The BAM Rose Cinema is brimming with obscure festivals and I couldn't be happier that I stumbled across Japanese stop-motion animation by Kihachiro Kawamoto. They showed two days of shorts and I saw yesterday’s smorgasbord: An Anthropo-Cynical Farce, House of Flames, To Shoot Without Shooting, and Briar Rose or The Sleeping Beauty. With beautifully costumed puppets and charming little sets, he creates worlds in China, Japan, and whatever European utopia Fairytale Land comes from.

The one common factor? Every seemingly simple fable was extraordinarily dark and weird. In House of Flames, a woman trying to choose between two suitors solves the dilemma by killing herself. Unfortunately, the two men also kill themselves and she is damned to a House of Flames where an iron duck picks at her brain for five centuries. Even Sleeping Beauty got a twisted makeover. The viewers are told that the fairytale is false and no evil witch ever cast a spell. Instead, the Queen’s first love (who she thought was dead) shows up at little Rose’s christening. On her fifteenth birthday, the actually-not-doomed princess discovers her mother’s old beau in the forest. And proceeds to sleep with him. Fifteen. Mother’s ex-lover. WTF?!? (That love scene may have inspired Matt Stone and Trey Parker in Team America: World Police… oh, who am I kidding?) Yup, I will be running (not walking) to see his full-length The Book of the Dead this afternoon. Midnight Eye has a fascinating interview on Book of the Dead and a nice overview of Japanese experimental animation.