Ilan Nguyên is Japanese-French scholar, translator, critic, curator and coordinator for cultural events. His main research areas are history and aesthetics of the Japanese animation (anime) and comic books (manga).
Nguyên was born 1975 in France. He graduated from the French National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO) an majored in Japanese under Prof. Jean-Jacques Origas.
He regularly publishes articles and columns in French (Positif, Animeland…) and Japanese (Daily Yomiuri, Eurêka…).
He was subtitling translator in French for the following Japanese animated films: Takahata’s Our Neighbours the Yamadas and Only Yesterday, Miyazaki’s The Castle in the Sky, Yamamura’s Mr. Head and The Old Crocodile, Kawamoto’s The Book of the Dead. His comic books translations into French include Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind, and Taniguchi’s Trouble is my business and The Louvre’s Guardians.
He also collaborated with many international animation and film festivals (as writer, translator, lecturer, coordinator, program curator, selection committee or jury member) : Annecy, Zagreb, Bruxelles, Madrid, Tokyo, Meknès, etc.
As program co-director of the animation festival « Nouvelles images du Japon » (New Images from Japan / 1999, 2001, 2003) at the Parisian film center Forum des images, Nguyên introduced a new approach toward Japanese animated film as a whole.
At present he mostly works as a lecturer in animation history at schools and universities in Japan and France, such as Tokyo University of the Arts (Tokyo Geidai / 2009-2014), Tokyo Zokei University (2012-2015), EMCA (2012-2014) and Gobelins.
Since 2014 he has position as research associate professor at Tokyo University of the Arts Graduate School of Film and New Media, Department of Animation.
