All posts tagged: women’s issues

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 …

Kiku-to-Girochin-Still

Kiku and the Guillotine (unofficial)

Published by Ben Dimagmaliw

Director Zeze Takahisa made waves with his 4-hour opus Heaven’s Story in 2010. Despite its running time, the independently produced movie took home the FIPRESCI Prize at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival among other praises & accolades at home and abroad. He has a completed shooting a new movie titled Kiku to Girochin – Onna Zumo to Anakisuto (lit. Kiku and Guillotine – a female sumo and an anarchist), the premise of which seems quite interesting. Set in the Taisho Era, just after the Great Kanto Earthquake, the story of two women sumo wrestlers who participated in an exhibition troupe of female sumo (think the women’s baseball league from WWII featured in A League of their Own) and their relationship with a group of anarchists calling themselves “Guillotine” promises stout-hearted entertainment that depicts “with romance, action, and social satire the rough and ragged power of the common people.” The existence of female sumo wrestlers in that period is sure to be a revelation to many, even in Japan, and the added element of the two female …