This Saturday, a new 50-minute documentary on Hayao Miyazaki will air on the NHK. The film will follow the
legendary 2D anime director's attempts to make a cgi film. The project started out as a short for the Studio Ghibli Museum in Tokyo, Japan. However, Miyazaki became so enamored with the process and the short he made (titled
Boro the Caterpillar) that he now wants to make a feature-length film.
Recently, Studio Ghibli producer
Toshio Suzuki caused a stir when he indicated that plans for the feature length film was moving forward.
A synopsis on the
NHK website describes the documentary as:
3 years ago, the Academy Award-winning animated film director Hayao Miyazaki shocked the world when he announced his retirement at age 72. But his creative impulse never faded. After meeting a group of young animators who specialize in computer graphics, he decides to make a short film using CGI to explore new expressive possibilities. Will the short film he releases change the future of Japanese animation? The creative process proves so difficult that he almost calls it quits. This program documents the tremendous struggle that unfolds behind the scenes as Miyazaki, inspired by a new medium, wrestles with CGI for the first time.