The exhibition, unique in Switzerland, retraces Takahata’s career, from Heidi, girl of the alps (1974) to Grave of the fireflies (1988) and The tale of the princess Kaguya (2013), through his notebooks and storyboards, original drawings, cels, film and video excerpts and audiovisual documents.

The exhib­i­­tion, unique in Switzer­land, retraces Taka­hata’s career, from Heidi, girl of the alps (1974) to Grave of the fire­flies (1988) and The tale of the prin­­cess Kaguya (2013), through his note­­books and story­­boards, original draw­ings, cels, film and video excerpts and audi­o­visual docu­­ments.

It also high­lights an entirely new aspect: the special ties Taka­hata main­tained with the West through­out his life, from his intel­lec­tual educa­tion to his role as a cultural bridge, and the accur­acy of his depic­tions of the European world in land­mark works such as Heidi, girl of the alps (1974).

This part of the exhib­i­tion explores Isao Taka­hata’s decis­ive rela­tion­ship with the West, partic­u­larly the French-speak­ing world. It retraces his discov­ery of Préver­t’s poetic real­ism – a found­a­tion of both his aesthetic and polit­ical engage­ment – and presents his in-depth research into The shep­herd­ess and The chim­ney-sweep (1953), through original docu­ments that shed light on the origins of his voca­tion. It then exam­ines the unpre­ced­en­ted chal­lenge of adapt­ing clas­sic West­ern stor­ies into anim­a­tion – Heidi, girl of the alps (1974), From the apen­nines to the Andes (1976), Anne of Green Gables (1979) – combin­ing ethno­graphic rigour with docu­ment­ary ambi­tion.

Finally, it high­lights Taka­hata’s exchanges with West­ern artists (Grim­ault, Ocelot, Back, Norstein and many others), his influ­ence on world anim­a­tion and his major role in estab­lish­ing anim­ated film as a recog­nised art form. This jour­ney illus­trates the import­ance of sustained cultural exchange, portray­ing Taka­hata as a key figure in inter­cul­tural dialogue and a source of inspir­a­tion across borders.