Katsudō Shashin (1907) (2025)

Popular reviews

• Review by dumbsville ★★★★★ 2

  People in 1907 watching a 30 second long animation of some guy painting be like "YOOO YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"

• Review by Peter H

  This is the equivalent of a computer programmer learning to display, "Hello World." There's something oddly charming about it, and the movement is surprisingly fluid.

• Review by Sally Jane Black

  Brief, fluid motion giving us both action and performance (albeit in animated form), not a whole story but a clear moment, all in the space of three seconds. Using the media to inflict charm upon us in less than a moment.

• Review by Dr. Ethan Lyon 6

  Almost impossible to rate considering that this is just, as the title suggests, a fragment, but I wonder how many people in the audience, if this was ever shown at all, tipped their hats back at it. Of course, that was 115 years ago now, but it's funny how we've gone full circle from being terrified by images that we couldn't quite distinguish from reality to being seduced by images that are so real we need AI to break them apart. And sometimes the AI is even making those images; see the recent trend for turning photos into a variety of different painting styles at the push of a button. All of art is at our fingertips, computing power even…

• Review by loureviews ★★★½

  At 3 seconds, this creepy Japanese animation (the first ever made in the country) is also known as Katsudō Shashin and was lost for almost 100 years. It was put together by stencil printing, includes the colours red and black, and the title means 'activity film', or, indeed, 'moving picture'.

• Review by yuki ★★½

  so this birthed anime?????

• Review by Migo Abuel ★★½

  That was quick

• Review by Olivia

  Whoever the hell made this has a lot to apologize for.

• Review by oskarsdelicate ★★ 28

  i could care less about this little boy
  - sorry for watching short films and not proper films! i have so many exams atm and i need to study. i’ll try and watch full length films soon i promise. i hope everyone is doing okay🖤

• Review by Donut ★★★★

  Technically the birth of anime.

  Katsudō Shashin (sometimes referred to as the Matsumoto fragment) is a simple, fluid 3 second animation that was once lost, has no known director, and is (as far as we know) the first animated piece of film to come from Japan.

  Historically interesting and intentionally charming, as it's nickname suggests, it's simply a fragment, a snapshot back into a different time where the worlds of animation and cinema were only beginning, from a country where some of the most famous (and infamous) animated works of all time would be created. The fact this can still be viewed is pretty wonderful.

• Review by handsincarnadine

  logging a gif on letterboxd

• Review by Des de Moor ★★★★½

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  1001 films that will reward your time boxd.it/1FRRk (9th edition 2021).

  This three-second animated fragment is something of a missing link between the age of film and the preceding age of 19th century animated novelties like the phenakistoscope, zoetrope and praxinoscope. These devices were only capable of exhibiting very short sequences of repeated actions, while film made much longer linear sequences possible, limited only by the capacity of the projector reels. In the early 20th century, film equipment began to migrate from the professional into the domestic sphere, with toy projectors sold as expensive novelties for prosperous homes. Film can also be spliced into loops, creating a more affordable content option, adequate to amuse children for a while. So once…