Studio Ghibli documentary: The Kingdom of dreams and madness

Leeds film feastival, artist documentary

During the Leeds film festival I went to go and see a movie called 'the kingdom of dreams and madness'. It was a documentary on the Japanese animation studio who made such films as; Grave of fireflies, spirited away and my neighbor totoro. Looking at the life of director, writer and artist, Miyazaki. The founder of the studio, who was working on his final film before retirement.

The reason I put this in my blog was due to the inspiration it had on me, even though the subject didn't have much to do with my own practice, it still inspired me to start creating work, never give up and how the job industry works outside life at university.

To watch Miyazaki work is amazing as he doesn't create 'art' in the normal way you would think, creating imagery for a story board and randomly making up the story as it goes, the story coming after the character designs and background designs, which are amazing water coloured, quick sketches.
His life is that of enjoyment, living out every day to the fullest, getting into work at 11am and leaving at 6pm, every day on the dot. In the documentary he shows how he gets inspiration, taking photographs of whereever he goes and whatever he see's, creating a large scrap book full of images. At this point he says how he wants to capture the positive time in his life, however once he attemped to do the opposite, taking negative pictures. He then says that he ended up taking photographs of the same things, laughing it off, and giving us a look at his life in a nutshell.
I feel as though lines in the documentary like this, that make you stop and think about your life in comparison, help to inspire you in whatever subject and path you choose in life, and this is why i choose to review this 'artist' so to speak.