Indie Short Film Crowdfunding: Noriko Yuasa’s “Coming Back Sunny”

The talented filmmaker Noriko Yuasa has an original new film project and needs your help. She is only seeking a modest sum of money to see the project through to completion and get it out to festivals.

Coming Back Sunny (おかえり、カー子) is a love story about a colour-blind schoolgirl rediscovering the world around her. The main shooting locations are the Edo era streets of Kawagoe City or “Ko-Edo” in Saitama Prefecture and the modern streets of Ikebukuro, which were selected in order to depict the theme of destiny and how it can transcend space and time.

The pandemic has only been with us a short time, but filmmakers and cinemas around the world are already feeling the pinch. Many of us have been feeling pretty helpless at not being able to go out and support our local art house cinemas and independent filmmakers. Filmmakers need our support at this time more than ever.

Head over the Kickstarter to learn more about Coming Back Sunny & give if you can:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/norikokyuasa/short-film-coming-back-sunny-crowdfunding-first-phase

【Trailer】Coming_Back_Sunny from Noriko Yuasa on Vimeo.

Cathy Munroe Hotes

Women Directors at Nippon Connection 2017

Women Directors at Nippon Connection 2017

http://www.nipponconnection.com

Since 2010, I have made a point to watch all of the films directed by women at Nippon Connection.  This year’s programme includes feature films, documentaries and animation by women directors…. with women also featuring prominently behind the scenes in the areas of production and screenwriting.

Guests include the Japanese producer Yukie Kito (Tokyo Sonata, Sakebi), who is presenting the documentary Mifune: The Last Samurai (Steven Okazaki, 2015), Akiyo Fujimura will be on hand to present her feature debut Eriko, Pretended at its German premiere, and Tokyo University of the Arts student Rina Tanaka will present her directorial debut Snake Beneath the Flow at its international premiere.

Women are currently dominating the student population in animation courses across Japan, which is why this year’s Tokyo University of the Arts selection is predominately female directors.  There are two women in my selection Poetic Landscapes – Recent Gems in Japanese Indie Animation.  Eri Okazaki is a graduate of the Tama Art University (Tamabi) animation programme.  Kiyoko Nakai belongs to the art unit kesyuroom2013 (ケシュ#203)  with Minami Nakai. Both women are graduates of Film Studies at Waseda. 

Here is a quick overview of what to look out for:

NIPPON ANIMATION

A Silent Voice

映画 聲の形

Eiga koe no katachi

Director: Naoko YAMADA

Japan 2016, 129 min.

German premiere

Thursday, May 25, 12:00 Mousonturm Saal

Saturday, May 27, 13:30 Mal Seh’n Kino

Poetic Landscapes – Recent Gems in Japanese Indie Animation

in the presence of the curator Dr. Catherine Munroe Hotes and director Hayato Nove

Sunday, May 28, 17:15 Naxoshalle Kino

Tokyo University of the Arts: Animation

In the presence of Taruto FUYAMA

Thursday, May 25, 15:15 Naxoshalle Kino

NIPPON CINEMA

The Long Excuse

永い言い訳

Nagai Iiwake

Director & script: Miwa NISHIKAWA

Japan 2016, 124 min.

German premiere

Competition Nippon Cinema Award

Friday, May 26, 20:00 Mousonturm Saal

Sunday, May 28, 17:45 Mal Seh’n Kino

NIPPON VISIONS

95 and 6 to go

Director, camera & world sales: Kimi TAKESUE

USA 2016, 85 min.

German premiere

Wednesday, May 24, 15:00 Naxoshalle Kino

Eriko, Pretended

見栄を張る

Mie o haru

Director & script: Akiyo FUJIMURA

Japan 2016, 93 min.

German premiere in the presence of the director

Saturday, May 27, 17:15 Naxoshalle Kino

Parks

パークス

Director & script: Natsuki SETA

Japan 2017, 118 min.

International premiere

Thursday, May 25, 19:45 Naxoshalle Kino

Start Line

Director: Ayako IMAMURA

Japan 2016, Blu-ray, 112 min, Japanese with English subtitles

European premiere

Friday, May 26, 12:15 Naxoshalle Kino

Snake Beneath the Flower Petals

湖底の蛇

Kotei no ja

Director and script: Rina TANAKA

Japan 2016, 59 min.

International premiere in the presence of the director Rina TANAKA

Cathy Munroe Hotes 2017

Dear Deer (ディアーディアー, 2015)

Dear Deer (ディアーディアー, 2015)

official website: http://www.deardeer-movie.com/

Takeo Kikuchi’s debut feature film, Dear Deer (ディアーディアー / Diā Diā, 2015), won the Nippon Visions Jury Award at this year’s Nippon Connection.  The film was recommended to me by festival curator Atsuko Morimune because the opening sequence features animation by Atsushi Wada, who was my NC animation guest in 2012.

See: Art of the Absurd: An Interview with Atsushi Wada, Atsushi Wada Works 2002-2010, & more

A young woman (a much too short cameo by the wonderful Rinko Kikuchi) is alone in the exhibition space of a local museum at closing time.  She presses a button several times in order to watch a video installation but it does not play.  A few moments after she walks away in frustration, the film plays for the cinema audience.  Animated with Atsushi Wada’s signature style, the short film tells the story of the local Ryōmō sika deer (sika deer are known as shika in Japan), a type of sika deer famous for its antlers, which used to be found in the Ryōmō district of Tochigi Prefecture.  The film claims that the deer used to be prolific until invading foreign species, industrialisation, and hunting drove them into extinction by the Second World War.  Fifty years later, three local children spotted a deer and took a blurry photograph of it.  The people of Ryōmō celebrated this sighting, but as no Ryōmō deer have been spotted since, many believe it to have been a different species of deer (see note at end of review for deer facts).

The story begins twenty-five years later when the three siblings who spotted the Ryōmō deer reunite in their hometown because their father is dying.  The eldest son, Fujio (Kōji Kiryū), stayed at home to run the family business but the economic downturn and his father's hospital bills have left him burdened with debt.  The second son, Yoshio (Yōichirō Saitō), has lived away from home for a long time and is jobless and struggling with mental health issues.  The daughter, Akiko (Yuri Nakamura), has also lived away since leaving school and is trying to divorce her husband.

This family reunion is fraught with problems as each sibling is in turn confronted with issues that they have avoided for much too long.  Fujio is under pressure from a local developer to sell his land to make way for a shopping centre.   Fujio knows he cannot save the business and he needs the money to pay his bills, but he is under pressure from the community not to sell his father’s factory. 

Although his family seems to think that he is mentally ill, Yoshio’s main problem seems to be an inability to take responsibility for the mistakes he has made in his life.  This issue manifests itself in the form of an incident that occurs when Fujio lets Yoshio take the wheel of their father’s car.  His neglectful driving leads him to run over a dog.  Rather than trying to find its owner and apologize, Yoshio buries the dog, and tries to cover his tracks with a series of lies.

Similarly, rather than using the time at home to come to terms with why her marriage has failed, Akiko throws herself back into a toxic high school affair.  As layer upon layer of the weaknesses of these siblings is revealed, we are hooked into the storylines by our curiosity to see whether or not the central characters have an epiphany about their lives, or if they will continue in a downward spiral.

The extinction of the deer and the disintegration of the family serve as metaphors for the decline of small towns all over Japan which are suffering because young people and businesses have moved to larger city centres.  The film was shot in the director’s home town of Ashikaga in Tochigi Prefecture and was produced by the lead actor Kōji Kiryū with his own production company Office Kiryu (オフィス桐生).

The most intriguing thing for me about this film is the fact that I identified more with the minor characters – Akiko’s underappreciated writer husband Seiichi (Yurei Yanagi) and the poor family who lost their dog – than I did any of the central characters.  I dearly hope Kikuchi does a sequel about the life of Akiko’s writer husband who cooks her a wonderful breakfast before walking out of her life to a future unknown.

On a final note: although the deer works as a wonderful metaphor within the story of the film, this is a fiction.  There is only one species of deer in Japan, so if Ryōmō has or had its own regional deer it would be a subspecies of the sika (cervus nippon) such as C.n.nippon.  In real life, the deer is not a very good metaphor for threatened species in Japan because deer and wild boar in Japan are a nuisance to farmers due to over-population.  Deer are overabundant in Japan because of a combination of conservation efforts, a reduction in hunting and the 19^th century extinction of the native species of wolf.  The only subspecies of deer under threat are the Kerama deer (C. n. keramae) which are native to the tiny Kerama Islands of Okinawa.

Takeo KIKUCHI (菊地健雄, b. 1978) was born in Ashikaga, Tochigi Prefecture.  He is a graduate of Meiji University and The Film School of Tokyo (Eigabi).  He apprenticed under Takahisa Zeze before working as an assistant director for many years under various directors.  Dear Deer is his debut feature film.  

2016 Cathy Munroe Hotes