Field Feet
(“Shakkei”)
JAPAN / 2008 / Japanese / Color, B&W / 8mm / 70 min
Director, Photography, Editing: Onishi Kenji
Production Company: Cinema Train
“Stop shooting video, hit the streets.” An attempt to let one’s identity emerge by piecing together fragments of 8mm film shot over some 20 years. The filmmaker’s muttering and breathing reverberate over a series of visual images that invoke the primitive pleasure of an image coming into focus. This is a tribute to the culture of 8mm film, which is nearing its end, and a personal film directed with an approach that sets it apart from other films.
[Director’s Statement] It was twenty years ago that I obtained a used 8mm camera . . . just at the time when the medium for visual expression was shifting from film to video. As a tribute to the disappearing medium, I shall spin illusions of nostalgia from the wreckage of memory.
Onishi Kenji
Born in 1973 in Mie Prefecture, Onishi began making films with a second-hand 8mm camera, which he obtained during his high school days. He founded the filmmaking group Cinema Train in 1995. A Burning Star (’95), a personal 8mm film focusing on his father’s death, has been shown on many occasions, including YIDFF ’97 and the 2002 Flaherty Seminar. |
Interview