A Day After a Hundred Years (1932)
Article 5533 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-26-2018
Directed by Shigeji Ogino
Featuring Shigeji Ogino
Country: Japan
What it is: A vision of the future

In the year 2032, a man resurrects one of his ancestors to show him the world of the future.

This is directed by the same man who gave us DETECTIVE FELIX IN TROUBLE, but I think this one is much more interesting. It’s basically a compendium of futuristic devices to show what life might be like in the future; my favorite is a magic television that can show any event in the past. There’s really not much of a plot, and with only a ten minute running time, it can’t show you a great deal, but it also doesn’t wear out its welcome. The animation this time is a sort of shadow animation, though it’s certainly a lot less elaborate than similar work from Lotte Reiniger. There is a bit of live-action footage of the ancestor using a Pathe camera, and I’m assuming that the ancestor is Shigeru Ogino himself, and that he plays himself in that footage as well. The ending is curious and not really satisfying; I myself would have liked to have seen the promised vision of Mars.