2nd. Tokyo Food Lovers Film Festival 2011 (第２回東京ごはん映画祭)

2nd. Tokyo Food Lovers Film Festival 2011 
第２回東京ごはん映画祭
October 8 – 23, 2011

My good friend Ushka Wakelin, who teaches cooking lessons in the Tokyo area (see her JP profile at Niki’s Kitchen), recently sent me word that the 2nd annual Food Lovers Film Festival gets underway at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Ebisu on October 8th.  

I am a big fan of food themed movies, which have been a growing trend in Japan thanks to the dominance of women cinema-goers there.  My favourite food stylist is Nami Iijima, whom I wrote about earlier this year (see: Nami Iijima: Food Stylist Extraordinaire).  The festival programme features three films that she worked on: Naoko Ogigami's Seagull Diner (2006) and Toilet (2010) and Shūichi Okita's Chef of the South Pole (2009).

The two week event will present a total of 17 Delicious Films for food lovers as well as Yuri Nomura's documentary eatrip. While food is central to the plot in many of the films, like the Ebi Fry in Chef of the South Pole, in others it is simply part of a memorable scene in the film, such as Dustin Hoffman comically making French toast with his son in Kramer vs. Kramer.  The festival hopes that visitors will experience firsthand the connections between people and food through by not only viewing the films, but sharing meals with likeminded movie fans.

In order to make the festival accessible to a wide audience, the festival offers several Special Movie Screenings for Moms. Moms are welcome to bring their children to these screenings. Children can feel free to cry or chat during the screenings without fear of disturbing other patrons. If a Mom brings two Mom friends with her, they will pay a discounted entry fee of 1,000 yen per Mom.

For the visually impaired, the screening site is equipped with audio guidance that can broadcast explanations simultaneously during the movie showing over radio waves. If you bring a FM radio receiver along, you will be able to “watch” and enjoy the movie with the rest in the same theater room. A portion of the sale receipts from the collaboration product, “eatrip picnic bag”, will go to funding for the production cost of audio guidance.

Many of the screening events will be held in partnership with local restaurants and cafes. Eatrip can be viewed while enjoying an Okinawan dinner, Cooking up Dreams with a Peruvian dinner, Dinner Rush with an Italian meal, The Hangover with drinks and dinner, and so on. Go to the website to learn about these and other events including workshops and live music.

Events are subject to change; please consult the official website for screening times and locations.

17 Delicious Films Programme

English language films (with Japanese subtitles)

Bagdad Café (バグダッド・カフェ)

Percy Adlon, GERMANY/USA, 1987

Dinner Rush (ディナーラッシュ)

Bob Giraldi, USA, 2000

Kramer vs. Kramer (クレイマー、クレイマー)

Robert Benton, USA, 1979)

My Blueberry Nights (マイ・ブルーベリー・ナイツ)

Wong Kar Wai, HONG KONG/CHINA/FRANCE, 2007

The Hangover (ハングオーバー! 消えた花ムコと史上最悪の二日酔い)

Todd Phillips, USA, 2009 (screening with dinner event only)

Into the Wild (イントゥ・ザ・ワイルド)

Sean Penn, USA, 2007

Japanese language films (only eatrip has English subtitles)

An Autumn Afternoon (秋刀魚の味/Sanma no Aji)

Yasujiro Ozu, JAPAN, 1962

Seagull Diner (かもめ食堂/Kamome Shokudo)

Naoko Ogigami, JAPAN, 2006

Read Review 

The Chef of the South Pole (南極料理人/Nankyoku Ryorinin)

Shūichi Okita, JAPAN, 2009

Read Review

Still Walking (歩いても 歩いても/Aruitemo aruitemo)

Hirokazu Kore-eda, JAPAN, 2008

Toilet (トイレット)

Naoko Ogigami, JAPAN/CANADA, 2010

Adrift in Tokyo (転々/Ten-Ten)

Satoshi Miki, JAPAN, 2007

Other languages (no English subtitles)

Soul Kitchen (ソウル・キッチン) (German with Japanese subtitles)

Fatih Akin, GERMANY, 2009

The Road Home (初恋のきた道) (Mandarin with Japanese subtitles)

Zhang Yimou, CHINA/USA, 2000

Breathless (息もできない) (Korean with Japanese subtitles)

Jang Ik-Joon, SOUTH KOREA, 2009

The Japanese Premier of

Cooking Up Dreams (Spanish with Japanese subtitles)

Ernesto Cabellos, PERU, documentary, 2011

A Special Presentation of eatrip

eatrip

Yuri Nomura, JAPAN, documentary, 2009

http://www.eatripfilm.com/

* All screenings of eatrip are with English subtitles.

Featured food from the film: stewed whole chicken with lemon and green sauce

One of the festival highlights is the contemporary Japanese food culture documentary eatrip in which director Yuri Nomura traces the relationship between food, people, the environment and spirituality.  This documentary takes the audience on a journey throughout Japan looking at how life can be led optimally through the daily ritual of eating. From the Tsukiji fish market to an Okinawan farm, the film offers poignant interviews with intriguing personalities. Featuring interviews with Nichiji Sakai, head monk of the Ikegami Honmonji temple; Kanji Takahashi, a distributor of Japanese soup stock (bonito broth); Naoko Morioka, an Okinawan leading a self-sustainable lifestyle; So-oku Sen a tea ceremony master and descendant of famed Sen No Rikyu; and Yayako Uchida, a musician and writer who recites poems about food. eatrip culminates with a passionate meal cooked by the director herself for actor Tadanobu Asano and singer UA and a handful of other eclectic guests.

October 8 – 23, 2011

Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography

Yebisu Garden Place

Advance Admission: 1 ticket 1,300yen / 3 tickets 3,600yen

Admission at the Door: 1,500yen

http://tokyogohan.com/filmfestival/

twitter: @Gohan_Movie

facebook: http://www.facebook.com/TokyoFoodLovers

info@tokyogohan.com

Lizard Planet (2009)

My kids just love this animated short by Tomoyoshi Joko. Not only is Lizard Planet (2009) bright and colourful, but it brings together two things my kids are fascinated by: lizards and outer space.

In this universe, cell-like planets float about the galaxy like bubbles in the sea. We follow the journey of a planet with a lizard on top as he delights in jellyfish, octopuses, and other “planets” passing by with glaciers and other natural objects on their backs. The lizard planet has a garden with trees and a small house on its back. He seems to be enjoying himself until his idyll is broken by the noise of a satellite dish.

Fascinated by the noisy satellite dish, the lizard planet follows it to a region of the galaxy full of space junk. There are rocket ships and floating remnants of human existence such as a lone chair. In this region, the lizard planets look old and weary and are weighted down with skyscrapers and freeways without a speck of greenery. As they pass by, our hero lizard planet’s back also transforms into a metropolis as he stares agape at the spectacular cityscapes around him. One of the ancient lizard planets gestures for him to come with them as they sacrifice themselves to a giant, sun-like orb. A fire lizard perched on the sun blows flames at the helpless lizards in an apocalyptic vision.

Our lizard hero miraculously survives this ordeal but has lost his planet. As he floats in a sea of junk, he spots another cell-like planet and grasps it, his body rounding it like a foetus in the womb. The film ends on an upbeat note with the lizard planet in a galaxy full of other lizard planets covered in lush greenery and flowers.

If one reads the lizard planet as representing our own planet as a living, breathing organism, then Tomoyoshi Joko’s film can be read as an environmentalist warning not to destroy our own environment. The film’s positive message of hope for the future led to the film being included in the recent screening event Films for Hope at the Japan Society in New York. Enjoy the film for yourself on Joko’s Youtube channel.

Tomoyoshi Joko (official website) studied animation under Taku Furukawa (Phenakistoscope, Jyōkyō Monogatari) at the Tokyo Polytechnic University. Since completed a graduate degree in March 2009 he has been working as an independent animator and teaching part time at Tokyo Polytechnic University. Joko and his wife, the acclaimed animator Hiroco Ichinose (The Last Breakfast, Ha・P, Ushi-nchi), have recently teamed up under the name DecoVocal (デコボーカル) in order to produce more ambitious animation projects together.

Filmography
2006 Afro
2006 God’s Gift
2007 Mr. Cloud and Mr. Rain
2008 Buildings
2009 Lizard Planet
2009 Kanagawa Dog

Dōjōji (道成寺, 1976)

The Buddhist temple of Dōjō in Hidakagawa, Wakayama Prefecture is home to many National Treasures (国宝/kokuhō) and Important Cultural Properties (重要文化財/jūyō bunkazai). These include scrolls from the Muromachi period (c.1336-1573) called the Dōjō-ji Engi Emaki (紙本著色道成寺縁起) which depict the story of the lady Kiyohime and the monk Anchin. The story of this ill-fated pair has been told and retold for centuries.

Most English reviews of Kihachirō Kawamoto’s award-winning puppet animation Dōjōji (道成寺, 1976), describe it as a retelling of the 19th century Kabuki play Musume Dōjōji (The Maiden of Dojo Temple) which is still quite popular today. The Kabuki and Bunraku versions of the story were adapted from the Noh play Dōjōji (Dojo Temple) which dates back to the 14th century. The earliest known version of the tale is believed to date back as far as the 11th century (Donald Keene, Twenty Plays of the Nō Theatre, p. 238).

While Kon Ichikawa’s lost (and recently recovered) puppet adaptation of Musume Dōjōji (The Girl at Dojo Temple / 娘道成寺, 1945) is definitely an adaptation of the Kabuki version – complete with Kiyohime’s dance – I believe that Kawamoto’s adaptation is actually drawn from the much more sinister Noh version.  The main plot points, thematic concerns and even the title all point to the Noh drama as being his main source of inspiration.  He has also clearly drawn on the ancient depictions of the tale of Kiyohime as inspiration for the design of his sets and puppets.

Anchin and his elderly mentor are on their yearly pilgrimage to Kumano. Along the way, they take shelter in the home of Kiyohime. She falls in love with Anchin and tries to seduce him, but he resists her. He uses his devotion to Buddha as his excuse for not falling for her charms. She begs and pleads with him, but to no avail. When she discovers that Anchin and his companion have left, she chases after him barefoot like a wild woman, paying no heed to her bleeding feet. When she finally catches up with Anchin, he no longer sees her human form but sees her as an oni (demon).

Anchin crosses the Hidaka River in his effort to escape Kiyohime and begs the boatman to help him. When Kiyohime arrives at the river, the boatman refuses to help her cross. Undeterred, she flings herself into the water in desperation and transforms into a serpent as she swims across. Meanwhile, Anchin reaches the Dōjō Temple and asks the priests there for assistance. They hide him under the giant bell. When Kiyohime, in the form of a serpent arrives, she wraps herself around the bell and burns him alive. She then returns to her human form and throws herself into the river. When the priests raise the bell, all that remains of Anchin is his skeleton with his Buddhist prayer beads unscathed still clutched in prayer in his hands. The priests begin to pray and a breeze filled with cherry blossoms blows the skeleton into dust.

The “woman as temptress” is an age old motif in mythology from around the world, included by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (pp. 101-5) in his elucidation of the monomyth. While the feminist in me recoils from this depiction of a wrathful woman – I am reminded by the famous line by William Congreve "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned." (The Mourning Bride, 1697, III.viii) – the pragmatist in me recognizes that the woman is functioning as metaphor for the temptations of life. Anchin is on a spiritual journey, like Campbell’s hero-knight figure, and Kiyohime represents the obstacles that life throws in the way of his journey.

In his animated films, Kawamoto was interested in depicting the Buddhist concepts of the hardship and suffering of human life. It was actually during the making of Dōjōji that the composer Teizō Matsumura (松村禎三, 1929-2007) gave him the complete works of Shinobu Orikuchi (折口信夫, 1887-1953) (Animation Meister interview). It was Orikuchi’s story The Book of the Dead which was to result Kawamoto’s last masterpiece, which I consider one of the most beautiful expressions of Buddhist philosophy on film.

Stylistically, Dōjōji is also a masterpiece of puppet animation. The puppets have been masterfully carved and dressed, and the sets meticulously painted. The colours and seasonal elements (spring flowers like sakura and forsynthia) have all been carefully chosen according to traditional Japanese customs. As I mentioned in my review of The Demon (Oni, 1972), the unusual mixture of 2D (watercolour backgrounds) and 3D objects (the puppets, the Bodhisattva statuette) was achieved by the use of horizontal sets shot from above with sheets of glass used to add layers to the image. Many of the scenes resemble Yamato-e paintings in the way in which set elements are places in the set. Some of the most technically stunning scenes in the film for me are the depiction of the moving waves when Kiyohime transforms into the serpent and the scene when the serpent wraps herself around the bell.

Dōjōji won Kihachirō Kawamoto much acclaim including the Émile Renault Prize and Audience Prize at Annecy in 1976. He then went on to win his third Noburo Ofuji Award for innovation in animation at the Mainichi Film Awards.

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

This review is part of Nishikata Film Review’s  Noburo Ofuji Award Challenge.

This film is available with purchase with English subtitles from cdjapan:

Kihachiro Kawamoto Sakuhin shu

Or from the U.S.:

Credits

Music

Teizo Matsumura

Sets 

Tsuyuhiko Mibu
Suzushi Nakagawa

Puppets
Kihachiro Kawamoto
Hiromi Wakasa
Kaoko Takahashi

Camera
Minoru Tamura

Sound
Isamu Katto

Sound Effects
Iwao Takahashi

Editing
Hisako Aizawa

Lab
Toyo Laboratory

Animation
Kihachiro Kawamoto
Ryo Ozaki
Hirokazu Minegishi
Tokiko Omukai

Animation Special Effects
Hiroshi Jinsenji
Takashi Komae

Title Calligraphy 
Hideo Goto

Screenplay/Direction
Kihachiro Kawamoto