11/'22 The Female Gaze

EVENT: The Female Gaze: Women Filmmakers from JAPAN CUTS and Beyond
DATES: November 11-20, 2022
VENUE: Japan Society, Auditorium

A survey of the growing prominence and visibility of women in film, the latest ACA Cinema Project series The Female Gaze: Women Filmmakers from JAPAN CUTS and Beyond focuses on the essential roles that female artists play from behind the camera in Japanese cinema—ranging from directing and screenwriting to production and cinematography. Presenting an exciting array of screenings and premieres—that include new mainstream and independent works from alumni and rising talents alongside a classics selection—The Female Gaze offers a much-needed deep dive into the remarkable and overlooked contributions of women in contemporary Japanese cinema.

https://japansociety.org/film/female-gaze/

Panel: Women in Film
Speaker：Naoko Ogigami (Director), S Casper Wong (Director), Leon Ingulsrud(Interpreter)
Moderator：Cidney Hue(Director)
Date: November 19, 2022

Title: Wedding High
Director: Akiko Ohku
2022/117 min./ Japan

[STORY] The latest from Akiko Ohku (My Sweet Grappa Remedies, JC 2020; Tremble All You Want, JC 2018) steps away from the director’s singular heroines to offer a wildly entertaining ensemble piece. When Akihito and Haruka decide to tie the knot, little do they know of the impending chaos to follow when the wedding guests—each with their own set of motivations, passions and backstories—begin to use the wedding for their own means, threatening to derail a “perfect wedding.” The colorful cast of Wedding High take on the wedding as an opportunity for reinvention and self-discovery, with the event becoming a catalyst for everyone present to live out their dreams and aspirations, however big or small they might be.

Event Title： Q&A
Speaker： Akiko Ohku (Director), Tomoko Takedani (Interpreter)
Moderator： Kazu Watanabe
Date: November 11, 2022

Title: Dreaming of the Meridian Arc
Director: Kenji Nakanishi
2022/112 min./ Japan

[STORY] A locally funded TV dramatization of cartographer Tadataka Ino, the first person to map Japan in 1821, runs into trouble when it’s discovered mid-production that Ino died three years prior to the completion of his map. Weaving between modern day and Edo-era Japan, Dreaming of the Meridian Arc reveals the surprising story of Tadataka’s disciples who hid news of their beloved master’s death and risked their lives to clandestinely complete the map in his honor. Adapted for the screen by Yoshiko Morishita (Flower and Sword) from Shinosuke Tatekawa’s rakugo story, Dreaming of the Meridian Arc offers a humorous and entertaining account of the exploits that led to the completion of Ino’s revolutionary map.

Title: She is me, I am her
Director: Mayu Nakamura
2022/70 min./ Japan

[STORY] A socially-distanced college reunion, an unusual rapport struck between a food delivery man and a patron, a bus-stop encounter, and a blind woman scammed into thinking her brother is sick constitute the stories of Mayu Nakamura’s COVID-era quadriptych—a work that encapsulates the newfound anxieties of loneliness, insecurity and the struggle for connection within the depths of the pandemic lockdown. Tied together by the remarkable performances of actress Nahana, who embodies the various female characters across the film’s varied narratives, Nakamura’s episodic feature—which includes the JC 2022-selected short Among Four of Us—delves into the lives of women in COVID-era Japan, finding profundity and human connection amid the unlikely encounters of strangers.

Title: One Summer Story
Director: Shuichi Okita
2020/138 min./ Japan

[STORY] Lensed by cinematographer Akiko Ashizawa, longtime Director of Photography for Kiyoshi Kurosawa whose collaborations include Tokyo Sonata and To the Ends of the Earth, Shuichi Okita’s charming One Summer Story focuses on one summer in the life of 17-year-old Minami Sakura, a high school swimmer and avid anime geek. By chance, she runs across Shohei, another fan of her favorite anime, on the last day of school—sparking an immediate rapport. Recognizing a handwritten talisman that Minami received from an anonymous sender, Shohei informs Minami that it originates from a new religious cult possibly connected to her missing biological father. Intrigued by the mystery, Minami and Shohei set out to investigate, beginning the adventure of a lifetime.

Title: Good Stripes
Director: Yukiko Sode
2015/119 min./ Japan

[STORY] The second feature of director Yukiko Sode (Aristocrats, JC 2021), Good Stripes stars Akiko Kikuchi as free-spirited model/actress Midori and Ayumi Nakajima as her city-bred partner Mao. Four years into their relationship, the couple’s dynamic has become stale and dull and the two contemplate breaking up. A surprise pregnancy results in a shotgun wedding when they decide to stick it out for the baby’s sake. An ode to romantic rediscovery and second chances, Sode’s story is insightful and charming.

Title: The Nighthawk’s First Love
Director: Yuka Yasukawa
2021/98 min./ Japan

[STORY] An adaptation of Naoki Prize-winning author Rio Shimamoto’s romantic novel, Yuka Yasukawa’s second feature follows the life of young grad student Aiko (Rena Matsui) whose facial birthmark has left her reluctant to pursue love. After being interviewed for a book focusing on facial scars and birthmarks, Aiko finds herself in unknown territory when rising interest in her story slates the book for a film adaptation. Initially reluctant to participate, Aiko begins to fall for the film’s director who accepts her for who she is. Tender and delicate, Yasukawa’s The Nighthawk’s First Love offers an emotive and resonant portrayal of Aiko’s struggles and pathway to first love.

Title: Her Brother
Director: Kon Ichikawa
1960/98 min./ Japan

[STORY] In writing about Her Brother, Ichikawa asks "…if one starts with the premise that everyone is essentially alone, then what follows?" Based on the autobiographical novel by Aya Koda, Ichikawa’s film is a moving, restrained family melodrama told from the viewpoint of Gen (Keiko Kishi), a lonely yet resilient young woman obligated to her distant writer father (Masayuki Mori) and invalid, devoutly Christian stepmother (Kinuyo Tanaka). Unable to make a life for herself in such a cold and oppressive household, Gen is left to serve as a surrogate mother for her over-indulged, delinquent younger brother Hekiro (Hiroshi Kawaguchi), to whom she remains lovingly devoted. Her Brother was recognized at the Cannes Film Festival with a Special Distinction by the C.S.T. Ex-aequo and given the Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film and Best Director in 1961.

Title: Conflagration
Director: Kon Ichikawa
1958/99 min./ Japan

[STORY] Known as Ichikawa’s favorite of his own films, Conflagration is the pinnacle of the many acclaimed literary adaptations he and his wife Natto Wada worked on together. Loosely based on true events that also inspired Yukio Mishima‘s novel The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, the story involves the spiritual and psychological breakdown of an introverted, troubled youth named Goichi (Raizo Ichikawa), whose desire for pure beauty leads him to Kyoto’s Shukaku temple, where he becomes an apprentice to the priest. Haunted by the trauma of his father’s death, Goichi is unable to reconcile the sacred beauty of the temple with postwar reality, and his absolutist ideals become increasingly distorted until they lead to destruction. Ichikawa’s stark, poignant film is unforgettably rendered in stunning black and white by cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa.

Title: two of us / Long-Term Coffee Break
Director: Risa Negishi (two of us) / Naoya Fujita (Long-Term Coffee Break)
two of us: 2019/47 min./ Japan
Long-Term Coffee Break: 2022/30 min./Japan

[STORY] two of us : Risa Negishi’s lucid short tells the story of best friends Yui and Hana, living in various stages of loneliness as they cope with family estrangements and lost relationships. Told in a fragmented, nonlinear style, two of us focuses largely on Yui’s relationship with her niece Karin, whose father is seemingly absent from both their lives. Negishi’s short provides snapshots of two women enduring emotional hardships while leaning on one another, and features dreamy, experimental photography and editing.

[STORY] Long-Term Coffee Break : In just 30 minutes, Naoya Fujita’s Long-Term Coffee Break captures a relationship in snapshots. Yuko (Mina Fujii) is in the midst of a successful career when she meets Naoki (Hiroki Sano), a spontaneous and aloof actor, and the two hit it off over coffee–his love of it and her disinterest in it–and get married. Over the course of Fujita’s film we see glimpses of regret, infidelity and impulsivity, all in the name of love. Shifting from sweet to bitter at a moment’s notice, Long-Term Coffee Break is a modern romance in brief, and a promising work from Fujita.

Event Title： Q&A
Speaker： Risa Negishi (Director), Naoya Fujita (Director), Tomoko Takedani (Interpreter)
Moderator： Alexander Fee

Title: His Lost Name
Director: Nanako Hirose
2019/113 min./ Japan

[STORY] A small-town carpenter named Tetsuro (Kaoru Kobayashi) happens upon an unconscious young man (Yuya Yagira) on a riverbank who eventually says his name is Shinichi. The middle-aged widower sympathetically takes Shinichi in, offering a room in his home and apprenticeship in his woodshop. Before long, the pair soon develop a father-son dynamic—forcing Tetsuro’s other carpenters and patient fiancé (Keiko Horiuchi) to adjust to the strange new situation—though long-held secrets threaten to undo everything. A protégé of Hirokazu Kore-eda and Miwa Nishikawa, director Nanako Hirose masterfully reveals the fictions that keep us together and lies that tear us apart in this sensitive debut drama.

Title: Riverside Mukolitta
Director: Naoko Ogigami
2021/121 min./ Japan

[STORY] Director Naoko Ogigami’s (Kamome Diner, JC 2007) newest feature, Riverside Mukolitta, focuses on ex-con Takeshi Yamada, who is eluding his past by relocating to a quaint rural village in the Hokuriku region. There, he begins to work at a small factory which makes shiokara (salted fish paste). Through the efforts of his boss, Takeshi moves into a nearby, dilapidated apartment complex. One afternoon, Takeshi’s vociferously eccentric neighbor Kozo Shimada barges into Takesh’s unit and demands a bath in Takeshi’s personal lavatory. With the metaphorical ice broken, Takeshi eventually emerges from his shell and warms to a friendship with Kozo and the other residents. Later, Kozo learns the secret behind Takeshi’s relocation to this particular village. Takeshi’s new friends organize an out-of-the-box resolution to Takeshi’s ongoing angst.

Event Title： Q&A
Speaker： Naoko Ogigami (Director), Leon Ingulsrud (Interpreter)
Moderator： Kazu Watanabe

Title: No Longer Human
Director: Mika Ninagawa
2019/120 min./ Japan

[STORY] Adapting the life of celebrated novelist Osamu Dazai (played by Shun Oguri), visionary director Mika Ninagawa’s (Sakuran, JC 2008; Helter Skelter, JC) sumptuous period piece focuses on the troubled, womanizing author’s formative relationships with his wife and two mistresses during his late-career years. Not shying away from Dazai’s addictive and self-destructive behavior, Ninagawa’s film paints the author’s spiraling lifestyle with decadent precision, as his constant drinking, suicide attempts and inner demons all point to the writer’s inevitable demise while on the verge of completing his greatest work.

Title: Let Me Hear It Barefoot
Director: Riho Kudo
2021/128 min./ Japan

[STORY] After dropping out from college, Naomi (Sion Sasaki) works at his father’s trash collecting company. On the way back from collecting old records, he encounters the local pool staff person Maki (Shuri Suwa) and his blind adoptive mother Midori (Jun Fubuki). To fulfill Midori’s wishes of seeing the world, Naomi and Maki began to record traveling tapes of a fictional world-trip. As their “footprints” cover the Sahara Desert, the Blue Grotto, Iguazu Falls and more, the hard-to-stop recording becomes the bond of a secretive and delicate romantic affair. As their “world-trip” draws to a close, overflowing emotions and desires explode in upgrading violent physical clashes. Riho Kudo’s second feature (her debut, Orphan Blues was shown in JC 2019) delicately portrays the melancholia of young adulthood, filled with two boys’ loneliness and their repressed affection as they traverse auditory-induced landscapes.

Title: Nagi’s Island
Director: Masahiko Nagasawa
2022/107 min./ Japan

[STORY] Produced by industry veteran Kumi Kobata, whose string of collaborations with Naoko Ogigami and Yuki Tanada include One Million Yen Girl (JC 2010), Toilet (JC 2011) and Rent-a-Cat (JC 2012), Nagi’s Island is set in the southern Yamaguchi Prefecture, where young Nagi (Chise Niitsu) lives a peaceful island life with her mother (Rosa Kato) and grandmother (Hana Kino), the local doctor. Nagi begins a particularly eventful summer vacation on the island during which she learns to reconcile her own traumas and estrangements while growing and helping others. With a quaint, joyful score by the sister-duo Kitri and the gorgeous backdrop of the Inland Sea, director Masahiko Nagasawa’s slice-of-life story is transportative and evocative of summer, childhood, and the bonds of family.

Title: a stitch of life
Director: Yukiko Mishima
2015/104 min./ Japan

[STORY] A small town near Kobe houses a popular dressmaking boutique run by Ichie Minami (Miki Nakatani), who inherited the business from her grandmother, the founder of the shop. Refashioning, hemming and threading, Ichie utilizes the old-fashioned techniques and designs passed down to her, keeping in line with the traditions her grandmother established. When department store Fujii (Takahiro Miura) employee approaches her boutique to develop it into a brand (with mass-produced garments), Ichie refuses. Fujii gradually comes to appreciate the craft and philosophies that motivate Ichie, as she finally dares to branch out and design her own work.

Title: Plan 75
Director: Chie Hayakawa
2022/112 min./ Japan,France,Philippines,Qatar

[STORY] Expanding upon her short of the same name (originally screened at JAPAN CUTS 2019 as part of the omnibus 10 Years Japan), director Chie Hayakawa’s frighteningly realistic exploration of Japan’s aging crisis explores a not-so-distant future where the government has implemented a mass volunteer-based euthanasia plan—the titular Plan 75—for the elderly aged 75 and above. Exploring the program’s effects on the lives of an elderly Plan 75 volunteer (played by Tora-san’s Chieko Baisho), a Plan 75 salesman and a Filipino caregiver, Hayakawa’s harrowing work of speculative fiction considers the value of life in a society that deems the unproductive to be burdensome. Winner of Caméra d’Or Special Mention Prize at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, Plan 75 is Japan’s official submission for the Oscars’ Best International Feature.

EVENT: The Female Gaze: Women Filmmakers from JAPAN CUTS and BeyondDATES: November 11-20, 2022VENUE: Japan Society, Auditorium

EVENT: The Female Gaze: Women Filmmakers from JAPAN CUTS and Beyond
DATES: November 11-20, 2022
VENUE: Japan Society, Auditorium