Genius Party Beyond 2nd trailer! from Quiet Earth on Vimeo.

Studio 4°C’s Genius Party Beyond has just been confirmed for fps as one of the many delectable films on the menu at this years Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema. This is an incredible treat for fans of the studio who brought us Tekkon Kinkreet and for animation enthusiasts alike as the anthology film has seen very few screenings on North American shores.

Festival details, further film listings, and more will be available soon on the official Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema site! We'll post a full schedule here on fps as soon as it's confirmed.

Labels: Genius Party, Studio 4C, Tekkon Kinkreet, Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema, WFAC

One of the first films that ever screened at Fantasia was the animated adaptation of Katsuhiro's Otomo's Memories, produced by Studio 4°C. Over the years, the studio has produced some notable feature-length narratives and shorts in omnibus films, including but not limited to Cat Soup, The Animatrix, Mind Game, Tekkon Kinkreet, and Batman: Gotham Knight. They have a powerhouse of talent that has allowed them to create some of the most interesting animation anywhere.

In Kenji Ishimaru's 2007 interview with studio CEO Eiko Tanaka, she mentions that all of this hard work was to get to one point: to be profitable enough to create what became Genius Party.

These seven stories are as distinct as they are breathtaking. Shanghai Dragon, Dethtic4, Limit Cycle and the opening sequence Genius Party (also a self-contained short) are the shorts that are seared into my brain. Almost every short has perfect pacing, a great aesthetic, and an interesting story.

The project grew large enough that this is the first of two omnibus films, the other being Genius Party Beyond. I'm looking forward to seeing it.

Genius Party plays again on Sunday, July 6th at 1:00pm at Montreal's Fantasia film festival.

Previously on fps:
2008 Fantasia Festival Animation
Studio 4°C
Genius Party
Interview: Eiko Tanaka
Interview: Masaki Yuasa

Labels: anime, features, Genius Party, Masaaki Yuasa, Shinichiro Watanabe, Shoji Kawamori, shorts, Studio 4C

It's a week of firsts for this blogger - this is my first post on fps and my first experience with Montreal's famous genre spectacle, the Fantasia Film Festival. Illustrator and fellow fps blogger Matt Forsythe and I attended the press symposium and were treated to a preview of what we can expect from July 3rd-21st.

This year's animated offerings feature an unusual and unintentional focus on collaborative efforts and collections of short films, from DC Comics' Batman: Gotham Knight, Studio 4C's aptly named anime extravaganza, Genius Party, and the cutting-edge showcase, Best of Ottawa Animation Festival 2007. There are only two single-narrative feature-length animated presentations in the entire fest - Bill Plympton's poetic, pencil-scratch surrealist vision, Idiots and Angels and John Bergin's bleak, post-apocalyptic fable, From Inside. We'll cover each entry in more detail throughout the festival.

Continue past the jump for a full schedule of the animated films screening at Fantasia 2008:



July 4th - 7:30PM - Hall Theatre - Genius Party
July 5th - 12:00PM - Hall Theatre - Batman: Gotham Knight
July 5th - 1:00PM - J.A. De Seve - Best of Ottawa Animation Festival 2007
July 6th - 1:00PM - Hall Theatre - Genius Party
July 7th - 9:45PM - Hall Theatre - Peur (s) Du Noir
July 9th - 3:00PM - J.A. De Seve - Peur (s) Du Noir
July 9th - 7:30PM - Hall Theatre - Idiots and Angels (Hosted by creator, Bill Plympton)
July 12th - 2:40PM - J.A. De Seve - Outer Limits Of Animation 2008 (Shorts from around the globe)
July 13th - 9:40PM - J.A. De Seve - From Inside
July 14th - 3:00PM - J.A. De Seve - From Inside

(Okay, who's the putz that programmed Batman: Gotham Knight to screen at the same time as the Ottawa Festival shorts?! ...sigh... guess I'll have to watch you at home on Blu-ray, Batman...)

Tickets go on sale July 2nd at 2PM at the Concordia Hall Theatre (Guy-Concordia Metro) and throughout the Admission Network at $7.50 each.

Directions:Hall Theatre - 1455 Maisonneuve O. (Guy Metro) Map and Directions
DB Clarke Theatre - 1455 Maisonneuve O. (Guy Metro) Map and Directions
J.A. De Seve - 1400 Maisonneuve O. (Guy Metro) Map and Directions

Previously on fps:
2007 Fantasia Line-Up
Batman: Gotham Knight Online
Genius Party Trailers
Plymptoons: The Complete Early Works of Bill Plympton

Labels: anime, Batman, Bill Plympton, Fantasia festival, festivals, From Inside, Genius Party, OIAF, Ottawa International Animation Festival, shorts, Studio 4C

The Japan Culture + Hyperculture festival at the Kennedy Center is the place to be in Washington D.C. this weekend for exciting anime. We've been falling all over ourselves because of Genius Party anthology for a while, and its North American premiere and the world premiere of Genius Party Beyond will be screening at the festival on Friday and Saturday. The other three anime screenings on Sunday are equally notable: it just depends on the type of animation you like to seek out. The east coast premieres of Appleseed: Ex Machina and The Piano Forest are firsts, but Five Centimeters Per Second, despite being listed as an east coast premiere, screened last November at WFAC.

Thanks to a head's up from Amid at Cartoon Brew.

Previously on fps
Genius Party
Masaaki Yuasa interview
Eiko Tanaka interview

Labels: anime, features, festivals, Genius Party, Japan, Studio 4C, Washington DC

Interview by Kenji Ishimaru

Studio 4°C has been leading the world of high quality animation in Japan. We interviewed Eiko Tanaka, CEO of Studio 4°C, about their highly anticipated but very secret latest product, called Genius Party.

Read the interview

Labels: anime, Genius Party, interviews, Studio 4C

We've been eagerly awaiting the appearance of Genius Party since Mind Game director Masaaki Yuasa dropped some hints about it in our 2005 interview. Those of us who attended the Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema last November were treated to an early trailer of the anime anthology, but in recent weeks Studio 4°C has dropped a few more on their website. Check them out to kill some time while we finish editing our interview with Studio 4°C chief Eiko Tanaka.

Trailer 001
Trailer 002
Trailer 003
Trailer 004

Labels: anime, Genius Party, Studio 4C