Winter days / Fuyu no hi

Winter Days (冬の日 Fuyu no Hi?) is a 2003 animated film, directed by Kihachirō Kawamoto. It is based upon the renga of the same name by the 17th-century Japanese poet Bashō. The creation of the film followed the traditional collaborative nature of the source material -- the visuals for each of the 36 stanzas were independently created by 35 different animators. As well as many Japanese animators, Kawamoto assembled leading names of animation from across the world. Each animator was asked to contribute at least 30 seconds to illustrate their stanza, and most of the sequences are under a minute (Yuriy Norshteyn’s, though, is nearly two minutes long). The released film consists of the 40-minute animation, followed by an hour-long ’Making of’ documentary, including interviews with the animators. Winter Days won the Grand Prize of the Japan Media Arts Festival in 2003.