. This marks the first time the program has ever showcased an anime director since the show debuted in 1976.
The theme of the program will be how Takahata pursued "the reality held by animation." Interviewed guests will include In This Corner of the World director Sunao Katabuchi, who served as an assistant director at Ghibli, and The Tale of Princess Kaguya voice actress Aki Asakura.
Other guests will include Seiji Kanō, the film researcher who served as an adviser on the ongoing Takahata art exhibit in Tokyo's National Museum of Modern Art; art historian Nobuo Tsuji, who lived in the same room as Takahata in university; Grave of the Fireflies art director Nizo Yamamoto; and the French animated film director Michael Ocelot, whose works influenced Takahata and vice versa.
The program will reveal the notes for The Tale of Princess Kaguya which Takahata wrote around 1960, as well as his study and personal library.
Takahata passed away on April 5 after a year-long battle with lung cancer. He was 82. He had a long career directing such classics as Little Norse Prince Valiant (Taiyō no Ōji - Hols no Daibōken), Alps no Shōjo Heidi, Anne of Green Gables, and Panda! Go, Panda! before he co-founded Studio Ghibli with Hayao Miyazaki. He went on to create the feature films Grave of the Fireflies, Only Yesterday, Pom Poko, and My Neighbors the Yamadas. Takahata's final film as director was The Tale of Princess Kaguya in 2013.
Source: Comic Natalie
