All posts tagged: female director

Eye-On-Danchi-Woman

Danchi Woman

Published by Ben Dimagmaliw

For the past 3 decades 85-year-old Uchikoshi Shizu has been living in the 50-year-old Seaside Road “Danchi” – the Japanese word for public housing – and filling it with a lifetime of souvenirs that have always kept her company. Due to the scheduled demolition of the complex to rebuild them as newer danchi, Uchikoshi and the women in the apartment are faced with problems of relocation and rent. Uchikoshi and her neighbors must say goodbye to their homes, and move into smaller apartments that cannot hold all of Uchikoshi’s momentos. This intimate documentary captures Uchikoshi’s sense of humor and profound nostalgia, as she sorts through relics of her past, choosing which memories she must fit into her new home, and which ones she can let go of. Director Sugimoto Akiko had covered this very same public housing complex in her independent film Seaside Road Danchi Story. Her camera turns its attention on the apartments’ residents as they move out and continue their lives in their new homes. Japan’s aging population has created a number of challenging …

Indievisual-Interview-Asakura-Kayoko

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 …

Eye-On-Manga-Tanjo

The Manga Master

Published by Ben Dimagmaliw

Updated 2018/10/08: Added new trailer in anticipation of its World Premiere at the Tokyo International Festival The proliferation of manga across the globe has been one of the pillars of the Japanese government’s economic soft power initiative, “Cool Japan” which also works to spread Japanese culture internationally. Many Japanese are often surprised by how knowledgeable foreigners can be regarding many popular manga titles as well as the increasing number of tourists who flock to Japan to consume and experience manga culture first hand. That being said, the roots of the medium itself is most likely unknown to both Japanese and international fans alike. Revealing the little known history of manga is the aim of The Manga Master which is directed by Oki Moe who is helming her second feature. Her debut work, Firecracker Ideals was a purely independent spin on the contemporary morose of young people as they grow to see the wide disparity between their life idealized through youthful ambitions versus unwelcome realities. It was hailed as a confident movie capturing some of the …

Eye-On-Tale-of-a-Butcher-Shop

Tale of a Butcher Shop

Published by Ben Dimagmaliw

There is a German documentary from 2005 titled Our Daily Bread. Without narration or much in the way of music, it brought to light with mesmerizing visuals the impact convenience and modern mass-production methods have had on the food we consume. The meditative quality of the documentary left reaction solely to the viewers, be it shock, disgust, amazement, etc. On first look, Hanabusa Aya’s 2013 documentary Tale of a Butcher Shop may well be the Japanese pseudo-companion piece. The local butcher shop remains a visible and well-loved part of many communities throughput Japan. But like everywhere, these are slowly disappearing feature of the landscape due to modernization and demands for meat to be sold at volume and for low prices. The Kitades are a family who live outside Osaka. They have been raising and slaughtering the cows they sell for meat at their small butcher shop for over 100 years. As the family embark upon their decision to close shop in response to competition from corporate supermarkets, the three butcher siblings contemplate life afterwards. By …

Eye-On-A-Crimson-Star

A Crimson Star

Published by Ben Dimagmaliw

UPDATE 2 (Sep. 20, 2018) Added link to report on the press screening. UPDATE 1 (Aug. 23, 2018) Included brand new trailer released to coincide with its Raindance Film Festival competition berth. Also removed proof-of-concept short which has been taken offline now that the movie is slated for a December 2018 release. Filmmakers, particularly writer/directors, drawing on their personal lives to inform or even inspire the movies they direct is not uncommon. When leading a production crew and directing actors on one’s first few films, communicating what one wants based on one’s experiences more than likely aids in achieving the desired results. At the age of 19, director Igashi Aya directed her Toho Gakuen Film Techniques Training College graduate thesis, Tokeru. She stated the movie was the story she could make at that age as a young girl living in the Hokkaido countryside. Tokeru is an outpouring of her frustration at watching and hearing her classmates banal conversations and pointless ambitions. The emotional and adolescent confusion portrayed by the lead character as well as the …

Eye-On-Our-House

Our House

Published by Ben Dimagmaliw

At its core Kiyohara Yui’s Our House is a story of two women. Seri is an adolescent girl living in an old house with her mother who Seri knows is planning to get remarried with her new lover. Sana is an amnesiac who is given sanctuary in the home of Toko, a woman seemingly harboring many secrets. Gradually, however, the movie begins to reveal why it won two awards at the Pia Film Festival, and earned screenings at the Berlin International Film Festival’s Forum Section and at the Lincoln Film Center in New York. With a high-concept usually found in science fiction and the forward thinking of an experimental movie, Kiyohara slowly begins overlapping these stories occurring in parallel as the boundaries between them become increasingly porous. Yet, nothing about it suggests it is a “genre” movie per se. Though there is a level of spookiness applied by Kiyohara as the occupants of the house begin to sense one another–no doubt attributable to her mentorship with Kurosawa Kiyoshi–the contrivance is primarily a form of storytelling. …