A hand on your back as a child becomes your hand on theirs, bent with age. Gardens are built to show time passing; this film is built the same way. You watch two people trying to recognize each other across decades, and by the end you're not sure if they ever really do.
A grown child tries to recall how another person's hand once felt resting on their back in childhood. Now it is the child who lays a hand over that person's own, which pain has left bent. The film compares this to landscaped gardens, which are shaped to call up the turning seasons and the recurring marvels of nature: the narrator looks at this person, hoping to find the two of them together once more. A short psychological animated film, it was made as a 2022 graduate work in the animation department of Tokyo University of the Arts.
Streaming Poetics of the Garden legally, as of the last catalog refresh. Availability changes by region.
YouTubeVimeo