[1999]

Mangue-kyo

Director: KAWASE Naomi

1999 Japanese Subtitled in English Color 16mm 85 min

Production Company: Sent Inc.
Producer: SENTO Takenori
Photography: KAWASE Naomi
Editing:
Music:
Sound: KIKUCHI Nobuyuki		   International Sales: Sent Inc.
3F, Minagawa Bldg. 2-14-2 Shitaya, Taito-ku, Tokyo 110-0004 JAPAN
Phone: 81-3-5824-1127
Fax: 81-3-5824-1128
E-mail: noirmam@sepia.ocn.ne.jp
URL: www3.kcn.ne.jp/~kumie/

[Festivals and prizes] Rotterdam ’99, Vision du Reel 2000

[Synopsis] A provocative interactive project filming a photographer and his models during their collaboration.
Four people are brought together: Kawase herself in the role of filmmaker, the photographer Arimoto Shinya and his models Mika and Machiko. Kawase records the interaction between the others, manipulating much herself. The two models are girls aged about fifteen who have grown up in very different circumstances. Kawase asks them about their lives, provokes them and drives the interaction between herself and them to the extreme. Arimoto becomes increasingly irritated by Kawase’s manipulations. The film crew also is drawn into the conflict. Kawase, no longer able to keep the project under control, is forced to abandon the film. She seeks a new direction to continue her work.


KAWASE Naomi

Born in 1969 in Nara Prefecture, made several films during her directing study at the Visual Arts College in Osaka. Her documentaries Embracing and Katatsumori, focusing on her felationship with her father and her grandmother respectively, have won prizes. Her first feature, Suzaku, was given the FIPRESCI Prize at Rotterdam in ’97 and the Camera d’Or in Cannes. She has made The Weald, a documentary about several elderly people living in the mountains of Nara, her homeland.

• KAWASE Naomi | Mangue-kyo | Kya Ka Ra Ba A | Letter from a Yellow Cherry Blossom | Shadow