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2021 Year-In-Review Main Image

2021 Year-in-Review

Instead of publishing a year-in-review article at the outset of 2021, I wrote an article compiling together information which had gone neglected over the previous year, but were still worthy of attention. My workload in 2020 necessitated putting Indievisual on the back burner so often the article was warranted. The only interview published then was for Nakano Ryota which has now graced the “Latest Interview” splash at the top of the site for two years! Unfortunately, with 2021 being similarly busy (a little less than 2020) no new interviews were published last year though one had been scheduled before the director had to cancel for personal reasons. I still do hope to interview this director sometime in the future. I did, however, manage speak with director Nakanishi Mai and write a feature about her experience shooting her latest horror short movie, Swallow. Ms. Nakanishi’s ability to speak English negated the necessity to translate our dialogue thus allowing for a quick production of the article which went live in October. 2021 was also the year I broke …

Swallow Backstory Main

Serving Up Horror: Nakanishi Mai shares the backstory of her sophomore short Swallow

In Swallow a striving actress is invited to a private, gourmet club only to discover her competition has prepared a horrifying banquet which devours her. Writer-director Nakanishi Mai follows up her haunting and atmospheric short Hana with a tale of the horrific depths to which human rivalries will go. Though she has worked for large companies such as Kadokawa, the bonafide genre fan has also dedicated time abroad collaborating with international genre stalwarts particularly in the realm of horror movies. Additionally, she founded the Scream Queen FilmFest Tokyo in 2013, a female-driven genre festival dedicated to sharing the unique and diverse visions that female artists bring to genre movies. With Hana, her directorial debut, she herself has become an exciting new voice in horror. And as with any sophomore effort, building upon the success of the first while continuing to creatively evolve took Nakanishi on a journey of opportunities and interesting turns. The seeds of Swallow first germinated in a short movie script which was scheduled to be shot in Korea that was cancelled. A Taiwanese producer told Nakanishi about a short …