Floating Sun (幻日, 2013)

Floating Sun (幻日, 2013) is a bit of a departure for Tokyo-based Malaysian director Edmund Yeo into the horror genre.  This short film is his contribution to Hungry Ghost Festival: 3 Doors of Horrors (鬼節:三重門, 2013), a 45-minute horror omnibus film produced by prolific Malaysian filmmaker James Lee for his indie production company Doghouse 73 Pictures.  The film premiered on Youtube on the 17^th of August.  The omnibus, which was designed to showcase young Malaysian directors, also includes Leroy Low’s I Miss You Two and Ng Ken Kin’s Horror Mission.  This review is of the 20 minute director’s cut of Floating Sun considered independently of the omnibus as a standalone short film.

The plot of Floating Sun comes from a short story by author and poet Kanai Mieko (金井美恵子, b. 1947).  According to Yeo’s blog Swifty, Writing, he happened upon Mieko’s collection of short stories The Word Book at the Aoyama Book Center in Roppongi.  Her story “The Moon” was the inspiration behind his beautiful short Last Fragments of Winter (2011), while Floating Sun is based on the story “The Boundary Line”, about the corpse of a woman who drowned.  

As with many Edmund Yeo films, Floating Sun blurs the lines between past and present, real and imagined.  A young novelist, Fiona Yang (Emily Lim), is writing a story based upon the unusual circumstances surrounding the death of her teenaged classmate Chen Xiao Hui (Candy Lee) many years ago. Chen Xiao Hui was found floating on her back in the river by a security officer (Azman Hassan), and the events continue to affect all those involved.  Since beginning to write the story, Fiona has been haunted by images of Chen Xiao Hui’s corpse floating in the river.  A series of strange events also begin to disturb her and her young daughter Teng (Regina Wong) in the apartment that they share.  The disquieting events seem to be connected not only to the haunting presence of the spirit of Chen Xiao Hui but also to possible guilt surrounding Fiona’s affair with married man Wai Loon (Steve Yap) – but this interpretation is my own as the circumstances are deliberately left vague.

 

It turns out that Fiona was the last person to see Chen Xiao Hui alive, a fact that she downplays as being unimportant because they were merely classmates not close friends.  A flashback reveals that Fiona recalls sitting with Chen Xiao Hui at the river and saying: “Do you know, if you look at the sun from underneath the water, it is as if the sun is floating.  It’s a lovely sight, but sad at the same time.”  These comments suggest that Chen Xiao Hui’s death may have been an accident. 

The location for the river scenes really makes the film.  Chen Xiao Hui lies in the water as if being embraced by the root of a giant tree.  This tree was truly a great find for the film for its numerous roots are not only poetically beautiful, but add symbolic weight to the film: the roots behind the events in this vignette are many, but Edmund Yeo leaves us only a few tantalizing clues and leaves it to our imaginations to fill in the blanks.   It’s an atmospheric and suspenseful tale that leaves us wanting to know more about these characters.    

You can watch Floating Sun as part of the Hungry Ghost Festival: 3 Doors of Horrors (鬼節:三重門, 2013) on Youtube.

Written, directed, and edited by:

Edmund Yeo

Executive producer: 

James Lee

Director of photography:

Lesly Leon Lee

Music:

Wong Woan Foon

Cast: 

Emily Lim as Fiona Yang

Candy Lee as Chen Xiao Hui

Daphne Lee as Fiona (teenager)

Steve Yap as Wai Loon

Candy Ice as Wai Loon’s wife

Azman Hassan as the security guard

Regina Wong as Teng

 Catherine Munroe Hotes 2013

The 4th Annual Tokyo Food Lovers Film Festival (第4回東京ごはん映画祭)

A festival that brings together “delicious films” and “delicious food”.

おいしい映画」と「おいしいごはん」を真ん中に、みんなで繋がる映画祭

Dates:  October 12^th – 18^th, 2013
【日時】2013年10月12日（土）～10月18日（金）
Locations: Omotesando Hills and the Image Forum Theatre
【場所】12～14：表参道ヒルズ スペース オー12～18：シアター・イメージフォーラ
http://tokyogohan.com/

The Tokyo Food Lovers Film Festival is back for its fourth year with a mixture of festival favourites, classic foodie films, and some new films with a food theme.  What makes this film festival unique is that they partner with local chefs and restaurants to pair dishes with the films, making the film screenings a delight not only for the eyes and ears but also for the audience's senses of taste, smell, and touch.

Films that have shown at the festival before include the documentaries eatrip and El Bulli: Cooking in Progress, as well as the much loved indie fare Amélie and Bagdad Café.  This year sees a number of recent documentaries including heartfelt films Ten no Shizuku, Reviving Recipes, and Iranian Cookbook, not to mention the internationally acclaimed Jiro Dreams of Sushi.  There are also recent feature films such as the high school girl comedy-drama Otome no Recipe, Amole Gupte’s award-winning Stanley’s Tiffin Box (aka Stanley’s Lunch Box), and Ken Loach’s Cannes Jury Prize winner The Angel’s Share.  Other films I highly recommend are Louis Malle’s beautifully shot anarchic comedy Zazie dans le métro and Wong Kai-Wai’s dynamic Chungking Express.

This years films and their accompanying dishes:

Girl’s Recipes / Otome no recipe『乙女のレシピ』

Mitsuhiro Mihara, JAPAN, feature, 2012

Starring: Miho Kanazawa, Airi Kido, Mika Akizuki, Erena Watanabe and Mio Yuki

Dish:  Chef Okuda Original Dish

Special Guests: Chef Okuda, members of the cast

eatrip 『eatrip』

Yuri Nomura, JAPAN, documentary, 2009

Dish: Roast Chicken in a Green and Lemon Sauce

Amélie 『アメリ, 』

Jean-Pierre Jeunet, FRANCE, feature, 2001)

Starring: Audrey Tautou, André Dussollier, Mattieu Kassovitz, Rufus

Dish:  crème brûlée

Chungking Express 『恋する惑星』

 Wong Karwai, HONG KONG, feature, 1994)

Starring: Brigitte Lin, Tony Leung Chiu-Wair, Faye Wong, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Valerie Chow

Dish:  Hong Kong Street Food

El Bulli: Cooking in Progress 『エル・ブリの秘密 世界一予約のとれないレストラン』

Gereon Wetzel, GERMANY, documentary, 2011)

Dish: presented by Food Creation  

Stanley’s Tiffin Box 『スタンリーのお弁当箱』

Amole Gupte, INDIA, feature, 2011

Starring: Partho A. Gupte, Numaan Sheikh, Abhishek Reddy

Dish:  Indian curry

Bagdad Café 『バグダッド・カフェ』

Percy Adlon, GERMANY/USA, feature, 1987

Starring: Marianne Sägebrecht, C.C.H. Pounder, Jack Palance

Dish: coffee and bread

Coffee and Cigarettes 『コーヒー&シガレッツ』

Jim Jarmusch, USA, feature (11 linked vignettes), 2003

Starring: Roberto Benigni, Bteve Buscemi, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits

Dish: coffee and hamburgers

Jiro Dreams of Sushi 『二郎は鮨の夢を見る』

David Gelb, USA, documentary, 2011

Featuring: Jiro Yoshino

Dish: sushi

Iranian Cookbook 『イラン式料理本』

Mohammad Shirvani, IRAN, docu-fiction, 2010

Dish: Iranian home cooking

The Angel’s Share 『天使の分け前』

Ken Loach, UK/FRANCE/BELGIUM/ITALY, feature, 2012

Starring: Paul Brannigan, John Henshaw, William Ruane, Gary Maitland

Dish: Scotch Whisky

Zazie dans le métro『地下鉄のザジ』

Louis Malle, FRANCE, feature, 1960

Starring: Catherine Demongeot, Philippe Noiret

Dish: blue mussels steamed in wine

Dinner Rush 『ディナーラッシュ』

Bob Giraldi, USA, feature, 2000

Starring: Danny Aiello, John Rothman, Frank Bongiorno

Dish: lobster pasta

Ten no Shizuku: Tatsumi Yoshiko “Inochi no Soup”

『天のしずく　辰巳芳子“いのちのスープ”』

Atsunori Kawamura, JAPAN, documentary, 2012

Featuring: Mitsuko Kusabue

Dish: potage bonne femme (leek, potato and carrot soup)

Reviving Recipes 『よみがえりのレシピ』

Satoshi Watanabe, JAPAN, documentary, 2011

Dish: Yamagata produce

Screening times and locations on the official website: http://tokyogohan.com/

A2-B-C (2013)

A subjective documentary like Ian Thomas Ash’s A2-B-C (2013), is difficult for me to watch with any sort of objectivity.  Having been a mother of two young children when I lived in Tokyo, and having many close friends with children in Japan, the familiar scenes of dusty Japanese playgrounds, friendly hoikuen (nursery schools), and concerned parents’ groups stuck a deep chord with me.   

Ash also makes it clear from his opening confrontation 12 days after the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima with Dr. Shunichi Yamashita, the government advisor on radiation health, that he is firmly on the side of the families affected by the disaster. Although he does interview a wide range of people from workers hired to “decontaminate” houses to local politicians, the main focus of A2-B-C (still called by its earlier title A2 when it screened at Nippon Connection in June) is to give voice to the most at risk people whose views are not being taken seriously enough by the powers that be: the mothers and children affected by the fallout of the Fukushima disaster.

In particular, Ash turns his attentions to mothers and children living in Date City (pronounced with two syllables: “da-tay”), 60km northwest of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.  Because the city lies outside of the 30km exclusion zone, the families living in this area have no access to funding to move elsewhere in Japan.   Although this community is further away, these communities northwest of Daiichi lie in the path of the radioactive plume.  Most of the families living here feel helpless.  They can’t sell their homes to fund a move because no one will buy them.  Without government assistance it is impossible to give up their property and jobs and start with nothing somewhere else. 

Having resigned themselves to the fact that they are stuck where they are, the mothers that Ash follows are educating themselves on how radiation works and are challenging the system when they feel that they are being given inaccurate or misleading information.  Mothers are afraid to let their children play outside, to allow their children drink school milk because it is being sourced locally, or even allow their children to go to school because there is a major radiation hotspot just on the other side of the school fence.  Recently, there has even been talk of feeding the schoolchildren locally sourced rice regardless of the hazards. 

The community is living with the fear of cancer hanging over their heads.  Rumours abound of young women having abortions or having already given up the idea of getting married for fear that they have already been affected by radiation.  The children go to school and to the playground with “glass badges” that monitor the amount of radiation they are being exposed to on a daily basis.  The title of the film is taken from the thyroid examination results that the children have taken.  One of the most disturbing scenes in the film is when a group of children discuss their A2 thyroid cysts and seem resigned to the fact that they will likely one day develop cancer.  The mothers don’t even trust the hospital thyroid test results because they are being prevented from paying private hospitals for independent results.

Ian Thomas Ash is the voice behind the camera for most of the 70-minute film, apart from a sweet scene where one of the young daughters turns the tables on him and photographs him and in a tension-filled scene when a school vice principle confronts him about filming on school property without permission.  One of the most interesting aspects of the film is how close Ash gets to the families whose stories he is telling.  You can really feel his genuine concern and compassion for these people who feel left adrift in a sea of misinformation. 

One of the more frustrating aspects of the film is this lack of clear information.  The average viewer does not understand what a safe radiation reading is, how radiation works, or what the thyroid test results really mean.  There is also a lack of context about how reasonable it is for the residents of Fukushima Prefecture to mistrust government information – after all, there is a long history of government officials from the local to national level in Japan putting industry ahead of the health and well-being of communities.  For many, the Fukushima disaster brings back memories of what happened in Minamata,Niigata, Yokkaichi, and elsewhere.  While I was frustrated by the lack of clear context in the film, at the same time that frustration mirrors that of the people living in the shadow of the nuclear plant.  Ash has made a film that puts us into the shoes of the people who are living daily with the fear of the unknown.  The fear of a future that may be filled with illness and suffering for themselves and their children.

It was a film that had to be made.  A2-B-C won the jury adjudicated Nippon Visions Award at Nippon Connection 2013 to much applause.  The award includes JVTA (Japan Visualmedia Translation Academy) funding for subtitling his next film.  Ash is working on a follow up film about Fukushima which will be his third film on the devastating effects of the nuclear meltdown.  His first film, In the Grey Zone (2012) was filmed closer to the Daiichi plant. 

To learn more about Ian Thomas Ash, check out his official website and Robin Caudell’s article on Ash winning the Nippon Visions Award.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2013

#nippon13 #nc2013

Shady (かしこい狗は、吠えずに笑う, 2012)

Ryohei Watanabe (b. 1987) made a splash at last year’s Pia Film Festival with his debut feature film Shady (かしこい狗は、吠えずに笑う/Kashikoi inu wa hoezu ni warau, 2012) where he won the Entertainment Award and the Cinema Fan Award.  Since then, his film has shown at international festivals including Nippon Connection 13 and the Nara International Film Festival.  Yoshito Seino has listed Watanabe as one of 7 Japanese Indie filmmakers to check out at the upcoming Raindance (25^th Sept. – 6^th Oct. 2013) in the UK.

On the surface Shady appears to be a teenage girl coming of age film.  Risa Kumada (mimpi*β) is an outsider at school.  Her body type and round face don’t conform to what’s currently “cool” and she finds herself on the receiving end of cruel taunts from the school bullies.  Mocking her slightly chubby appearance, the bully ringleader Marisa calls Risa “Pooh-san” in a play on words of “kuma” (bear) in her family name. 

Risa has become so resigned to her fate as an outsider that she is startled by the sudden attentions of Izumi (岡村いずみ), who is one of the cutest girls in high school.  Wary at first, Risa soon falls under the spell of Izumi’s charm and before long the girls have become best friends who confide in each other and do everything together.  Before long their friendship takes on the intensity of a romance.

However, there is a growing sense of unease that develops gradually from the moment the film begins.  This unease is invoked through parallel story lines (the police search for missing classmate Aya), cinematography (strange glimpses of the past and the future shot in shades of grey with punches of colour), the soundtrack, and metaphor.  Right at the outset, a sense of entrapment is established when Risa as voice-over narrator wonders if people can sympathize with what it is like to be a dog on a leash, a fish in an aquarium, or a bird in a cage.  Watanabe and cinematographer Katstuki Tsuji continue this motif by filming Risa and Izumi in claustrophobic spaces and frames within the frame from the aquarium in the foreground to the electricity lines.

Izumi’s home also serves as a metaphor for her character: a strangely quiet place devoid of family life.  When Risa expresses surprise at how big the house is, Izumi mysteriously warns Risa that appearances can be deceiving.  Of course, Risa does not head this or any other warning (i.e. Izumi’s repeated quotation of Napoleon saying “Men are moved by two levers only— fear and self interest”) until she is too psychologically entangled with Izumi to escape. 

For such a young filmmaker, Watanabe has put together a tightly edited, suspenseful film.  Although I might have gone a different route with the resolution of the film, it was a delight to see such a well executed film under 2 hours in length at Nippon Connection.  A nice contrast from the countless young directors whose films drag on because unconstrained by the cost of film stock they indulge themselves with long-winded endings.  Ryohei Watanabe is definitely a filmmaker to keep one’s eye on.

For more on Ryohei Watanabe see Guillaume Boutigny’s interview with him at Nihon Eiga  (FR) and Adam Torel’s Best of 2012 posting on Wildgrounds (EN).

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2013

#nippon13 #nc2013

Zakka Films: An interview with Seiko Ono

Rokkasho Rhapsody (Hitomi Kamanaka, 2006)

One of the biggest frustrations of fans of Japanese film is that we hear about a great documentary playing at international festivals and have to wait years before it is available on DVD.  Even then, the film is usually only released in Japan and without English subtitles – thus limiting the audience and making it difficult to use for teaching purposes.

All that changed earlier this year when the U.S-based company Zakka Films opened its Filmmakers’ Market with the aim of offering Japanese and Asian documentary filmmakers the opportunity to bring subtitled DVDs of their films fresh onto the market for consumption like fish at Tsukiji. 

Zakka Films is the brainchild of Seiko Ono, wife of respected Yale professor Aaron Gerow (author of Visions of Japanese Modernity and A Page of Madness).  After my dedicating the month of October last year to reviewing DVD releases by Zakka Films, I contacted Seiko Ono to learn more about how she came to start this exciting new DVD label.

Tell me about yourself and your background in the film industry.

In the late 1980s in Japan I started working at Studio 200 of the Seibu Department Stores. Things were about to decline, but Seibu still had lots of museums, movie theaters, performance theaters and galleries. Unlike the department stores in the US, they were trying to provide an entire life to customers: not just fashionable brands, but the arts as well. Studio 200 was one of the Seibu art spaces, and was sort of an all-purpose theater playing rare films, presenting dance performance, experimental music concerts, art exhibitions, etc. People working there, including me, coordinated many different kinds of events, and I had some wonderful opportunities to work with films which were not shown at commercial theaters such as Taiwan New Wave films. It was extremely exciting for me to work there, and in fact I learned so many things and met a lot of film people, which helped me later. Just before the 1990s, Seibu’s art spaces started closing one after another out of financial difficulties. People around me started leaving because no one wanted to be transferred to the shoe section or some other section of the Seibu Department Store. In 1990 I joined the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, which was preparing for the second festival in 1991 (the YIDFF takes place once every two years). After that, for nearly 20 years, my work involved programming and coordinating the YIDFF. I am no longer officially at the YIDFF, but I am still involved.

Zakka Films seems like a real labour of love.  What inspired you to start the company?

In 2004 my husband got a job at Yale in the US, and all of us moved to America. I still continued to work for the YIDFF from afar even though I was not a programmer anymore. I had more spare time to start thinking of doing something I had never done before, or something that could justify me living here in the US. Considering my long career at the YIDFF, it didn’t take a long time to get the idea to sell Japanese documentaries on DVD. I already had connections with many documentary productions and filmmakers. It was a quite natural idea to start thinking of working on Japanese documentaries. There were only a few Japanese documentaries that you could obtain in the US, and the few that existed tended to downplay the presence of the director, such as with Out of Place: A Memoir by Edward W. Said and Radiation: A Slow Death. The first is by Makoto Sato and the second by Hitomi Kamanaka, and both of them are pretty famous documentary filmmakers, but their names as directors were sometimes hard to find in publicity. Customers were not always even aware these were documentaries from Japan. I felt there was something not quite right with this situation. That was one impetus for starting Zakka Films. By the way, Zakka Films means 雑貨映画 in Japanese. It is a made up word combination, but zakka in Japanese means miscellaneous goods, so I thought I’d deal not just with documentaries, but also with other rare films which are powerful and excite fans of good cinema. As you know, the first DVD of Zakka Films was The Roots of Japanese Anime, a collection of classic animation, not documentary. You see I had no experience in running my own business in Japan, and here in the US I was a non-English speaker, so I thought I should not try something too difficult at first. Classic animation had a broader appeal and there were already many fans of Japanese animation. Starting with this, I could learn how to produce a DVD, how to promote it, and how to sell it.

Although much of pre-war animation has been lost, many great animated films by Noburo Ofuji and Kenzo Masaoka did survive until the present day.    What criteria did you use in selecting films for The Roots of Japanese Anime: Until the End of WWII? 

If you want to access classic animation films, the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, is the best place to visit, but it is almost impossible for us to make a DVD from their films. Fortunately, there are some classic animation collectors in Japan. All the films on The Roots of Japanese Anime were from one collector whom I had known for a long time. At the beginning of this project, I had a longer list of films to include, but the process of working on permission and rights issues trimmed it down to eight films. For me Momotaro’s Sea Eagle (review) was the one which couldn’t be removed, since it was so historically significant. We also made a booklet that comes with the DVD which includes historical backgrounds of each film, and out customers have liked that.

Do have any plans to release more anime in the future?

Right after I released this DVD, I received requests from many customers about what they want next. Many of them were popular 1970s anime which were made for TV such as the anime of Fujio Akastuka or Go Nagai. If I won a fortune in a lottery, I might put out such DVDs, but that is a bit beyond our scale. However, if I have another chance to work on classic animation again, I would do it.

Zakka Films released four documentaries by legendary filmmaker Noriaki Tsuchimoto who passed away in 2008.  Did Tsuchimoto know of the plans for their release?

I wish he had known of this plan. Two years after his death, my husband and I visited his office, Ciné Associé, a company which was taken over by his wife and sometimes editor of his later films, Motoko Tsuchimoto. I told her about my project before the plans were even concrete, and she was very happy to hear of it, and it was her enthusiasm that helped start the project. Of course I needed to discuss the project with Siglo, the production company for Minamata: The Victims and Their World (review). Both of them were so supportive. Motoko-san provided us tapes, documents, books and whatever was helpful for Zakka.

In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, Tsuchimoto’s documentaries about Minamata and Hiroshima seem more important than ever – particularly his focus on the victims of these manmade catastrophes and their stories.  What can today’s documentarians learn from Tsuchimoto?

Tsuchimoto’s belief was that “If there is no record, there is no truth.” When he started making documentaries about Minamata, Minamata disease was taboo: no one wanted to talk about this disease, which is why his first attempt to make a documentary about Minamata for television totally failed. So what he did was to enter their world: he and his staff started living there, and volunteered to do things like drive a car to help them. Minamata was a poor town and cars were still rare. After building closer relationships with them—a method that wasn’t unusual in the 1960s given the Sanrizuka series by Ogawa Productions—he and his staff gradually started shooting. Their office was always open so people from Minamata could make casual visits and Tsuchimoto could show them the rushes they just shot. Building trust, people who refused to be filmed at the beginning ended up turning to ask him to film them! That’s why he could shoot so many of the victims for Minamata: The Victims and Their World. 

This documentary became an important document in publicizing Minimata disease so they could be officially recognized as a victims by the government of Japan at that time. Tsuchimoto’s Minamata series is not just a document, it is a record of human dignity. For cinematic beauty, I believe some of his films should be ranked among the top films of world cinema history. You cannot find in his films the terrible images of the victims that you can find by searching YouTube with the keyword “Minamata.” He patiently waited until the patients were relaxed and tried to film their most beautiful expression. I think that’s how he in the end could create works that made you think deeply about social contradictions. After the Fukushima nuclear accident, many documentary filmmakers have been to Fukushima or Miyagi to make documentaries. I think it is fine to have many different styles and methods, and not all of them need be masterpieces. But I wonder how many filmmakers think like Tsuchimoto did about how to film such tragedies, and how their work relates to the issues. The documentaries I like to see are not those that are complete when you’re finished watching, but those that start then. Tsuchimoto’s films are like that.

On the Road: A Document (1964) is a groundbreaking film for its experimentation with the form of dramatized documentary.  Can you talk a little bit about why this was such a radical film when it was released and how it was received by audiences?

This film was originally made as traffic safety film for the Metropolitan Police, but it was shelved for nearly 40 years because Tsuchimoto did not make the film that was ordered. Tsuchimoto was working with the drivers union to expose their problems and unhealthy labor conditions, while also masterfully editing the footage like a city symphony, so when a police official finally saw the film, he called it “useless—the plaything of a cinephile.” Until recently the film was not shown openly except at some film festivals, so for a long time On the Road was a kind of phantom film. The production company went bankrupt, so the rights finally reverted to Noriaki Tsuchimoto himself, and the DVD was released in 2004 in Japan.

The name “Zakka” (miscellaneous goods) suggests that you plan to expand your catalogue to include more than just classic works of animation and documentary.  What is next for Zakka Films?  

I am going to continue working on Tsuchimoto’s works, but in the spirit of my company’s name, zakka (雑貨), I would like to extend my business and move beyond the limitations imposed by our size and finances. The project I just opened is The Filmmakers’ Market (FM). FM is a new marketplace for documentaries that tries to break down the walls separating Japanese filmmakers and foreign viewers and allows filmmakers to bring their English-subtitled works in for direct sale, kind of like a farmer’s fresh produce market. When I produce and release my own DVDs, there are countless steps such as making subtitles, designing the DVD cover, making booklets, and so on; that is a big investment in time and money, so we have to limit ourselves in what we actually release. But FM is basically Zakka helping independent filmmakers sell the DVDs they have already made to a foreign market. It opens up the possibilities to obtain rare documentaries, some of which are not even commercially released in Japan. We feature not only Japanese but also other Asian documentaries. All of the DVDs are produced by the directors and producers themselves; for some, Zakka will help make an English booklet or cover, but some may have only Japanese on the package or in the booklet (we will note as such when selling it). But and all of them will have English subtitles. Please come and look at the films brought to market!

産地直送 Filmmakers’ Market (official website)

ROKKASHO RHAPSODY  Director: Hitomi Kamanaka (read review)

In 2004 the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant was completed in Rokkasho village as a facility for reprocessing spent fuel from Japan's nuclear reactors into plutonium. The film spotlights the people of the village, who hold diverse opinions regarding this huge, nearly operational national project.

ECHOES FROM THE MIIKE   Director: Hiroko Kumagai

The story of the Miike Coal Mine, the largest mine in Japan, which ceased operations on March 30, 1997. Hiroko Kumagai interviewed over 70 individuals, men and women, including Koreans who were forcibly brought to Japan. The film looks at Miike not just to explore the past, but also to think about the future: what it means to work and to live.

BREAKING THE SILENCE  Director: Toshikuni Doi

In the spring of 2002, the Israeli army surrounded and attacked the Balata refugee camp. The camera follows residents living in at state of terror and records their lives and feelings.

ARTISTS OF WONDERLAND  Director: Makoto Sato

This is a film about seven artists. It's also about seven people who are mentally handicapped. This has all the marks of a Makoto Sato film: the quirky humor and passion for everyday human life.

BINGAI  Director: Feng Yan

Bingai, a Chinese documentary by Feng Yan—a director deeply inspired by Shinsuke Ogawa—has just been added to the Filmmakers' Market at Zakka Films. Bingai won the Ogawa Shinsuke Prize (the grand prize of Asia program) at the Yamagata Film Festival.

MAPPING THE FUTURE NISHINARI  Directors: Yukio Tanaka, Tetsuo Yamada

Nishinari in Osaka is home to one of Japan's largest concentrations of day laborers, with much of the population being composed of homeless persons, buraku (a discriminated community of descendants of outcast groups), former yakuza, and Korean-Japanese. This documentary presents the people of Nishinari, not from on high, but rather from their own level.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

The Mirage Flower (あんてるさんの花, 2012)

Tonight the 13^th Japan FilmFest Hamburg is hosting the world premiere of The Mirage Flower (aka The Mysterious Flower of Anteru / Anteru-san no hana, 2012) directed by up and coming young filmmaker Tadaaki Horai.  The film is set in Kichijōji, a bustling neighbourhood of Musashino city. 

Shigemitsu Ogi (Paradise Kiss, Always: Sunset on Third Street 2) plays Teruo Ando, the quiet unassuming proprietor of an izakaya (Japanese-style bar) which he has named using his own nickname “Anteru”.   While doing a guest spot on a local radio station to promote his izakaya, Anteru learns about a mysterious flower from Peru whose petals can cause realistic hallucinations for up to three days.

On his way home, Anteru spots a flower fitting the description at a florist, purchases it on a whim, and takes it back to the izakaya to show his wife Namiko (Misato Tanaka of Bride of Noto).  Namiko suggests that they test the flower’s powers out on three of their regular customers: Kusanagi, a divorcee with a young son; Chisato, a recently signed musician trying to make a name for herself; and Takayuki, a part-time security guard with a meddling little sister.

After having contact with Anteru’s flower, each of the central characters encounters an important figure in their lives – someone who has been haunting their dreams and whose relationship with them is unresolved.  Kusanagi (Hidenori Tokuyama of Slackers 2) is still suffering from the pain of his recent divorce and struggling with being a single father to Shuichi.  The sudden reappearance of his ex-wife (Megumi Sato of Happy Flight) forces him to confront his conflicting feelings towards her.

Chisato (Megumi Yanagi) now considers herself a professional musician on the up-and-up, but her new record producer is pressuring her to change her style in order to become more successful.  After coming in contact with Anteru’s flower, Chisato’s former band mate Naomi (Yukina Kasai) reappears in her life.  Naomi reminds Chisato of her roots as an artist and causes her to question whether or not she has become a sell-out.

Unlike his two friends, Takayuki (Ren Mori) doesn’t seem to have any skeletons in his closest – apart from a troubled relationship with his parents – but he does have secret fantasies about the kind of girl he’d like to meet.  One day while on the job the beautiful girl of his dreams turns up and engages him in conversation.   Remembering his encounter with Anteru’s flower, Takayuki immediately presumes that this girl must be a hallucination.  Real or not, Takayuki is happy to go with the flow for as long as this trip lasts.

The film unfolds in a dream-like fashion with some scenes shot overly bright to add to the ethereal quality.  The multiple plot lines weave in and out of one another in a manner reminiscent of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours Trilogy with a colour scheme similar to that of The Double Life of Véronique. The line between what is real and what is hallucination is so thin that we start to realize that even the envelope story of Anteru and his wife may not be all that it seems.  The references to Hans Christian Andersen remind us that this is not a realistic story but a more of a fable about life.   It is a film about unfinished business and second chances, not to mention love, loss and forgiveness. 

The Mirage Flower will be released in Japan on the 16^th of June at the Baus Theatre.  For more information, check out the film’s official website or the website of the production company Musashino Eiga.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Lord of Chaos: The Cinema of Sono Sion (2011)

Lord of Chaos: The Cinema of Sono Sion

Il signore del chaos: Il cinema di Sono Sion

In December, the 29th Torino Film Festival (TFF, 25 November – 3 December 2011) honoured Sion Sono by featuring his oeuvre in their Rapporto confidenziale (Confidential Report) section.  This annual programme aims to take note of emerging auteurs, genres, and other trends in international cinema. 

In honouring Sono, TFF describes him as an “eccentric and mesmerizing Japanese poet, novelist and director” whose works had never before been screened in Italian cinemas.   They go on to call him a “visionary” and a “provocative and dynamic filmmaker.  .  .  [who] mixes mixes psychoanalysis and Grand Guignol, melodrama and pop culture, horror and politics, serial killers and dark ladies.” (source)

In addition to presenting almost all of Sono’s films, TFF teamed up with the Italian blog Sonatine: Appunti sul cinema giapponese contemporaneo (Sonatine: Notes on contemporary Japanese cinema) to publish a book of essays and film reviews called Il signore del chaos: Il cinema di Sono Sion (Lord of Chaos: The Cinema of Sono Sion).

The book is edited by Dario Tomasi and Franco Picollo and features the writing of not only the editors but also Claudia Bertolè, Matteo Boscarol, Luca Calderini, Giacomo Calorio, Emanuela Martini, Grazia Paganelli, and Fabio Rainelli.  The cover features a photograph of the director taken at TFF.  The book includes a complete filmography with titles in Japanese/romaji/English/ Italian

For non-Italian speakers, I recommend checking out the Sonatine website using Google Translate.  As Italian sentence structure is very similar to English it is quite readable – unlike the bizarre world of Google JP to EN!!  Check out the following reviews on Sonatine:

1984   Rabu songu (Love Song)

1985   Ore wa Sono Sion da! (I Am Sono Sion!)
1986   Ai (Love)
1986   Otoko no hanamichi (Man's Flower Road) 

1988   Kessen!Joshiryō tai danshiryō (Decisive Match! Girls Dorm Against Boys Dorm)
1990   Jitensha toiki (Bicycle Sighs) 
1992   Heya (The Room)

1997   Keiko desu kedo (I Am Keiko / It's Me Keiko)
1998   Dankon - The Man (Dankon: The Man)

2000   Utsushimi (Utsushimi)

2002   Jisatsu sākuru (Suicide Club)

2005   Yume no naka e (Into a Dream)
2005   Kimyōna sākasu (Strange Circus)

2006   Hazard (Hazard)

2006   Noriko no shokutaku (Noriko's Dinner Table)

2006   Kikyū kurabu, sono go (Balloon Club).

2007   Exte (Exte: Hair Extensions)
2009   Ai no mukidashi (Love Exposure)
2009   Chanto tsutaeru (Be Sure to Share), 2009

2010   Tsumetai nettaigyo (Cold Fish)

2011   Koi no tsumi (Guilty of Romance)

2011   Himizu (Himizu)

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012