Thursday, November 12, 2009

"GWASHI! KAZUO UMEZU DESU"

Other sites have already reported this news, but I wanted to post it here for folks that haven't heard yet. A new documentary about the life & work of Kazuo Umezu is coming out very soon! The film is titled "Gwashi! Kazuo Umezu Desu".



I read that the footage was filmed over the course of 3 years by Koji Ito, one of Umezu's staff/webmasters, and shows us Kazuo Umezu's daily life (including his lawsuit over the Makoto-chan house), creating manga and art, in addition to "exploring Japan's issues with creativity and art appreciation." From the trailer it looks like the doc also features interviews with other manga artists, authors, and pop culture talking heads.

GWASHI! KAZUO UMEZU DESU debuts properly on 11/23 in Tokyo's Tollywood Theatre, and plays through December. Umezz and company have created a new site just for news about the film, so check it out! The boys from Tokyo Scum were able to see an advance screening of the film and say it's rad... and will be interviewing Uncle Kaz very soon in person!

2 comments:

Alfie said...

Wow, that looks incredible.

James Rampant said...

I flipped onto NHK last night and caught the last minute of some weekly show Kazuo Umezu is doing where he talks about how to draw 4-panel comics. Here's the website they had at the end http://www.nhk.or.jp/syumiyuuyuu/manga.html , I'll check it out next week.