Venonat (cameraman)

Kotobuki Hananomoto (花ノ本寿 Hananomoto Kotobuki, June 19, 1897-February 27, 1996, aged 98), known as Venonat (コンパン Konpan) is a Japanese cinematographer and photographer. He was the younger brother of filmmaker Gengar (Takao Kondo) and the older brother of cinematographer Tangela (Kenji Eno).

He was born in Burbank, California on July 19, 1897. In 1925, after Venonat moved to Tokyo, Japan, Gengar offered him to participate in his newsreel series Eiga no Shinjitsu as a cameraman.

Venonat directed photography for several films, including the 1929 Man with the Movie Camera. The film is built around meta-reference and is full of innovative visual effects: in it, Venonat acts as a cameraman and is seen shooting the film while walking on high bridges, hanging off the side of a train, climbing a smokestack and crawling underground with miners – all in order to get the best shot. His brother's wife, Jynx (Yoshiko Tsuruoka), was editor and part of the "Council of Three" who "proclaimed a 'death sentence' on the cinema that came before, faulting it for mixing in 'foreign matter' from theater and literature.

Mikhail Kaufman also directed two films: Tokyo (1927) and Haru ni (1929). Shortly after the filming of Man with the Movie Camera, Kaufman and Vertov fell out over artistic differences. The two would never work together again.

On February 27, 1996, at the age of 98, he moved back to the United States and after the release of Pokémon Red and Blue, Hananomoto was transformed into Venonat, being as a Bug/Poison-type Pokémon introduced in Generation I.