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Oct.7 no.5


 
ONE CUT
“I Would Like to Keep Deepening the Discussion”
Filmmaking, the Women’s Movement and Friendship
Filmmakers Taste Yamagata
“Dedicated to Robert Kramer”
Haryu Ichiro in Yamagata
Other Possible Themes for Yamagata Doc’s Kingdom:
Japanese Panorama
A Patch of Blue Sky
Kobayashi Shigeru, director
New Asian Currents
The Falling Kite
An Interview with Hsiao Mei-ling
New Asian Currents
MAYA
An Interview with Sekine Hiroyuki





“I Would Like to Keep Deepening the Discussion”
“I see this film as the first step of a process that has just started. I don’t think I could make Tanaka-san understand everything about me (as Korean-Japanese), and the fact that I am Korean-Japanese does not end with this movie. She is almost like family to me, and because we understand each other so well, our friendship has been one in which things that we don’t understand about each other are left alone. But there are still some parts of Tanaka-san’s opinion about the Korean-Japanese issue that I haven’t grasped yet, so I would like to keep deepening my discussion with her.”
(Tei-chan of Tei-chan’s Roots after the screening)



Filmmaking, the Women’s Movement and Friendship
Soha has been an activist in the women’s film group Barito with director Byun Young-joo. An avid reader, soha was in charge of the group’s theoretical endeavors. At the time, she promised herself that she would make a film in ten years. And so for ten years, she was a film critic and theorist. Now, just as she vowed, she has made a movie that is a collection of women’s expressions. At her Q&A session, the words of someone who has grown through filmmaking, the women’s movement, and friendship echoed quietly through the theater.
(soha, director, Koryu: Southern Women, South Korea)



Filmmakers Taste Yamagata
The “Find Out Yamagata” sightseeing tour began with a visit to a sake brewery. It was still morning but fifteen filmmakers were knocked out by treasured sake which cannot be found in stores. Even the usually quiet Ozgur E. Arik was smiling. The next stop was a tofu factory, and Kye Un-kyoung said, “Yamagata is wonderful! I love soba and sushi.” Next to her was Kana Tomoko, who, with a bottle of soy sauce in her hand, turned into a “soy sauce girl,” serving soy sauce to all present. Mehrdad Oskouei sat Japanese style, strangely natural. Finally came soba and imo-ni (stewed sato-imo potatoes) beneath the blue sky. Was the conversation about filmmaking? No. It was all about food. The great filmmakers were regular human beings after all. Given their smiles, all we can say is that great food is universal.



“Dedicated to Robert Kramer”
After the YIDFF Network Special Screening of Good Friends, Good People, director Masa came up for a Q&A session. The piece depicts aspects of YIDFF ’97 head juror Robert Kramer rarely seen in Kramer’s work, and some questions were related to Kramer. Kramer’s widow Erika Kramer was also present at the screening, and a harmonious atmosphere pervaded the theater.
(The Good Friends, Good People screening)



Haryu Ichiro in Yamagata
Although the screening of Nippon Suicide Pact ended late in the evening, the theater was standing-room only and the air filled with enthusiasm. After the Q & A session with director Oura Nobuyuki, Haryu Ichiro was introduced and went up to the stage. “During the interview, I was worried whether or not it would really become a movie, but in the end it’s a wonderful piece and filled with Mr. Oura’s variety of images. But this movie is not me. The images are strictly the director’s.” Haryu’s words to the audience after the screening were as inspiring as his words throughout the film.
(After Nippon Suicide Pact at Muse)


Other Possible Themes for Yamagata Doc’s Kingdom:
Already there has been a lot of talk about theoretical writings on the mixed usage of fiction and documentary. There are a few films in the International Competition and in the New Asian Currents series that use this, the limits between the two [fiction and documentary], which is, of course, very interesting, because you hear a lot of people asking, “Is that true, is that true? Or was it staged just for the film?” And you can ask yourself, is that a relevant question or not? This is one of the many questions we’ll be asking. (Kees Bakker, Yamagata Doc’s Kingdom)
•Yamagata Doc’s Kingdom runs from 10:00 to 21:00, Monday October 8 at the Yamagata Citizens’ Hall Small Hall.



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A Happy Reunion
A Patch of Blue Sky (Japanese Panorama)
Kobayashi Shigeru, director

 

I saw Doomealee, the Very First Step at New Asian Currents. This is a sequel to director Hong Hyungsook’s film, Doomealee, A New School Is Opening, which screened at YIDFF in 1995. I had become acquainted with director Hong and her all-female film crew back then, so I was looking forward to seeing them again. The previous film chronicled villagers who protested the Korean government policy of merging and closing small elementary schools. This film elaborated on the issue and depicted the lives of villagers who valued nature. I could empathize with the villagers’ hearts who protested the closure and, in a sense, this film became a foundation to the previous one. The four seasons were captured very well, and I could see Hong’s evolution as a director. One of the aims of this festival is to nurture Asian filmmakers, and I am glad that Hong has set a good example. The director could not make it to Yamagata; instead, Mr. Kang Seok-pil, her husband and the producer of this film, came. Holding high a photo of the director with her baby, Mr. Kang told me that they had gotten married and that they had a baby two months ago. One delight of this festival will be finding out what kind of work Hong Hyungsook will make along with the growth of her child.







Where Does a Kite Cut Loose Fly?
The Falling Kite (New Asian Currents)
An Interview with Hsiao Mei-ling

 

The Chinese title of Hsiao Mei-ling’s film The Falling Kite literally means “a kite whose string has been cut,” and apparently represents Hsiao’s feelings of uprootedness.

DB: What inspired you to make this film?

HM: I was very much influenced by the environment. Northern France is a declining industrial region with many coal mines. It also has a large immigrant population, which includes myself, and many second generation immigrants. I once heard that there were 140,000 Chinese in the region at the time of the First World War. Until now I’d always made modern art, but the lonely atmosphere of northern France made me feel nostalgic, so I began filming it. Robert Kramer’s one-year visiting professorship at my school was also important. He said, “If you’re in France and you have growing feelings for home, then why don’t you make a film out of it?” Two years before making the film, I went through a period of wondering whether I should go home or stay on as I was, so I thought I’d try finding myself.

DB: You aren’t related to Mr. Chang, the second-generation Chinese immigrant who appears in the film, are you?

HM: That’s right. The situations of Mr. Chang and my grandmother, the film’s two characters, are entirely my imagination. Everything I filmed was from me. Mr. Chang’s father worked in the coal mines, as did my grandfather. And my grandmother and grandfather went down into the mines together, just like Mr. Chang worked with his father. The second half of the film uses intersecting images that could be France or could be Taiwan—I wanted to shoot their common experiences.

DB: The images of rain, the mountain greenery, rice paddies and trains were very beautiful. Are they images that recall memories for you?

HM: The rain functioned as two things for me. Keelung, Taiwan is known as “the port of rain,” and I grew up there. So when I’m making a film, I often start working when it starts to rain. The coal mines are a metaphor for the coal miners’ memories, memories that have been forgotten. As for the trains, I filmed both a train leaving northern France and the train in my grandmother’s home region. This signifies that in a way, they cross paths somewhere. These three images are main points in the film. There’s also a god looking down from above, if god exists, and I think that my grandmother has been a part of the landscape in that field of vision for the 80 years she’s lived so far. So there are elements of history in the film, but I wanted to film them not as “history” but as landscape. The film’s tempo is really slow, so I was worried that some members of the audience wouldn’t be able to bear it. But when I film my grandmother walking so slowly, it’s to express that she lives inside the landscape, so it was necessary to have that kind of rhythm.

DB: Apparently all of your keepsakes were lost in a fire. What do you think about the relationship between material objects and memory?

HM: It’s possible that the memories we keep in our consciousness could be more material than things with form. Some things that we can’t see are even more concrete than things we can see: these are our emotions towards our hearts and towards things.

The Falling Kite screens Monday, October 8 at 20:00 at Muse 2.

(Watanuki Mugi))


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When It’s Raw
MAYA (New Asian Currents)
An Interview with Sekine Hiroyuki




DB: You’re known for filming ruins in the Tokyo metropolitan area. Why did you choose a ruin that lies on Mount Maya in Kobe this time?

SH: I started filming ruins in 1987, and for five or six years it went pretty well, but then I stopped being able to make films. Then came a point where I absolutely had to make a film or else, and I found out about the Maya Tourist Hotel from a magazine article. The movement formed by the environment of the building and the surrounding mountains was extraordinary. It was a great pleasure to film that atmosphere.

DB: In Maya, the sounds inspire imagination. What were you thinking about the sound?

SH: When I was shooting, there was so much I saw with my eyes and met with my ears. I think it’s important to stress that a film’s expressiveness depends on how well you can translate what you felt at the location to the screen through editing. If you have recorded the sound at the site, then that can be definitely used. I’ve finally realized this. That’s why I decided to capture the sound properly from the very beginning, and brought the recording equipment with me to the location. That’s how Maya came about.

DB: The camera movement was very relaxing. How did you achieve such movement?

SH: Tarkovsky’s films are the best example here. He wasn’t using a hand-held camera, but the movements are so delicate. Tarkovsky’s camera glided on a rail, but I wanted to create the same effect with a hand-held camera. The other example is the body. I’ve always wanted to show that image is a form of physical expression, and since I saw Maya Deren’s A Study in Choreography for Camera, I thought that it would be amazing if I could turn a camera into an extension of a body. If anyone could film like he or she was dancing, the result would be a movie like no one has ever made before.

DB: The images of the things you film feel so very raw. It’s as if something which we cannot usually see is taking shape.

SH: That is because I had the time and the environment to do it. All the rest comes down to whether or not you meet that most beautiful moment. This time, we were lucky that we waited to film until it was raining. Then there’s the power of the place. When you want to express something, it’s really important to be aware of the fact that you, your body, and everything else are standing on a single point on the earth, all at once. Ruins are good places for inviting this sensation. The 8 mm camera is a really ambivalent tool: one frame is barely as large as a fingernail. The fact that so much rawness can come from that small frame is due to the chemical reaction of the film and from the developing, which has to do with time. You can’t also forget that without the space between the projector’s lens and the screen, a film is not a film. Thinking about the history of film technology, projection has to be a key to revealing the secret of creating the rawness of film.

Maya will screen on Monday, October 8 at 20:00 at Muse 2.

(Sato Kazuyo)


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