Category: Festivals

Camera Japan Announces Complete Programme for 2017

September 4, 2017September 18, 2017by Hayley ScanlonLeave a comment

Camera Japan, the premier Dutch showcase for Japanese film, returns for 2017 with more than 40 films screening in two cites over two weekends – Rotterdam 21st – 24th September, and Amsterdam from 29th September to 1st October. With so many films on offer it get can a bit overwhelming, so here’s a handy list broken down by genre and/or medium.

Current Cinema – Indie / Arthouse

As usual Camera Japan has brought together some of the most eagerly anticipated recent independent and arthouse features including the latest from festival darlings Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Miwa Nishikawa, to Naoko Ogigami’s family comedy/drama Close-Knit, sleeper Cannes hit Oh Lucy! and a host of soon to be classics from up and coming directors.

At the Terrace – Adapting his own stage play, Kenji Yamauchi’s At the Terrace is a scathing satirical comedy charting the gradual disintegration of the bourgeoisie over the course of one very awkward post dinner party drinking session. Review. Screening at Rotterdam only – 21st Sept. 2.30pm, 23rd Sept. 5pm
Bangkok Nites – The latest from Saudade director Katsuya Tomita who also stars in the film, Bangkok Nites is a sideways look at the continuing effects of colonialism. Review. Rotterdam only, Sept. 24, 1pm. Producers will be present for a Q&A.
Before We Vanish – Kiyoshi Kurosawa returns to the sci-fi genre for the first time since 2013’s Real with an idiosyncratic take on the alien invasion movie. Screening with Dutch subtitles only at Rotterdam 21st Sept, 9.30pm / 23rd Sept. 7pm , and at Amsterdam 30th Sept., 7pm.
Close-Knit – Less surreal than her previous films, Ogigami’s heartwarming family drama follows a neglected 11 year old girl who is taken in by her uncle and his transgender girlfriend, Rinko (played by Toma Ikuta). Review. Screening at Rotterdam 21st Sept. 7.30pm, 22nd Sept. 4.30pm, and Amsterdam 29th Sept. 7pm.
Eriko Pretended – Eriko can’t bring herself to admit to her family that her career as an actress has stalled but discovers a new talent after a trip home for a funeral introduces her to the world of professional mourning in the debut feature from Akiyo Fujimura. Screening at Rotterdam only – Sept. 22, 2.30pm, and Sept. 24, 7.15pm.
Going the Distance – Asahi is about to marry the love of his life when a face from the past reappears and threatens to come between them. Forced to choose between his wife-to-be, and a “brother” who grew up with him in the same orphanage, Asahi’s life reaches a crisis point in this comedy/drama debut from Yujiro Hamamoto. Screening at Rotterdam only – 21st Sept. 4.30pm, 22nd Sept. 4.45pm
Hello/Goodbye – A young girl accidentally discovers her classmate is pregnant whilst trying to steal something from her bag leading the pair to encounter an old woman with alzheimer’s and a mystery she needs solving in this indie feature from Takeo Kikuchi. Screening at Rotterdam only – 21st Sept. 3pm, 24th Sept. 3pm
Her Love Boils Bathwater – Capturing Dad’s Ryota Nakano takes a good look at mum in this heartbreaking comedy/drama which stars Rie Miyazawa as a long suffering wife and mother who learns she has a terminal illness and decides to mend her fractured family while she still can. Review. Screening at Rotterdam 24th Sept., 12.30pm, and Amsterdam 1st Oct. 12.30pm.
Journey of the Tortoise – First time feature director Tadashi Nagama draws inspiration from his own relationship with his father as a boy, his dad, and the pet turtle, join an uncle and his fiancée for an anarchic cross country road trip. Screening at Rotterdam only – 21st Sept. 10.15, 24th Sept. 5pm.
Kuro – Directed by Joji Koyama and Noriko Tujiko, Kuro is the story of a Japanese woman living in Paris who works in a karaoke bar and cares for her paraplegic lover at home. When a mysterious Mr. Ono arrives, he threatens to destabilise their previously settled lives. Screening at Rotterdam only 23rd Sept., 8.30pm & 10.30pm. The directors will be present for a Q&A.
Life and Death on the Shore – Hikari Mitsushima stars in a tale of wartime romance. Part of the festival’s Kyushu focus. Screening once only at Rotterdam, 22nd Sept. 7pm.
The Long Excuse – Miwa Nishikawa’s adaptation of her own novel examines the destructive effects of chronic insecurity as a self centred writer loses his wife in an accident but feels nothing only to have his emotional walls knocked down by the grieving family of her best friend. Review. Screening at Rotterdam 21st Sept. 4.45, 23rd Sept. 7.15, and at Amsterdam on 30th Sept., 12.30.
Love and Other Cults – Eiji Uchida returns with another tale of wandering youth as a young girl raised in a cult craves real love but struggles to find it in an increasingly strange world. Review. Screening at Rotterdam 21st Sept., 5pm, 22nd Sept. at midnight, and Amsterdam 29th Sept. at midnight. Director Eiji Uchida will be attending the Amsterdam screening for a Q&A.
Noise – 12 years after a spate of random stabbings in Akihabara three ordinary people attempt to deal with the longterm effects in Yusaku Matsumoto’s debut feature. Screening once only at Rotterdam, 24th Sept., 7pm. Director and members of the crew will be present for a Q&A.
Oh Lucy! – A sleeper hit in Cannes, Atsuko Hirayanagi’s debut is the story of a lonely middle-aged office lady who decides to spice up her life with English lessons but discovers a whole new side of herself when the charismatic teacher (played by Josh Hartnett) gives her a blonde wig and the alter-ego Lucy. Screening once only at Rotterdam, Sept. 24, 12.30pm.
Over the Fence – The last of three films inspired by novels of Yasushi Sato, Nobuhiro Yamashita’s Over the Fence is a tale of new beginnings and the courage it takes to find them. Review. Screening at Rotterdam, 24th Sept. 4.35pm, and Amsterdam 9.30pm.
Parks – Set in Inokashira park, Natsuki Seta’s charming drama centres on three youngsters who bond through the discovery of a tape featuring an unfinished lovesong. Review. Screening at Rotterdam only, Sept. 23, 14.30.
Poolsideman – A timely look at a life of quiet desperation from Hirobumi Watanabe. Review. Screening once only at Rotterdam, Sept. 23, 9.45pm.
Rage – The latest from Lee Sang-il, Rage is a tale of three possible murderers, doubt, suspicion and violence. Review. Screening at Rotterdam 22nd September, 9.30pm, 23rd Sept. 9.30pm, and Amsterdam 30th Sept. 9.30pm.
Same Old Same Old – Rikiya Imaizumi’s reflexive drama is the story of a director in over his head, a grieving son, and an actress trying to cover up the suicide of her boyfriend. Screening once only at Rotterdam, 23rd Sept. 4.30pm.
The Sower – A powerful film about guilt, responsibility, and redemption, The Sower is a painful tale of a family’s disintegration when a long lost brother returns home from a mental hospital only to encounter a family tragedy. Review. Screening once only at Rotterdam, 22nd Sept., 9.45pm.
Seto & Utsumi – Tatsushi Omori’s adaptation of the popular manga is a predictably charming affair comprised of brief vignettes as the two high school boys of the title chat their days away hanging out on the way home from school. Review. Screening at Rotterdam only, 21st Sept., 5pm, 22nd Sept. 5pm.

Current Cinema – Mainstream / Genre

Of course there’s plenty of blockbuster fare on offer too from the latest in the Death Note franchise to cat-centric dramas, tales of Shogi playing geniuses, splatter horror, and one family’s strange journey to familial harmony when all the lights go off.

Death Note – Premier blockbuster director Shinsuke Sato brings his typically polished visuals to this spin-off of the main series following officers from the Death Note Taskforce as they face the increasingly global Death Note threat. Review. Screening at Rotterdam, 23rd Sept. 9.30pm and Amsterdam, 1st October 2.45pm.
Meatball Machine Kodoku – Yoshihiro Nishimura returns with another splatter fuelled assault on the senses. Screening at Rotterdam, 23rd Sept. at midnight, and Amsterdam, 30th Sept. at midnight.
Neko Atsume House – Adaptation of the popular smartphone game in which a blocked writer moves to the country for inspiration but finds his life overtaken by cats! Screening at Rotterdam only, 21st Sept., 7.30pm, and 23rd Sept. 2.30pm.
Neko Ninja – A young ninja completes his first mission but gains an unexpected follower in the form of a pudgy cat he thinks might be the reincarnation of his long lost father. Screening at Rotterdam on 23rd Sept. 5pm, 24th Sept. 10pm, and Amsterdam on 30th Sept. 3pm.
Satoshi: A Move for Tomorrow – A biopic of the real life shogi player who battled serious and life long illness to reach the top of the shogi tree. Review. Screening at Rotterdam on 22nd Sept., 7pm, and Amsterdam on 1st Oct. 7.30pm.
The Sun – Yu Irie’s sci-fi/horror takes place in a world in which vampirism rules the Earth and the only path to survival is to become a vampire. Screening at Rotterdam, 24th Sept. 9.30pm, and Amsterdam 1st Oct., 9.45pm.
Survival Family – Shinobu Yaguchi returns with another ensemble comedy following one Tokyo family’s attempts to survive in a post-electric world. Review. Screening at Rotterdam on 24th Sept. 7.30pm and 30th Sept, 4.45pm.

Classic Cinema

Alongside latest releases, Camera Japan has also brought together some classic movies from the recent and not so recent past.

Blind Woman’s Curse – Starring Meiko Kaji this ero-guro tale of female revenge features some very strange black cat/tattoo action. Screening at Rotterdam only, 22nd Sept., 10pm. Introduced by Midnight Eye’s Tom Mes whose Meiko Kaji book, Unchained Melody, is released on 11th Sept.
Eureka – Screening as part of the Kyushu focus, Shinji Aoyama’s 3.5hr masterpiece from 2000 stars Koji Yakusho as a bus driver attempting to live with the effects of a hijacking. Screening once only at Rotterdam only, 21st Sept. 7pm.
Naoko: Winning Runners – Also part of the Kyushu focus, this 2008 sports movie follows a young man hoping to fulfil his father’s legacy by competing in the marathon relay race with his high school team. Screening once only at Rotterdam, 22nd Sept. 4.30pm
A Page of Madness – Teinosuke Kinugasa’s landmark silent screens with live score from Bruno Ferro Xavier da Silva. Screening at Rotterdam 24th Sept. 7.30pm.

Documentary

Documentary fans also have a lot to look forward to with three very different explorations of modern Japanese life.

Boys for Sale – Produced by Ian Thomas Ash (A2-B-C, -1287), Boys for Sale mixes animation and talking heads interviews to explore the lives of the (mostly straight) young men working in the sex industry in Tokyo’s Shinjuku 2-chome. Screening at Rotterdam only, Sept. 22, 7.30pm. Producer Ian Thomas Ash will present for a Q&A.
Mother I’ve Pretty Much Forgotten Your Face – fascinating documentary following Michiru Endo, the lead singer of one of Japan’s most high profile ’80s punk bands, The Stalin, still on tour at 60 when the Great East Japan Earthquake strikes. Screening at Rotterdam only , Sept. 24, 9.30pm.
Start Line – Ayako Imamura, who was born deaf, charts her long distance bike ride. Screens at Rotterdam only, 21st Sept. 9.30pm.

Anime

There’s no shortage of animation either with four new releases including the award winning In this Corner of the World, and Studio Ghibli classic Princess Mononoke.

Ancien and the Magic Tablet (AKA Napping Princess) – The latest from Ghost in the Shell’s Kenji Kamiyama, this family friendly, sci-fi infused tale follows a young girl’s attempt to stop an international conspiracy from within her dreamworld. Review. Screening at Rotterdam only, 21st Sept. 7.15, 22nd 7.15pm.
In This Corner of the World – Award winning animation from the director of Mai Mai Miracle following the early life of a young woman of Hiroshima during the war. Review. Screening at Rotterdam 22nd Sept., 2pm, 23rd Sept. 4pm, and at Amsterdam on 1st Oct. 5.15pm.
Princess Mononoke – Classic Studio Ghibli animation features in the festival’s Kyushu focus. Screening once only at Rotterdam, 24th Sept. 5pm.
A Silent Voice – Heartrending tale of a girl with hearing difficulties and the boy who bullied her. Review. Screening once only at Rotterdam, 23rd Sept. at 7pm.
Your Voice – High school girl Natsuki is unsure what to do with the rest of her life until she wanders into a radio station and enjoys a stint as a DJ leading her to wonder if her grandmother’s stories of spirits from other worlds could really be true. Screening at Rotterdam only, 23rd September, 2pm, and 24th Sept, 3pm.

WARM-UP @ WORM: concert + movie

Trippy psychedelic road movie, Gui aiueo:S A Stone from Another Mountain to Polish Your Own Stone, produced by and starring Gui aiueo:S, will screen at WORM Rotterdam alongside a live performance from Krautrock band Minami Deutsch on 15th Sept. as a special warm-up event.

The festival will see two more live concerts by Yasuhito Arai and Noriko Tujiko whose film Kuro is also playing in the festival, as part of a series of special events including beer tasting, sencha and miso workshops, and the film brunch.

Full information on all the films as well as ticketing links can be found on the official website. You can also keep up to date with all the latest news via Camera Japan’s official Facebook page, Twitter account, and Instagram channel.

Follow our ongoing coverage and find reviews for all the films covered so far in our Camera Japan 2017 category.

Midnight Runners (청년경찰, Kim Joo-hwan, 2017)

September 4, 2017April 12, 2018by Hayley Scanlon2 Comments

There are many good reasons for applying to Police University, even if many people can’t see them. That aside, the heroes of Kim Joo-hwan’s Midnight Runners (청년경찰, Chungnyeongyungchal) have ended up there not through any particular love of honour and justice, but simply because it was cheap, on the one hand, and because it was different, on the other. An ‘80s-style buddy (not quite) cop comedy, Kim’s followup to the indie leaning Koala is the story of two young men finding their calling once their latent heroism is sparked by witnessing injustice first hand, but it’s also careful to temper its otherwise crowd pleasing narrative of two rookies taking on evil human trafficking gangsters with a dose of background realism.

Rookie recruits to Seoul’s Police University, Gi-jun (Park Seo-joon) and Hee-yeol (Kang Ha-neul) could not be more different. Gi-jun is exasperated by his worried mother’s words of parting, but hugs her goodbye anyway. Hee-yeol’s dad looks on in envy at this touching scene, but asking if he should hug his son too gets a resounding “no” before Hee-yeol begins to walk away, turning back to remind his father to button his coat because it’s cold outside. Gi-jun doesn’t want to get his hair cut because he’s fashion conscious, whereas Hee-yeol doesn’t want his cut because they don’t sterilise the clippers and he doesn’t want to catch a bacterial skin infection. Nevertheless, the pair eventually bond first during lunch as Hee-yeol surrenders his “carcinogenic” sausages to the always hungry Gi-jun, and then when Hee-yeol sprains his ankle during the final endurance test and Gi-jun (eventually) agrees to carry him to the finish line. Not for the first time, Gi-jun’s “selfless” actions to help a person in need earn the pair a few words of praise from their commander who berates the others for running past an injured comrade and thinking only of themselves when the very point of a police officer is to help those in need.

A year a later the pair are firm friends and decide to take a night on the town to find themselves some girlfriends to spend Christmas with. Sadly, they do not find any but they do find crime when they spot a pretty girl in the street and then spend ages arguing about asking for her number only to see her being clubbed over the head and bundled into a black van. Slightly drunk, the boys panic, chase the van, and ring the police but are told to stay put and wait for a patrol car. They figure they can get to the police station faster than a car can get to them but once they do they realise the entire station is being pulled away on another high profile case and no one’s coming. They do what it is they’ve been trained to do, investigate – but what they discover is much darker than anything they’d imagined.

Police in Korean cinema often have a bad rap. It’s nigh on impossible to think of any examples of heroic police officers who both start and finish as unblemished upholders of justice. Midnight Runners, however, attempts to paint a rosier picture of the police force, prompting some to describe it almost as a propagandistic recruiting tool. It helps that Gi-jun and Hee-yeol are still students which means that the idealistic line they’re being fed goes mostly unchallenged (at least until the climactic events prompt them to think again), but there are certainly no beatings, no shady dealings with the underworld, or compromised loyalties in the boys’ innocent quest to rescue a damsel in distress.

The spectre of corruption hovers in the background but on a national, rather than personal, level as the news constantly reports on the kidnapping of a wealthy CEO’s child while a young woman from a troubled background has also gone missing but no one, not even the police who have devoted all their resources to the CEO’s case, is interested. Meanwhile, Gi-jun and Hee-yeol, having just escaped from certain death, attempt to get help from a nearby police box but the shocked jobsworth of a duty officer won’t help them because they don’t have their IDs. The boys’ outrage on being informed that despite all their efforts, the specialist team who handle cases like these won’t even be able to look at it for weeks is instantly understandable, but so is their professor’s kindly rationale that all lives are equal and the squad can’t be expected to dump their current caseload and swap one set of victims for another. The police, so it goes, are heroes caged by increasing bureaucracy which has made them forget the reasons they became policemen in the first place.

Despite the grim turn the film takes after Gi-jun and Hee-yeol make a shocking discovery as a result of their investigation, Kim keeps things light thanks the boys’ easy, symbiotic relationship filled with private jokes and even a cute secret handshake. Jokey slapstick eventually gives way to hard-hitting action as the rookie officers finally get to try out some of their training and find it effective on entry level street punks, but less so on seasoned brawlers with mean looks in their eyes. Told to “leave things to the grown ups”, Gi-jun and Hee-yeol decide there are things which must be done even it is dangerous and irresponsible because no one else is going to do them (whether that be eating sausages or rescuing young women no one else seems to care about). A strange yet fitting place to make the case for a better, less selfish world, Midnight Runners is a buddy cop throwback which brings the best of the genre’s capacity for humour and action right back with it.

Currently on limited release in UK cinemas.

Original trailer (English subtitles – select from menu)

The Night is Short, Walk On Girl Opens Kotatsu 2017

September 1, 2017by Hayley ScanlonLeave a comment

Wales’ premier showcase for Japanese animation returns this September with some of the best in recent anime plus events and special guests. This year the festival runs for three bumper days at Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff (29th September – 1st October) before moving on to Aberystwyth Arts Centre for one day only, October 28th 2017.

Cardiff

Opening the festival will be the latest from Tatami Galaxy’s Masaaki Yuasa – The Night is Short, Walk on Girl in which a dark haired girl roams the dark city streets while her secret admirer waits patiently for an opportunity to reveal himself, little knowing that the dark haired girl feels exactly the same way…

Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff, 29th September 6pm.

Next up on Saturday 30th, Napping Princess sees the return of Ghost in the Shell SAC’s Kenji Kamiyama with a much more family friendly effort than might be expected. Regular teenage girl Kotone is sleeping her life away but her final summer vacation will provide unexpected adventures as she sets out to save the Tokyo Olympics from becoming an international disaster whilst solving the long buried mystery of her family origins. Review.

Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff, 30th September, 11am

Aberystwyth Arts Centre, 28th October, 11am

This one likely needs no introduction, but for the uninitiated Makoto Shinkai’s latest effort, Your Name, is a body swapping tale of star crossed lovers which has a much happier conclusion than Shinkai’s generally melancholy fare. Review.

Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff, 30th September, 4.15pm

The third in a series of three feature animations inspired by the works of late science fiction author Project Itoh (the other two being Harmony and Empire of Corpses), Genocidal Organ is a cyberpunk infused tale of global conspiracies in which nefarious forces have decided genocide is an unavoidable human evil that they need to ensure is remains in the category of “terrible things happening far away”. Review.

Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff, 30th September, 6.30pm

Aberystwyth Arts Centre, 28th October, 3.35pm

Produced by Osamu Tezuka, Eiichi Yamamoto’s Belladonna of Sadness has been little seen since its 1973 release but a recent 4K restoration is helping to change that for the better so this psychedelic exploration of sex, witchcraft, and folklore can finally be properly appreciated. Review.

Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff, 30th September, 9pm

Sunday’s first offering is a heartrending story of friendship and redemption between a girl with hearing problems and the boy who mercilessly bullied her in childhood only to get a taste of his own medicine and intensely regret it. Read our review of A Silent Voice here.

Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff, 1st October, 11am

Production I.G. is one of the most well regarded animation studios currently in operation this and series of four shorts by different directors demonstrates its strengths and versatility.

Pigtails – directed by Yoshimi Itazu and adapted from the manga by Machiko Kyo.
Drawer Hobs – directed by Kazuchika Kise
Lil’ Spider Girl – directed by Toshihisa Kaiya
Kickheart – directed by Masaaki Yuasa

Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff, 1st October, 2pm

Masaaki Yuasa’s 2004 debut, Mind Game, will also be screened as the closing movie in Cardiff on 1st October. Adapted from a manga by Robin Nishi, the anime follows an aspiring mangaka, also named Nishi, who runs into his teenage crush only to find out she is about to marry someone else, gets mixed up with yakuza, goes all the way to heaven and back, and then gets trapped inside a whale where he meets God…

Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff, 1st October, 5pm

Aberystwyth Arts Centre, 28th October, 6.15pm

In addition to the films on offer, there will also be a selection of special events taking place across the weekend including:

Japanese Marketplace
Kotatsu Festival Stand
Kotatsu display where you can try out a kotatsu for real! (Saturday night only)
Super Tomato – Cardiff based retailer of retro games and otaku goods
Keep It Secret – Bristol based store specialising in all things cute. (Saturday only)
Cherry Slug – handmade artwork inspired by manga and anime
Iconic Toos – tatooist specialising in otaku designs

That’s in addition to a Manga Drawing Workshop at 1.30pm on Saturday with manga artist Asuka Bochanska Tanaka, the Neo Craft Animation – A Certain Japanese Stop-motion Animation masterclass with Professor Yuichi Ito of Tokyo National University of Arts Graduate School, and a Japanese calligraphy workshop at 3pm on Sunday 1st October.

Aberystwyth

Following a second screening of Napping Princess at 11am, the festival continues at Aberystwyth Arts Centre with a screening of the Sword Art Online movie, Ordinal Scale, which follows Kirito and co. into the latest game using the brand new Augma system.

Aberystwyth Arts Centre, 28th October, 1.15pm

Sword Art Online will be followed by repeat screenings of Genocidal Organ (3.35pm) and Mind Game (6.15pm), and there will also be a raffle at 6pm!

Kotatsu 2017 runs at Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff from 29th September to 1st October and Aberystwyth Arts Centre on 28th October. Tickets are available from the respective box offices. You can find more information on all the films and the festival itself on the official website and you can keep up with all the latest news via the official Facebook Page and Twitter account.

Blade of the Immortal, Close-Knit Headline BFI London Film Festival 2017

August 31, 2017by Hayley Scanlon1 Comment

The BFI London Film Festival returns this October for another twelve day celebration of the best in recent international cinema. Though East Asian offerings are not as plentiful as in previous years, there are a number of highly anticipated films from China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Thailand and Cambodia making their UK premieres across the various strands of the impressive 2017 programme.

China

Chinese independent cinema has been in the ascendent recently, becoming a regular presence at high profile festivals. This year’s selection of films from the mainland includes two very different animated features alongside comedy, action and arthouse.

Angels Wear White – Featured in competition at Vencie, Vivian Qu’s Trap Street followup follows two girls who are assaulted by a middle-aged man in a motel room, and the receptionist who says nothing for fear of losing her job.
Big Fish and Begonia – Animated family fantasy in which mystical beings observe the human world for one week only but are forbidden from contact. Picked up for UK distribution by Manga Entertainment.
Have a Nice Day – Grown up animated feature in which a delivery driver steals a bag of cash so his girlfriend can get plastic surgery. Picked up for UK distribution by Mubi.
King of Peking – A father and son resort to DVD piracy after a fire destroys their business in this charming Beijing-set comedy.
Life Imitation – An experimental look at youth in modern China mediated through the digital realm.
Wrath of Silence – Western infused martial arts drama starring Jiang Wu.

Hong Kong

Two giants of Hong Kong cinema return – celebrated filmmaker Ann Hui with a tale of love and resistance, and legendary cinematographer Christopher Doyle shooting a noir fairytale for Jenny Suen.

Our Time Will Come – Zhao Xun’s schoolteacher takes up arms in the resistance movement against the Japanese occupation in Ann Hui’s tense spy thriller.
The White Girl – shot by Christopher Doyle, Jenny Suen’s quirky noir fairytale stars Joe Odagiri as a reclusive Japanese artist hiding out in Hong Kong.

Japan

Japanese entries are dominated by animation but there’s also space for Takashi Miike’s manga adaptation Blade of the Immortal which headlines the Thrill section, as well as Naoko Ogigami’s latest Close-Knit, and the recent 4K restoration of 60s avant-garde masterpiece Funeral Parade of Roses.

Blade of the Immortal – A return to the world of jidaigeki for the prolific director, Blade of the Immortal stars Takuya Kimura as a legendary swordsman who cannot die. Takashi Miike will also be present at the festival for a Screen Talk event. Picked up for UK distribution by Arrow Films.
Close-Knit – Less quirky than her previous work, Naoko Ogigami’s latest is a heartwarming family drama in which a neglected 11 year old is taken in by her uncle and his transgender girlfriend, Rinko (Toma Ikuta). Review.
Funeral Parade of Roses – Toshio Matsumoto’s avant-garde classic in its recent 4K restoration.
Lu Over the Wall – One of two films this year released by anime genius Masaaki Yuasa, Lu Over the Wall is a story of borderless love as a land boy and mermaid girl come together to ensure the survival of their respective communities. Picked up for UK distribution by Manga Entertainment.
Mutafukaz – crazy French/Japanese animated co-production.

Korea

Everything you’d expect from Korea from anarchic documentary to violent procedural and the annual return of Hong Sang-soo.

Bamseom Pirates Seoul Inferno – Jung Yoon-suk’s documentary following the Korean punk band
Becoming Who I Was – Chang-yong Moon & Jin Jeon’s reincarnation documentary.
Memoir of a Murderer – Byung-su, a retired serial killer recently diagnosed with dementia, attempts to catch his successor in this very Korean black comedy thriller. Picked up for UK distribution by JBG Pictures.
On the Beach at Night Alone – Hong Sang-soo returns with a close to home story of an actress (played by Kim Min-hee), taking refuge from the negative fallout from her high profile affair with a married film director…

Thailand

Thailand’s two entries feature youth looking forward and age looking back.

Bad Genius – Playing just about every festival this season, Bad Genius is the story of brainy Thai teens and their elaborate scam to game the exams system.
Pop Aye – a middle-aged man tries to rescue an elephant who was his childhood friend and save them both from the ravages of “progress”.

Cambodia

Jailbreak – martial arts drama from Jimmy Henderson.

The BFI London Film Festival runs at various venues in Central London from 4th to 15th October 2017. Full details and screening times/dates are available from the official website. Champion members’ booking begins 10am 6th September with Members’ booking opening 7th September ahead of regular ticket sales beginning 14th September.

You can also keep up to date with all the latest festival news via the BFI’s Facebook Page, Twitter account, and YouTube channel.

The Blue Sky Maiden (青空娘, Yasuzo Masumura, 1957)

August 29, 2017October 24, 2017by Hayley Scanlon1 Comment

Yasuzo Masumura is generally remembered for dark, erotic and disturbing explorations of human behaviour but the early part of his career was marked by a more hopeful innocence and a less cynical yet still cutting humour. His debut, Kisses, was very much in the mould of the youth movie of the day but its themes were both more innocent and more controversial as a boy and girl bond after running into each other at the prison where both of their parents are serving time. Marked by darkness as it is, the worldview of Kisses is much kinder than Masumura would later allow as the pair of lovers seem to shake off their respective concerns to embrace the youthful joy and boundless freedom young love can offer.

The Blue Sky Maiden (青空娘, Aozora Musume), Masumura’s second film, does something similar but with added bite. Working for the first time with actress Ayako Wakao who would later become something of a muse, Masumura takes a typical melodrama storyline – the returned illegitimate child treated as a poor relation by her own “family”, and turns it into a genial comedy in which Wakao’s charming heroine shines brightly despite the often cruel and heartless treatment she receives. As far as the family drama goes, the genre was still in its heyday and the family unit itself fairly unquestioned yet as Masumura shows times were changing and perhaps the family is not the bedrock it initially seems to be.

18 year old Yuko (Ayako Wakao) stands at the gates of adulthood. Taking a last photo in school uniform with her high school friends as they prepare for graduation, Yuko expresses her nervousness about being sent to Tokyo to live with the family of a father she barely knows while her friends worry about getting married or getting stuck in their tiny village all alone respectively. Tragedy strikes when the girls’ teacher arrives on a bicycle and informs them that Yuko’s grandmother has been taken ill. On her death bed, the grandmother reveals the reason Yuko is the only one of her father’s four children to be raised in the country is not a concern for her health, but that she is illegitimate. Yuko’s father, unhappy in his marriage, fell in love with his secretary (Kuniko Miyake) who later gave birth to Yuko, but he was already married with two children and so Yuko’s mother went to Manchuria leaving her to be raised in secret in the country.

Having nowhere else to go, Yuko arrives at her father’s large Western style house to be greeted coldly by her half-siblings, and treated as a maid by her still angry step-mother while her father (Kinzo Shin) is away on business. It has to be said that this model middle class family are an extremely unpleasant bunch. Step-mother Tatsuko (Sadako Sawamura) is shrewish and embittered while oldest daughter Teruko (Noriko Hodaka) spends all her time chasing wealthy boyfriends (but failing to win them because she’s just as mean as her mother). The oldest brother (Yuji Shinagawa) idles away in a hipster jazz band while the youngest boy, Hiroshi (Yukihiko Iwatare), is rude and boisterous but later bonds with his new big sister when she is the only one to really bother interacting with him.

The Ono household has always been an unhappy one. Yuko’s father married his wife after being bamboozled into it by an overbearing boss trying to offload his difficult daughter. Feeling trapped and avoiding going home he fell in love with a kind woman at work, had an affair, and wanted to marry her but wasn’t strong enough to break off not only from his unwanted family but also from his career in pursuing personal happiness. By Masumura’s logic, it’s this failure to follow one’s heart which has poisoned the Ono family ruining not only the lives of Tatsuko and the children who have no respect for their father or capacity for real human feeling (as Yuko later tells them), but also that of Yuko’s poor mother whose life has been one of constant suffering after being unfairly jettisoned by a man who was bold enough to have an affair, but not to defy social conventions and leave an unhappy home.

Yuko herself, however, refuses to allow her life to be ruined by the failings of others. Looking up at the bright blue sky with her teacher (Kenji Sugawara), she learns to create her own stretch of heaven if only in her own mind. Though others might have fought and complained at being forced into the role of maid in what is her own family home, Yuko bears her new circumstances with stoicism and good humour. Thanks to her kindness and enthusiasm, the family maid, Yae (Chocho Miyako), is quickly on her side and if Teruko’s latest target, Hirooka (Keizo Kawasaki) starts to prefer the “new servant girl” his defection is completely understandable. Unlike later Masumura heroines, Yuko’s “revenge” is total yet constructive. She refuses to be cowed by unkindness, remains pure hearted in the face of cruelty, and resolves to find her own happiness and encourage others to do the same. With a few cutting words offered kindly, Yuko gets to the heart of the Onos, essentially reminding her father that all of this unhappiness is his own fault – he made his bed 20 years ago, now he needs to lie it and be a full-time husband and father to the family of lonely misfits he created in the absence of love.

Light and bright and colourful, The Blue Sky Maiden is among Masumura’s more cheerful films, not least because it does seem to believe that true happiness is possible. Yuko does not so much defy social convention as ignore it. She lives openly and without rancour or regret. She takes things as she finds them and people (aside from the Onos) are good to her because she is good to them. Though Masumura’s later work would become increasingly dark and melancholy, Yuko bears out many of his most central themes in her steadfast claim to her own individuality and equally steadfast commitment to enabling the happiness of others in defiance of prevailing social codes.

Napping Princess (ひるね姫～知らないワタシの物語, Kenji Kamiyama, 2017)

August 17, 2017September 4, 2017by Hayley Scanlon4 Comments

Kenji Kamiyama has long been feted as one of Japan’s most promising animation directors, largely for his work with Production I.G. including the Ghost in the Shell TV anime spin-off, Stand Alone Complex, and conspiracy thriller Eden of the East. Aside from the elegantly shaded quality of his animation, Kamiyama’s work has generally been marked by thoughtful social and political commentary mixed with well executed action scenes and science fiction themes. Napping Princess (ひるね姫〜知らないワタシの物語〜, Hirune Hime: Shiranai Watashi no Monogatari, also known by the slightly more intriguing title Ancien and the Magic Tablet) swaps science fiction for steampunk fantasy and, in a career first, is aimed at younger children and family audiences.

With the 2020 Tokyo Olympics fast approaching, Kokone (Mitsuki Takahata) is a regular high school girl about to enjoy her very last summer holiday before graduation. With no clear ideas of what it is she wants to do with her life, Kokone idly whiles away her time looking after her monosyllabic single dad, Momotaro (Yosuke Eguchi), who only seems to be able to communicate with her via text. Momotaro is a mechanic with a difference – he knows how to retrofit cars with a hi-tech, experimental self driving software that’s a real boon to the ageing population in the tiny rural town where the pair live.

A dreamy sort of girl, Kokone is always tired and frequently drifts off into a fantasy land where the car industry is all important and all are at the mercy of an iron fisted king whose sorceress daughter continues to cause problems for the population at large thanks to her strange powers. Whilst in her dream world, Kokone (or Ancien as she is known in “Heartland”) is accompanied by a her stuffed toy come to life and interacts with slightly younger versions of the people from her town including a dashingly heroic incarnation of her father as a young man.

The main action kicks off when Momotaro is arrested by an evil looking guy who wants a mysterious tablet he says Momotaro has stolen from their company. The fairytale inspired dreamworld might indicate a different kind of tablet, but this really is just a regular iPad with some information on it that certain people would very much like to get their hands on and other people would very much prefer that they didn’t. The tablet itself is a kind of macguffin which allows Kokone to process some long held questions about her past and that of her late mother who passed away when she was just an infant.

Kokone’s frequent flights of fancy start to merge with the real world, firstly when she shares a lucid dream with companion Morio (Shinnosuke Mitsushima) who helps her on her quest, and then later when magic seems to come to the pair’s aid through the tablet (though this turns out to have a more prosaic explanation). At 17 or so, you’d think perhaps Kokone is a little old for these kinds of fantasies, or at least for carting around a stuffed toy which is in remarkably good nick for something which apparently belonged to her mother when she was a child. Nevertheless, her dreamland is a long buried message which helps her piece together her mother’s story and how it might relate to her own all while she’s busy saving the Opening Ceremony of the 2020 Olympics from becoming a possibly lethal international embarrassment which would destroy the Japanese car industry for evermore.

Despite his prowess with harder science fiction subjects, Kamiyama can’t quite corral all of this into a coherent whole. Valiantly trying to merge the twin stories of Kokone’s coming of age and the problems of the Japanese auto industry which is good at hardware but struggles with soft, Napping Princess narrowly misses its target neither quite charming enough in its fantasy universe or moving enough in the “real” one. This may perhaps rest on a single line intended to be a small revelation which melts the icy CEO’s heart but essentially comes down to the use of a kanji in a name being different from one on a sign, losing much of its impact in translation as it accidentally explains the whole of Kokone’s existence in one easy beat which easily missed. Failing to marry its two universes into one perfect whole, Napping Princess is a pleasant enough though perhaps inconsequential coming of age story in which a young girl discovers her own hidden powers whilst unlocking the secrets of her past.

Currently on limited UK release from Anime Limited.

Trailer featuring a (very nice) Japanese cover of Daydream Believer

Oh Lucy! To Open Raindance 2017

August 15, 2017September 21, 2017by Hayley Scanlon2 Comments

London’s Raindance International Film Festival returns from 20th September to 1st October 2017 with the best of recent independent cinema from across the world. East Asian titles have been thin on the ground for the past few years, but this time around Japan in particular is back with a vengeance.

The festival will open with Atsuko Hirayanagi’s Cannes sleeper hit Oh Lucy! which stars Shinobu Terajima as a 55 year old woman trapped in a boring office job who discovers a whole new side to herself after being given a blonde wig and the alternate identity of Lucy by an unorthodox English teacher (played by Josh Hartnett) whom she later becomes obsessed with.

The only feature documentary on the list, Boys for Sale takes a look at the young men who have sex with men for money in Tokyo’s red light district. Produced by frequent Raindance guest Ian Thomas Ash (A2-B-C, -1278), this innovative documentary mixes animation and straight to camera interviews to explore the various reasons why these young men have made a decision to work as “boys” and the nature of their lives in this hidden part of Tokyo nightlife.

A haunted guitar amp promises a struggling musician everything he’s ever dreamed of in Ghostroads: A Japanese Rock ‘n’ Roll Ghost Story!

It has been centuries since humanity’s clones rebelled and went to live underground. Now an intrepid band of humans must venture into their world to investigate the the fate of the self exiled creatures in Takahide Hori’s impressive stop motion animation, Junk Head.

Eiji Uchida’s Love and Other Cults receives its UK premiere at Raindance. The story of a young girl’s journey through cult devotee to mixed up kid and a life in the adult entertainment industry, Love and Other Cults is the latest Uchida/Third Window Films production. Review.

Kazuyoshi Kumakiri (My Man, Sketches of Kaitan City, Antenna) returns with a tale of familial love and kendo in Mukoku as Go Ayano puts down his sword following a traumatic incident and proceeds to waste his life drinking and working as a security guard until a chance meeting with a talented high schooler shakes him out of his malaise.

Yusaku Matsumoto’s Noise takes place eight years after a killing spree as three residents of Akihabara including the daughter of a murdered woman, an underground idol, and a delivery driver attempt to find meaning in their lives.

In Junpei Matsumoto’s Perfect Revolution, Lily Franky plays a man with cerebral palsy who is an activist for the sexual rights of disabled people and falls in love with a sex worker who suffers from a personality disorder.

Ordinary housewife Mariko is married to a younger man with whom she has a son, but Tomoharu is often away from home and she is beginning to believe he is having an affair. Meanwhile, her manager harasses her at work and the customers are constantly rude. Under such strains, Mariko’s perception of reality starts to disintegrate in Koji Segawa’s indie drama Swaying Mariko.

The only non-Japanese East Asian film on offer is Huang Ji & Ryuji Otsuka’s The Foolish Bird – a story of a “left behind child” forced to bring herself up in an unforgiving Chinese village.

The Raindance International Film Festival takes place at Vue West End from 20th September to 1st October and tickets are already on sale via the official website.

Black Hair (검은 머리, Lee Man-hee, 1964)

August 9, 2017December 1, 2017by Hayley Scanlon3 Comments

Film noir can be the most contradictory of genres. A moralistic world filled with immortality, fatalism mixed with existential angst, and a rage against society which is always tinged with a resignation to living on its margins. Genre in Korean cinema has always been a little more fluid than elsewhere and Lee Man-hee’s seminal crime thriller Black Hair (검은 머리, Geomeun Meori) is also a melodrama – the story of a self loathing man committed to his own arbitrary codes, and a woman he expects to pay the price for them.

In a brief prologue that has little to do with the ongoing narrative, ruthless gangster Dong-il (Jang Dong-hui) extorts a corrupt CEO by blackmailing him over some illicit smuggling. Meanwhile, across town, the gangster’s wife, Yeon-sil (Moon Jeong-suk), meets with a man, Man-ho (Chae Rang), in a hotel room. She’s come to pay him off, hoping it will be for the last time but Manh-ho, an opium addict, knows he’s onto an endless cash cow and refuses to put an end to their “arrangement”. Sometime ago, Man-ho raped Yeon-sil and has been blackmailing her for money and sexual favours ever since. Yeon-sil threatens to tell her husband and the police and suffer the consequences, but Man-ho knows she won’t. Dong-il’s gang have a strict rule about adultery and if Yeon-sil trusted him enough to believe he would believe her about the rape, she would have told him already.

Another goon hides behind a screen, snapping photos of Yeon-sil and Man-ho which he later passes on to Dong-il. The boss is shocked and shaken. He knows he has to enforce the rules he himself set down for the gang, but he never expected them to cost him his wife. Eventually Dong-il orders an underling to slash Yeon-sil’s face with a broken bottle, after which she is exiled from the gang. Anyone who tries to repair her scars or help her in any other way will be treated as an enemy.

At this point the narrative splits as Yeon-sil is cast down into a sleazy underworld, living with her blackmailer who pimps her out as a common streetwalker and then steals all her money to spend on drugs and booze. She pines for her husband whom she has been prevented from seeing, longing to at least explain why she did what she did and ensure he knows that her heart has always been with him. Dong-il, by contrast, is going to pieces – his gang no longer respect him, he feels guilty about the way he treated his wife, and he has no idea where to go from here.

Unlike other films of the era or film noir in general, Lee’s world view is non-judgemental in its treatment of the respective paths of Yeon-sil and Dong-il. Yeon-sil is left with no choice than to enter into a life of casual prostitution and the film forgives her for this – the fault is that of Dong-il and Man-ho rather than her own. Having been horribly scarred, she wears her hair longer on one side to hide her disfigurement but is constantly reminded of her emotional damage through its physical manifestation and the reactions it often elicits. Picking up a client in the street, she’s threatened with violence and cruel words for having “deceived” him when he catches sight of her disfigured face. A passing taxi driver witnesses the attack and challenges the man so Yeon-sil can escape. The cabbie then hires her and they spend the night together in a nearby brothel. He surprises Yeon-sil by being entirely unfazed about her facial scarring, offering to help her get it treated if that’s what she wants, and making it clear he would like to spend more time with her off the clock.

Yeon-sil’s life is completely controlled by her triangular relationship to the three men – her unforgiving husband Dong-il, the cruel and venal Man-ho, and the good and decent cab driver. After meeting the cabbie, Yeon-sil tries to see Dong-il again but his boys stop her. They say they’ll take her to see him, but really they’re planning quite another destination. Luckily, in a staggering coincidence, they’re spotted by the taxi driver who once again saves Yeon-sil, taking her home to stay with him and proposing they embark on a more formal relationship.

This is more of a problem than it seems for Dong-il’s guys who now fear their boss will find out they tried to kill his wife in an effort to wake him up from his ongoing existential malaise. The rules of the gang are tough and clear – adultery is not permissible, no woman is allowed to leave, no exceptions are to be made. Dong-il, however, is beginning to rethink the code he himself designed. A conversation with his childhood nanny throws up a number of interesting questions. She blames herself for giving Dong-il “evil” milk which has led to his spiritual corruption, though Dong-il later tells Yeon-sil that he did not choose evil so much evil chose him. He created these “evil” gang rules, but failed to live up to them in continuing to feel attached to Yeon-sil – he feels he must punish himself for the “sin” of being unable to forget her and abide by his own honour system which he now feels to be pointless and arbitrary. Effectively issuing himself a death sentence, Dong-il changes tack confirming that he has, in a sense, chosen evil even if it was a “choice” of refusing to resist the path set down for him. Suddenly realising the emotion he felt for Yeon-sil was love, he is struck by a terrible feeling of loneliness.

As in much of Lee’s work, Yeon-sil and Dong-il are trapped by their own society and belief systems and finally perhaps by feeling. Yeong-sil is frequently captured behind bars or caught in a window, imprisoned within the frame as she tries to reconcile herself to her precarious position, daring to hope for a new, decent life with the good hearted taxi driver while also mourning her love for Dong-il and living with the humiliation caused to her by Man-ho. Lee’s structure is sometimes unclear as he introduces a fairly pointless subplot about the taxi driver’s modern woman little sister who has moved out to be independent but works in a hostess bar, inhabiting the same sleazy world as Yeon-sil and Dong-il, only more innocently, but never does much with it beyond contrasting the lives of the two women who occupy slightly different generations and have very different options open to them. There’s a fatalism and inevitability in the way Yeong-sil and Dong-il live their lives to which the taxi driver and his sister do not quite subscribe but Lee breaks with the genre’s trademark pessimism to offer the glimmer of a bittersweet ending and the chance of a new beginning for the much abused Yeon-sil now freed of her dark associations.

Black Hair is the second in The Korean Film Archive’s Lee Man-hee box set which comes with English subtitles on all four films as well as a bilingual booklet. (Not currently available to stream online)

The First Lap, Sweating the Small Stuff Screen at Locarno 2017

July 29, 2017July 29, 2017by Hayley ScanlonLeave a comment

Sweating the Small Stuff Now in its 70th year, the Locarno Film Festival returns with another celebration of auteurist cinema from 2nd to 12th August, 2017. As usual there are a number of arthouse films from East Asia included in the programme hailing from China, Japan, Korea, and Myanmar.

dragon fly eyes still Visual artist Xu Bing’s first debut feature Dragonfly Eyes is entirely composed of images taken from China’s many CCTV surveillance cameras as they capture the lives of two young people – Qu Ting, a young woman training to become a buddhist nun who returns to the secular world and takes a job at a dairy farm, and Ke Fan a young man who falls in love with her but finds himself sent to jail in the quest to win her heart. On his release he searches for her desperately only to discover she has reinvented herself as an online celebrity.

mrs fang still Wang Bing’s documentary Mrs. Fang tells the story of an elderly woman suffering with Alzheimer’s who is sent back to her rural village from the nursing home in which she had been living after it is decided they can offer no further treatment.

first lap still In Kim Dae-hwan’s The First Lap Su-hyeon and Ji-young have been living together for the last six years but the possibility of an unexpected pregnancy forces the pair to reassess their relationships with their old families before starting a new one.

sweating small stuff still 2 Ryutaro Ninomiya directs himself in Sweating the Small Stuff as he plays a 27 year old mechanic who decides to pay a visit to the terminally ill mother of a friend he has been avoiding seeing despite knowing of her illness.

blood amber still The first feature documentary from Lee Yong Chao, Blood Amber takes a look at a Burmese forest controlled by the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) in which the inhabitants eke out a living mining hoping to find a way out whilst also living in fear of military action.

There are also two short films from East Asia:

crossing river still Han Yumeng’s Crossing River follows a group Chinese construction workers

signature still Kei Chikaura’s Signature centres on a young Chinese man lost in the middle of Shibuya.

The 70th Locarno Film Festival runs from 2nd – 10th August, 2017. You can find full details for all films as well as the complete lineup on the official festival website, and you can keep up with all the latest developments via the Festival’s Facebook Page, Twitter account, YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat.

Outrage Coda to close Venice 2017

July 27, 2017by Hayley Scanlon5 Comments

outragebyond-決a02 The Venice Film Festival has unveiled the full lineup for 2017. Sadly, it is a poor showing for East Asian cinema with only four films in total included in this year’s programme (bar the possibility of a few late additions announced as the festival gets closer) and only Japan and China represented.

outrage coda still The biggest hitter in terms of the festival as a whole is Takeshi Kitano’s Outrage Coda. The third in Kitano’s Outrage saga, Coda follows Otomo (played by Kitano himself) as he returns to Japan following gang trouble in South Korea. Outrage Coda will screen as the closing night gala.

third murder horizontal poster The only other Japanese film included in the programme this year is the latest from festival favourite Hirokazu Koreeda – The Third Murder. A departure from Koreeda’s usual focus on drama, The Third Murder is a crime thriller in which Masaharu Fukuyama (Like Father, Like Son) plays top lawyer Shigemori working on the defence of a murder/robbery suspect (Koji Yakusho) who previously served time for murder 30 years before. The defendant admits his crime and wants to plead guilty even if he will almost certainly get the death penalty but the more Shigemori looks into the case the more doubts he accrues.

1260733_Human-Flow Moving on to China, Ai Weiwei’s documentary Human Flow charts the global scale of the ongoing refugee crisis. Playing in competition.

©22 HOURS FILMS Finally Vivian Qu’s Angels Wear White is the story of two teenage girls assaulted in a hotel room by a middle aged man, and the receptionist who says nothing in fear of losing her job. Sadly, Vivian Qu is also the only female director with a film playing in competition.

The Venice Film Festival runs from 30th August to 9th September.