London International Animation Festival to screen Momotaro - Sacred Sailors

It enjoyed its UK premiere at this year's Scotland Loves Anime, but if you're still curious about it in advance of its home video release in 2017 then the London International Animation Festival will be offering up another opportunity to see Japan's first feature-length anime on the big screen this December.

Specifically, on Sunday, 4th December at 7PM, you'll be able to see both Momotaro, Sacred Sailors and accompanying short Spider and Tulip at the Barbican. Tickets to this screening can be booked via the LIAF web site. 

The film is described as follows:

Presumed lost until the mid-’80s, Momotaro resurfaced on VHS in Japan (and was only available in the West on rare bootlegs). Now freshly restored in a 4K scan of the original 35mm negatives, Mitsuyo Seo’s classic lives again – looking not a day older than when it screened in 1945. Momotaro remains – propagandistic material notwithstanding – a timeless achievement in worldwide animation. It’s nothing less than the birth of anime as we know it – a very rare chance to see a lost masterpiece on the big screen. Plus we’re bringing you an Anime bonus in the form of supporting film, Kenzo Masaoka’s Spider and Tulip.

Following this, the festival is also screening a number of animated shorts of Japanese origin in a competition programme named New Japanese Shorts - Beyond Anime. Screenings of all of these shorts similarly takes place at the Barbican at 9PM on 4th December - tickets can be booked from this page.

Here's the description of this programme:

The backbone of the whole LIAF mission. We’ve emerged from under the pile of 2,400 entries to put together a series of programmes that showcase the best 128 new films. Six ‘general’ International Competition Programmes, our ever popular Abstract Showcase and 
Long Shorts programmes, plus the British Showcase and Animated Documentaries. The films come in from every corner, they use every technique, they can be funny, dramatic, eye-popping, subdued, documentary or autobiographical. The one thing they have in common is that we think they’re the pick of the crop.

Independent Japanese animation has had a massive upturn in recent years and the world is beginning to sit up and take notice. This programme celebrates the best of these films, opening the window on the wildly imaginative world of new young Japanese animation.