Chicago Japan Film Collective is the first Japanese film festival in Midwest. From May 25 to the 31, they will stream nine films, a mixture of dramas and documentaries, many of them highly acclaimed by critics and audiences alike – you can read some of my reviews and interviews with two of the directors via links below!!! – that give you a good insight into what contemporary indie films in Japan look like.
An early-bird ticket is available and costs only $13 until the 15th. I cannot emphasise how much value for money this is considering you get nine high-quality films. Tickets are handled by Eventive and it looks easy to register with. I’m assuming that this is region-locked and probably only available in America.
Wow, I had no idea that 2020 would turn out like this when I wrote last year’s end post. We’re a few days away from the end of what has been a plague year. I almost got caught out at the start when I was in Japan and the borders were going to be closed, back at the end of March, but I escaped with the help of some friends. Since then, I have been in work on reduced duties or at home waiting to be called in for odd jobs. When not working, I was doing shopping with my mother and checking in on my grandmother.
During this time of waiting, I watched a lot of films, some as part of the Osaka Asian Film Festival, Nippon Connection, Japan Cuts and the New York Asian Film Festival, a lot just for pleasure. I took part in a physical film festival in Japan and I helped organise and execute an online film festival twice and during all of this I wrote a lot of reviews. Probably more reviews than in previous years. On top of it all, I also helped start a podcast about Asian films called Heroic Purgatory where I discuss films with fellow writer John Atom (the Christmas special is already out and the second season coming in 2021!).
When I was able to go to the cinema I watched a wide variety of things. In the UK, the last film I watched was Parasite with my mother. In Japan, I went to numerous screenings at the Osaka Asian Film Festival and an animation festival at the Yujiku Asagaya (just before Tokyo’s lockdown). At home with a lot of time on my hands I got into the cinema of Mario Bava and re-watched lots of Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento movies. I waded through hours of 70s and 80s horror movies from America and I went back to some tried and trusted Japanese classics. Most of all, I tried to get more Japanese indie films out there and so I think this is reflected in my list of top films from 2020.
This post is truncated due to time constraints. As has been the case for at least the past four years, I’m working as press officer/writer for the Kotatsu Japanese Animation Festival and so I am caught up doing SNS as well as covering other things (one more day to go and everything is online and free to view).
This week I posted a preview of the Japanese films at Tokyo FILMeX and my review for the Kazuya Shiraishi film One Night. I’ve watched Italian horror giallo movies like Terror at the Opera and Deep Red (both by Dario Argento), Black Sabbath and Black Sunday (both by Mario Bava).
What is released this weekend? About 19 films, so I’ve split this post into two with the second part tomorrow. Some of these films are screening as part of Busan, others I have seen as part of Nippon Connection and the Osaka Asian Film Festival.
One of the highlights of the Osaka Asian Film Festival 2020 was VIDEOPHOBIA, the latest work of Daisuke Miyazaki. A frequent visitor to Osaka, many of his works are youth-focused, with Yamato (California) (2016) and Tourism (2018) being screened at the festival. His films frequently capture the cultural zeitgeist for young people as young women with smartphones navigate various issues to carve out their own niche in the world. Yet VIDEOPHOBIA comes completely out of left-field as it’s an existential horror movie where technology drives a young woman into a fog of paranoia and fear.
Filmed around the less well-known areas of the city of Osaka and shot in black and white, it is a deeply unsettling experience as we witness melancholy 20-something Ai (Tomona Hirota) have a one-night stand with a stranger only to discover that a highly explicit sex-tape has been made of the encounter. It is a shocking discovery that plunges her into a panic that gets worse the more technology manipulates and alters her perception of herself. Things get so bad that she begins to question her own sanity and identity, realizing that the only way to rectify her situation is through total dissolution of her character. The audience is prompted to think about various social issues as Miyazaki pries apart the cracks in contemporary life and how incessant exposure to technology alters how we perceive ourselves. Full review here.
Miyazaki sat down to discuss the making of the film, the real-world topics that form the basis of the story and how he hopes the audience will engage with it amidst the ironies of our always-connected social media landscape.
There are few filmmakers capturing the zeitgeist of youth culture like Daisuke Miyazaki. His characters, often smartphone-wielding young women, make their way through a chaotic world with what little resources have been given to them by society. This scarcity of support engendered a spirit of defiance in Yamato (California) (2016) and an openness for change in Tourism (2018) which helped the protagonists of those films define their own identity. VIDEOPHOBIA is Miyazaki’s darkest work yet, one that shows the shadowy side of technology as revealed through online pornography.
It’s almost March and that means the Osaka Asian Film Festival (OAFF) is about to launch for its 2020 edition.
The festival plays from March 6-15 and comes at a time when the international community is convulsed with the spread of the Coronavirus. However, despite the cancellation of part of the programme (a decision taken by one of the festival’s co-hosts), the rest of the event is scheduled to go with 58 films to be screened and a whole host of guests to attend. It’s a ballsy move typical for a fest that screens hard-hitting works that challenge audiences. Also typical is the way the programmers continue to search out and provide a platform for talented individuals and stories that contain thorny issues.
If OAFF has an identity, it’s a rebellious guy or gal standing up for someone else as borne out by the films programmed with the fiery fight for democratic rights in Hong Kong seen in Apart (2020), a myriad of LGBTQ+ stories from across Asia, the biggest title this year being the Taiwanese romance Your Name Engraved Herein (2020) which gets its world premiere at the fest. Nearly half of all festival berths given to female directors and it is on the basis of quality rather than tokenism as seen with the moving drama Way Back Home (2019) and there are a lot of pure entertainment film, many from the Philippines which bring some absolutely charming romances for audiences to relax to like Write About Love (2019) and Last Song Syndrome (2019).
Here’s a trailer for the fest:
The line-up for this year’s festival is as exciting as it has ever been and while the slate features names from returning directors, there is a deep well of new talent on display in various sections and if you want to see the cinematic output of Asia in one place, this has to be it, especially since the films will have English subs.
I’ll be on the ground at the festival to review films. Although post-film Q&As have been cancelled, if any of the filmmakers are present I still might have the chance to interview creatives to highlight some of the gems that may be gracing other festivals and cinemas around the world.
Please check the full line-up of OAFF 2020 which can be found hereon the official site (complete with synopses I have written) and here is a summary on my blog.
A fearsome performance from Janine Gutierez helps propel Rae Red’s solo feature directorial debut which also stars an ensemble of great actors who play a group of characters all connected to the titular gun as we look at the lifespan of a weapon passing through the hands of people from the politically turbulent 1980s to the crime-ridden era of now.
While the crime genre is typically male-dominated, in the Philippines, filmmakers have recently tackled it from a female perspective with “Buy Bust” (2018) and “Neomanila” (2017) and “Birdshot” (2016), which Rae Red helped write, being some standout titles. “The Girl and the Gun” offers a thrilling, visually crisp narrative with a message about power dynamics between people, and the gender analysis, with the inflection of violence, proves to be most gripping.
Anshu Chauhan — whose film “Bad Poetry Tokyo” (2018) won Best Actress at OAFF 2018) — returns to the competition with “KONTORA”, a movie which takes in a family drama and the echoes of World War II.
Set in rural Japan, the movie follows a high school girl who loses the one family member she can talk to, her grandfather, is left trying to make sense of the stifling reality surrounding her and the distant relationship from her father but hidden treasure and a vagrant who only walks backwards promises to change the dynamics in her life. Chauhan again explores the clashes between past and present and the frustration of youth stuck with older generations that are inflexible and selfish but with black and white visuals and majestic camerawork and it has a mysterious tone to it which proves absorbing.
Following the Oscar wins for “Parasite” If you want to sound smart when talking about South Korean cinema, you can bring up the work of Hong Sang-soo and wow any neophyte cinephiles and impress the slightly more clued up who are familiar with his talky and repetitive films. If you want to sound even smarter, try selling them on the debut film of Hong’s former producer, Kim Cho-hee who takes his style and peoples it with genuinely lovely characters.
For her debut, Kim casts actors familiar from Hong’s films and a relatively new actress, Kang Mal-geum, who is the titular Chan-sil, a movie producer who hits hard times and goes through an emotional crisis when a director dies. Plenty of amusement is to be had as Chan-sil tries to get back on track but the film has drama lurking underneath as the main character experiences some bleak and humiliating moments that gets her to question her life choices and it turns out to be a harrowing to go through it with her and proves to have deeper things to say about the human experience than a Hong film.
“Looking for a Lady with Fangs and a Moustache” has to have one of the best titles of the year and if it sounds barking mad, it makes complete sense at the end of the film. Almost. The semi-abstract story is full of philosophy as a thoroughly modern man living in Kathmandu goes on a mystical journey to save his life. There is a lot of introspection over the clash between modernity and tradition in Nepal as the film tracks the plight of the psychologically ailing character divided between his attraction to western and city lifestyle and his home culture but the chief pleasure of the experience are the majestically beautiful images shot by Khyentse Norbu. Each frame is a painting that could adorn a wall so while the philosophising might drive you crazy, you can luxuriate in a relaxing and beautiful experience.
Nobody makes stories about the youth of Japan like Daisuke Miyazaki and his latest feature (following “TOURISM“) is completely different. A shadowy tech film that comes with a David Lynchian twist where the world we see is our own but made alien through how technology makes the main character powerless. The movie follows a young woman named Ai whose night out at a club results in a sex video being made. The only thing is, she had no idea she was being filmed. What’s worse is that the video is spread online like a virus.
The narrative sees Ai become disassociated from herself in a disturbing psycho-sexual narrative that leaves many ideas for the audience to mull over once the film is over. Anchored by a great performance from Tomona Hirota and set in Osaka, it’s an original idea made effective by the mise-en-scene and electro soundtrack. The film’s genre-defying nature positions Miyazaki as one of the filmmakers to watch in this year’s edition.
Made in Bangladesh (Rubaiyat Hossain, 2019, France, Bangladesh, Denmark and Portugal)
Director Rubaiyat Hossain, a new and brave feminine voice in Bangladeshi cinema. With three titles to her name, she challenges the male-dominated space to create socially conscious films told from a female perspective. This film is vital in an age of resistance against corporate exploitation and challenges to patriarchy as it looks at female garment factory workers unionising against hazardous working conditions, male oppression and global capital. It serves up an insight into Bangladeshi workplace and society and how we get our cheap goods in the West at the expense of the workers.
Earlier this month, the organisers of the Osaka Asian Film Festival (OAFF) 2020 announced the full line-up for the festival which takes place from March 6-15. This is the best event to see a cross-section of Asian cinema and nearly all of the films will have English subs – the only exceptions we know so far are “Birthday”, ” House of Hummingbird”, and “Malmoe The Secret Mission”.
Despite the issues surrounding Coronavirus, the festival is still going ahead but one section, the co-hosted event “Come to Life! vol.2 Gutai and Nakanoshima”, has been cancelled due to the decision of the co-host organiser. This means six films have been removed which brings the number of selected films screened from a record 64 to 58 in total. This number includes 12 World Premieres,12 International Premieres, and 3 Asian Premieres with films submitted from countries and regions such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, Poland, South Korea, Japan, and South East Asia.
Continuing on from previous editions of the festival, OAFF remains a beacon of progressive programming as 25 female directors find their works selected with over half the films in the Competition section directed by women. The festival programme features characters from across the world contesting with issues such as war, crime, bullying, LGBTQ+ rights, immigration and unionising in the workplace. OAFF continues to give a platform to filmmakers who face challenging issues, whether the films reckon with historical injustice or paint a brighter future through showing diverse characters navigating their way in our tumultuous world.
Please check the full line-up of OAFF 2020 which can be found here. Tickets for the films screening at the fest are already on sale.
Chicago Japan Film Collective is the first Japanese film festival in Midwest. From May 25 to the 31, they will stream nine films, a mixture of dramas and documentaries, many of them highly acclaimed by critics and audiences alike – you can read some of my reviews and interviews with two of the directors via links below!!! – that give you a good insight into what contemporary indie films in Japan look like.
Genkinahito 