All posts filed under: Featured

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Insider Looking Out – Yamamoto Hyoe

Published by Ben Dimagmaliw

Becoming a filmmaker requires specific skills. An understanding of and practical experience with film production techniques is a matter of course, however a non-English speaking filmmaker will also need to become English proficient if they aspire to the world stage. Unfortunately, the language barrier is still a daunting and significant obstacle for a large majority of Japanese filmmakers in 2019. Yamamoto Hyoe perhaps innately sensed the importance of learning English when he left Japan to attend high school in Massachusetts before entering NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts to study film production. Back in the mid-to-late 90s, this made him somewhat of a trailblazer if not an oddity, but doing so would give Yamamoto early insight regarding how filmmaking, like language, possesses a cultural component which can not be fully understood until one fully immerses oneself in that culture. From the creative process to business fundamentals, major and independent film production alike in the U.S. does differ from Japan’s idiosyncratic film industry–sometimes significantly. This education and experience is brought to the fore in Yamamoto’s debut …

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Killer Smile – Asakura Kayoko

Published by Ben Dimagmaliw

There is a perceptual problem in cinema that women are not suited for or interested in directing genre movies. Making such an assumption about Asakura Kayoko based on her model-esque stature and charming smile would be a disservice to the well-versed director and passionate fan of genre fare. At the 2014 Etheria Film Night where Asakura’s slow burn horror short HIDE and SEEK screened, feminist magazine ‘Bitch Media‘ reported a man expressing incredulity the evening’s chills and thrills were directed by Asakura and the other female filmmakers who walked on stage post-screening. Many male directors have become reliable brand names of genre movies, but there are few female directors with equal clout. The fact Asakura has had even fewer working female directors in her native Japan to venerate, especially in genres such as horror, makes the attention she has gained to date all the more remarkable. Raised in Yamaguchi Prefecture, her first encounter with cinema was in the form of Steven Spielberg’s E.T. when she was young child. After graduating high school she left Yamaguchi in …

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All In Due Time – Furuta Wataru

Published by Ben Dimagmaliw

If taken just on face value, the career of Furuta Wataru might seem inapplicable to a magazine about independent film directors. After all, the Shizuoka Prefecture native studied economics and computer programming at a Canadian university and upon graduation landed a job as a programmer for a computer company before being transferred to manage sales, advertisement, and promotion there. Only upon joining a production company did he begin creating visuals as a computer graphic artist. However, look a little closer and you’ll discover Furuta is an award-winning director of short movies that have played at various festivals both at home and abroad. His unique vision and humor has often been praised including by the likes of director Izutsu Kazuyuki, the Japanese equivalent of Simon from ‘American Idol’, who had “no complaints” about Furuta’s short, Confession, saying it was “a masterpiece.” Even when not in the director’s chair, the works with which he’s been involved still garner attention. He produced the outrageous Burst the Earth short movie compilation which created quite a buzz following its broadcast …

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Through a Theater Darkly – Ogata Takaomi

Published by Ben Dimagmaliw

The role of media in society has changed significantly over the last several years. It’s becoming more difficult to tell if media influences the masses or if the masses influence the media. Ogata Takaomi was becoming aware of this blurring of lines between sensationalism and journalism almost a decade ago. An avid lover of cinema since childhood, the Fukuoka native speaks of movies with an eager grin and a mild manner which belie the movies he has made. At the age of 25, he left the startup-up he founded as a partner and traveled abroad extensively. It was then he began to see the only way of life and society he knew in an entirely different light. His filmography is a gallery of thought-provoking studies intended to shed light on the biases instilled by society and the media in all of us. Ogata’s filmmaking is likely best described by the old adage “walk a mile in another man’s moccasins”. Having once aspired to journalism, he is unwavering in his dedication to steer his stories away …