Director, artist and animator Sol Friedman taught himself digital animation while studying printmaking at the Ontario College of Art and Design, assisting a friend in the production of the animated documentary I Met the Walrus, which received an Academy Award nomination. His involvement would spark his current obsessive fascination with experiments in motion and storytelling. He also created animation for the short film Carpe Diem, a mocumentary opera about the environment and big oil.
Junko’s Shamisen is Friedman’s live-action and screenwriting debut, which blends the asthetic traditions of Japanese kabuki theatre and contemporary manga illustration through the use of cell, stop-motion and computer animation. He also wrote and directed the short Love Songs From an Android.