On the day in March when we heard the good news that the film, Minari, earned 6 nominations for the 93th Academy Awards, we heard another happy news. It was that Opera, directed by Eric Oh, earned a final nomination for the Best Animated Short Film. Director Oh, who has dissolved the problems of our communities in his works with his unique originality and viewpoint, said that his philosophy expressed in this works was established when he was attending Seoul National University.

My Own Voice that I Found in the School

Director Oh, a lover of cartoons and animations, was dreaming of an animator from his young ages. When the information was not readily available, he applied for the Department of Painting of Seoul National University, simply because he thought that he would be able to paint there. He was also motivated to prepare a solid basis in fine arts, the foundation of all arts, to learn animations more properly.

“It was found to be a right decision. The Department of Painting of Seoul National University was like the Department of Philosophy. You can learn the skills and techniques of painting, but you are also given endless questions like, ‘What kind of artist do you want to be?’, ‘What is the theme that you like to express in your works?’ or even ‘Who are you?’ I remember that the night work after the classes was a good excuse to drink beer in the painting room, talking about philosophy with my friends. Looking back the times, it was funny and we were too young, but I was thinking about what I really liked to do and what I really wanted to talk about.”

The questions that he asked himself gave a conclusion around the second semester of the senior year: “I will be an animation director.” What he wanted do was storytelling, and animation was the best medium for that. He started to study animation alone because there was no class that taught about the technical things. He has put into his artworks the experiences that he gained when attending the university as well as the ideas that he obtained from the experiences.

“I used to pain many oil-based abstract paintings. In my paintings, I expressed my own features that readily identified my works. The same continues in my current works for creating animations. Many people comment that my works have a common theme, which, I guess, is my unique personality that I developed when attending the university. I not only became skillful in painting but also realized the theme that I have to put into the artworks.

The characters in Heart are fighting with each other to take up the red heart on the ground. The last scene of the film is linked with the first scene, suggesting that tragic events will happen again.

Genuine Concerns of the World Contained in the Freewheeling Works

The besting about short animations is that the artist may expression their ideas in a freewheeling manner, breaking free from the existing frameworks. That’s why he left the Pixar Animation Studios, the dream company of the animators worldwide. He entered Pixar out of the competition rate of 100:1, and participated in Finding Dory (2016), Inside Out (2015) and Monsters University (2013). He continued his personal works while he was in the company. After leaving Pixar, he released Pig: The Dam Keeper Poems, a TV series prepared from his 5-minute short animation. This animation made him the first Korean who won the best prize ‘Crystal’ in the section of TV series from the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, the world’s best awards in the field of animation.

Pig: The Dam Keeper Poems, which Director Oh produced after leaving Pixar, was a 10-episode short animated film about the friendship between a young pig dam keeper and a fox.

“The most attractive point of animation is that it extends to both paintings and films. When it comes closer to films, it becomes a long animation movie, like the Disney’s. When it comes closer to paintings, it can be an experimental cinema full of artistry. Depending on what it is directed, animation can tell stories in different ways.”

In that sense, Opera was a new experiment and an adventure that he had never tried before. The 9-minute long animation was firstly produced for a media art exhibition. In the endless cycles of day and night, the characters spend each day doing their works quietly. At a glance, the animation is simply the emergence and disappearance of many characters. However, the individual characters are exquisitely engaged with each other such that each of the individuals, having their own life stories, is indispensable for the group to function. The animation, expressing the classes, cultures, religions and ideologies throughout the human history, earned the nomination in the category of Short Film (Animated) for the 93th Academy Awards. 

“Spending each day of life is exactly the same as making the film. All that I feel is included in the works. That’s why I’m always talking of ‘life’ and ‘cycle.’ One of my early works, Symphony, was about the imagination of an ego with the beginning and the end meeting together. Heart and Gunther were about our instincts and desires. I would like to continue to ask through my artworks the question, ‘What meaning do we put on our life?’ Opera is the same. The world around is gradually dividing. We destroy each other and hate each other. So, I wanted to talk with the audience about how we humankind can progress in this reality.”

Opera, expressing the classes, cultures, religions and ideologies throughout the human history, earned the nomination in the category of Short Film (Animated) for the 93th Academy Awards.

Talking About Unchanging Values

Director Oh lived in the US when he was young. He studied animation in the Department of Painting, the fine arts, and produced artworks expressing his own viewpoint in the Pixar Studios where popular stories are made. He has been delivering his own messages, breaking free from the frameworks of ‘majority versus minority’ and ‘mainstream versus fringe.’ He said, ‘I hope that the young students can move forward while keeping their own balance.’

“As the world is changing so rapidly, anyone can feel that they belong to a generation that is sandwiched between other generations. Our young students may feel anxious and hazy about their steps to take next. I’d like to tell them, ‘Just focus on your inner voice.’ We need to keep our balance with the commitment to a positive move. That may be the starting point of enduring today’s world of confusion.”

Director Oh released a short animated film, NAMOO, based on his autobiographical experiences, and met the Korean audience after a long time through a special screening at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival held in last July. NAMOO drew attention as it was also produced in the version of Virtual Reality (VR) through the investment from the Facebook Oculus. To our question about his next work, he said, “I have a lot of thoughts about the discrimination of Asians that has been occurring since the outbreak of COVID-19.’ We hope that he will communicate with us about the problems that we all have to think about, just as he was determined to do so when he decided to become an animated film director.

“I have been given various opportunities since Opera. Although happy, I feel the responsibilities and I think more about what I truly like to do. I don’t know what my future works will be like. They may be short films like before, or they may be a series. I want to be an artist who always thinks about what to do, just as I did when I firstly started this job, rather than focusing on the success of the films. I’d like to show that there are unchanging values even in this ever changing world.”

 

NAMOO, based on the autobiographic experiences of Director Oh, drew attention, as it was also produced in a VR version.