Hedatetete, Education and Patriotism, Ikitete Yokatta, Drive into the Night, Pineapple Tours Japanese Film Trailers

Happy Weekend

I hope you are well.

This week, I posted about the Hanakori Korean Independent Animation Festival which will screen Korean animated films online in Japan next week. I posted my interview with director Yuko Watanabe about her short Boy Sprouted. I also posted the first part of the trailer post. This week, I’ve watched High and Low (Dir: Akira Kurosawa), The Graceful Brute (Dir: Yuzo Kawashima), The People Under the Stairs (Dir: Wes Craven), Armour of God II: Operation Condor (Dir: Jackie Chan), Candyman (Dir: Ni DaCosta) all in preparation for a Heroic Purgatory talk on Parasite (which I also watched).

What else was released this weekend?

An Interview with Yuko Watanabe, Director of BOY SPROUTED [Osaka Asian Film Festival 2022]

 

Boy Sprouted depicts the battle of wills unfolds between a boy (Seitaro Hara) who dislikes tomatoes and his mother (Kanako Higashi) who is determined to make him eat them. Director Yuko Watanabe takes this everyday scenario and channels the boy’s aversion into a fairy tale nightmare aesthetic that is visually arresting and makes the film’s tone hover on the border between horror and bathos. The story itself comes from a Japanese AI named “Furukoto”, a bot that uses a neural network to create a story long enough to make a 30-minute short.

The film had its world premiere at Osaka Asian Film Festival (OAFF) 2022 and can currently be streamed online globally as part of Short Shorts Film Festival and Asia.

Yuko Watanabe took part in an interview where she went in depth into her background as well as the background of the film, explained her experience of working with an AI and a child cast, her ideas for the visuals, and influences in creating such a distinctive and enjoyable work. This interview was done thanks to the dedicated work of OAFF staff, the film’s producer Ryohei Tsutsui, and translator Takako Pocklington.