Portal:Studio Ghibli

Hayao Miyazaki (宮﨑 駿, Miyazaki Hayao, born January 5, 1941) is a Japanese film director, animator, manga artist, illustrator, producer, and screenwriter. Through a career that has spanned six decades, Miyazaki has attained international acclaim as a masterful storyteller and as a maker of anime feature films and, along with Isao Takahata, co-founded Studio Ghibli, a film and animation studio. The success of Miyazaki's films has invited comparisons with American animator Walt Disney, British animator Nick Park, and American director Steven Spielberg. He is considered one of the most popular and influential animators in cinema.

Born in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Miyazaki began his animation career in 1963, when he joined Toei Animation. From there, Miyazaki worked as an in-between artist for Gulliver's Travels Beyond the Moon, working in various roles in the animation industry until he directed his first feature film, Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro, released in 1979. After the success of his next film, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind in 1984, he co-founded Studio Ghibli, where he continued to produce many feature films.

While Miyazaki's films have long enjoyed both commercial and critical success in Japan, he remained largely unknown to the West until Miramax Films released Princess Mononoke (1997). Princess Mononoke was the highest-grossing film in Japan until it was eclipsed by another 1997 film, Titanic, and the first animated film to win Picture of the Year at the Japanese Academy Awards. Miyazaki's next film, Spirited Away (2001), topped Titanic's sales at the Japanese box office, won Picture of the Year at the Japanese Academy Awards, and was the first anime film to win an American Academy Award.

Miyazaki's films often contain recurrent themes, like humanity's relationship with nature and technology, feminism, and the difficulty of maintaining a pacifist ethic. The protagonists of his films are often strong, independent girls or young women. Miyazaki's newest film, The Wind Rises, was released on July 20, 2013 and screened internationally in February 2014. Miyazaki announced on September 1, 2013 that this would be his final feature-length film.

Spirited Away (千と千尋の神隠し, Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, lit. "Sen and Chihiro's Spiriting Away") is a 2001 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli. The film stars Rumi Hiiragi, Miyu Irino, Mari Natsuki, Takeshi Naito, Yasuko Sawaguchi, Tsunehiko Kamijō, Takehiko Ono and Bunta Sugawara, and tells the story of Chihiro Ogino (Hiiragi), a sullen ten-year-old girl who, while moving to a new neighborhood, enters the spirit world. After her parents are transformed into pigs by the witch Yubaba (Natsuki), Chihiro takes a job working in Yubaba's bathhouse to find a way to free herself and her parents and return to the human world.

Miyazaki wrote the script, and with a budget of US$19 million, production of Spirited Away began in 2000. Pixar director John Lasseter, a fan of Miyazaki, was approached by Walt Disney Pictures to supervise an English-language translation for the film's North American release. Lasseter hired Kirk Wise as director and Donald W. Ernst as producer of the adaptation. Screenwriters Cindy Davis Hewitt and Donald H. Hewitt wrote the English-language dialogue, which they wrote to match the characters' original Japanese-language lip movements.

The film was released on July 20, 2001, and became the most successful film in Japanese history, grossing about $330 million worldwide. The film overtook Titanic (at the time the top grossing film worldwide) in the Japanese box office to become the highest-grossing film in Japanese history with a ¥30.4 billion total. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 75th Academy Awards, the Golden Bear at the 2002 Berlin International Film Festival (tied with Bloody Sunday) and is among the top ten in the BFI list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (風の谷のナウシカ, Kaze no Tani no Naushika) is a 1984 Japanese animated post-apocalyptic fantasy adventure film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, based on his own 1982 manga of the same name. Isao Takahata produced the film for Tokuma Shoten and Hakuhodo, and Top Craft animated the film. Joe Hisaishi provided the music. The film stars the voices of Sumi Shimamoto, Goro Naya, Yoji Matsuda, Yoshiko Sakakibara and Iemasa Kayumi, and tells the story of Nausicaä (Shimamoto), a young princess who gets involved in a struggle with Tolmekia, a kingdom that tries to use an ancient weapon to eradicate a jungle of mutant giant insects. Nausicaä must stop the Tolmekians from enraging these creatures.

The film was released in Japan on March 11, 1984. While created before Studio Ghibli was founded, the film is considered to be the beginning of the studio and is often included as part of the Studio's works, including the Studio Ghibli Collection DVDs and Blu-rays.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind received generally positive reviews from film critics. The film frequently ranked among the best animated films in Japan and is seen as a seminal influence on the development of anime, as the film's success lead to the foundation of Studio Ghibli and several other anime studios.Theron Martin of Anime News Network praised the film for its character designs, as well as Hayao Miyazaki's direction and Joe Hisaishi's score. He also said that the film "deserves a place on any short list of all-time classic anime movies." Commonsense Media, which serves to inform parents about media for children, rated the film positively and cited its good role models and positive messages, but also cautions parents about its dramatic setting and violent scenes. As of August 2013, review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 83% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 11 reviews with an average rating of 7.8/10.