Tag: Nippon Connection

Dawn of the Felines (牝猫たち, Kazuya Shiraishi, 2017)

May 30, 2017November 20, 2017by Hayley Scanlon6 Comments

Towards the end of the 60s and faced with the same problems as any other studio of the day – namely declining receipts as cinema audiences embraced television, Nikkatsu decided to spice up their already racy youth orientated output with a steady stream of sex and violence. The Roman Porno line took a loftier approach to the “pink film” – mainstream softcore pornography played in dedicated cinemas and created to a specific formula, by putting the resources of a bigger studio behind it with greater production values and acting talent. 40 years on Roman Porno is back. Kazuya Shiraishi’s Dawn of the Felines (牝猫たち, Mesunekotachi) takes inspiration from Night of the Felines by the Roman Porno master Noboru Tanaka but where Tanaka’s film is a raucous comedy following the humorous adventures of its three working girl protagonists, Shiraishi’s is a much less joyous affair as he casts his three lonely heroines adrift in Tokyo’s red light district.

Masako (Juri Ihata), Rie (Michie), and Yui (Satsuki Maue) are best friends, though they don’t even know each other’s real names. They each work for a shady escort agency in Tokyo’s red light district where they’re ordered and dispatched by their two-bit hustler of a manager Nonaka (Takuma Otoo) and driven around by the assistant who it turns out has been secretly filming them and posting the videos on YouTube as a kind of exposé on the sex trade.

Each of the women “has their tale to tell” as one puts it but none of them are particularly unhappy in their work, prostitution is simply their way of life and to that extent completely normalised. It does, however, interfere with their ability to form relationships, not just practically but emotionally. For unclear reasons possibly connected to debt collection Masako is technically homeless despite the large amounts of money she can earn, sleeping in cheap motels or all night manga cafes and carting all of her worldly possessions around with her in a tiny carry on size suitcase on wheels. One of her regulars, a millionaire shut in (Tomohiro Kaku), offers to let her stay with him but their relationship is strange and strained – somewhere between business and pleasure with the lines permanently unclear.

Rei, by contrast, is saddled with an elderly client who usually just wants to talk but eventually takes things in an extreme direction. Her path into prostitution is in a sense more positive even if it stems from a kind of vengeance in that the feeling of being needed and providing a valuable service gives her life meaning.

Yui looks for meaning through romance but rarely finds it thanks to the various potential mates she meets through her work. Yui’s young son Kenta has worrying bruises on his face, arms and torso, rarely speaks, and is frequently abandoned by his mother who pays a shady guy to look after him while she spends her time looking for love.

Working for a lenient agency the girls are more or less free agents rather than abused street walkers trapped by debt-bondage and could quit any time they wanted. Yui and Masako may be looking for an escape from this dead-end world – Yui at least is conscious of her age and the declining bookings, but neither names that as something that they are actively pursuing. Rei, by contrast, has made her escape already but has travelled in the opposite direction – from stifling bourgeois life to Belle du Jour liberation, but her eventual destination may be a much darker one than she’d anticipated.

This darkness hovers round the edges as the threat of violence is only ever indirectly expressed or fetishised as in a sequence led by Yui’s possible new partner and the bondage club he works at as one half of a warmup manzai act. Only towards the end does its reality finally surface, making plain how vulnerable and unprotected the women remain whilst on the job. Far from the liberated laughter of Night of the Felines, Shiraishi’s film traps its women with their own despairs as they wallow in an inescapable well of loneliness, satisfying the needs of others but unable to satisfy their own. Bleak but subtly ironic, Dawn of the Felines finds no joy in the sun rising, only the relief of the end of a working day as its three stray cats wander the streets looking for their place to belong.

Dawn of the Felines was screened at the 17th Nippon Connection Japanese Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

The Tokyo Night Sky is Always the Densest Shade of Blue (夜空はいつでも最高密度の青色だ, Yuya Ishii, 2017)

May 29, 2017January 12, 2018by Hayley Scanlon9 Comments

Learning to love Tokyo is a kind of suicide, according to the heroine of Yuya Ishii’s love/hate letter to the Japanese capital, The Tokyo Night Sky is Always the Densest Shade of Blue (夜空はいつでも最高密度の青色だ, Yozora wa Itsudemo Saiko Mitsudo no Aoiro da). This city is a mess of contradictions, a huge sprawling metropolis filled with the anonymous masses and at the same time so tiny you can find yourself running into the same people over and over again. Inspired by the poems of Tahi Saihate, The Tokyo Night Sky is at once a meditative contemplation of city life and an awkward love story between two lost souls who somehow find each other in its crowded backstreets.

The heroine, Mika (Shizuka Ishibashi), works as a nurse by day and supplements her income by night as a bar tender in a “girls bar” (basically a normal bar where all the bartenders are female and you have to pay an entrance fee on top of your overpriced drinks). Depressed and anxious, she wanders the city with a poetic interior monologue expressing her constant loathing for its indifferent soullessness. Meanwhile, Shinji (Sosuke Ikematsu) is a casual day labourer working on various projects in the run up to the 2020 Olympics. He describes himself as odd and is over sensitive about being blind in one eye. Unlike his friends and colleagues, Shinji prefers literature to parties and solitude to company.

The two first catch sight of each other in a crowded bar where Mika is trying to buy time before having to head back to a dull double date with her drunken friend and the lewd guys she’s invited to come along, and Shinji is trying to read away from the noise and chaos of his lodging house. They meet again when one of Shinji’s colleagues suggests going to the girls bar, and then seem to be constantly running into one another for no particular reason.

Though romance would seem to be the natural outcome of the “pointless miracle” of their repeated meetings, the process is a slow one. It’s obvious the pair share a deep, innate understanding of each other but they each have various problems which conspire to keep them apart. Shinji, describing himself as odd and assuming he’s annoying, is prone to nervous babbling which Mika correctly guesses is less down to a love of his own voice than a fear of awkward silence. For her part Mika is anxious all the time, brittle and insecure she instinctively rejects attempts at intimacy but somehow warms to Shinji responding to his confession of oddness with a comforting “well then, you’re just like me.”

The pair advance and retreat as they wander around the city they both claim to hate but as much as they keep each other at a distance their lives begin to overlap and run in parallel. Mika receives a text from an ex (Takahiro Miura) with a confused declaration of love while Shinji receives one from an old high school classmate (Ryo Sato) with much the same effect. Mika insists that love makes you boring, that you’ll never find someone who is prepared to love the most pitiable part of you, and that there is no such thing as love on this planet, but her protestations point more towards a kind of soul-searching and buried hope than they do of active rejection.

Ishii marries the romantic undercurrent with an ambivalent portrait of the stratified city. Mika, a nurse by profession, needs to take a second job to make ends meet while the more traditionally working class Shinji is a sensitive intellectual relegated to dangerous and insecure employment. As a day labourer he gets no employment benefits like sick pay or insurance – hence when he’s injured on the job he avoids letting anyone know for as long as possible because it means both loss of wages and a doctor’s bill. An older friend (Tetsushi Tanaka) has ruined his back through long years of overwork and is now left with nothing while a Filipino migrant worker (Paul Magsign) pines for home and the wife and child waiting for him there.

Shinji’s anxieties are partly economic – trapped in insecure employment which may well, as his older friend points out, dry up once the Olympics rolls around but the greater problem is inertia. During their journeys around the city, Shinji and Mika run into the same busker (Yoshimi Nozaki) who is always singing the same strange song about her underarms sweating which seems to echo their shared anxiety. Yet the song she offers them also provides a note of hope as she enthusiastically reaches the “Ganbare!” chorus, cheering the pair of frightened lovers on and encouraging them to pursue their dreams and desires rather than waiting around for something to happen.

Waiting has been Mika’s problem. Saddled with intense abandonment issues stemming from childhood trauma, Mika is always sure something bad is about to happen. Shinji partly shares her anxiety often claiming that he has “a bad feeling” about something or other but conversely, he begins to believe that the “something” could be good as well as bad. Rather than try and argue with her, Shinji concedes most of Mika’s points, nobody knows what will happen in the future, nobody can make any promises, and everything ends someday but that’s OK – it’s only life.

Ishii’s Tokyo is a soulless place filled with the melancholy and the empty but there’s beauty here too, if only people would look up from their smartphones every now and then to see it. Mika is afraid of being swallowed by the city and becoming one of its faceless masses but her listlessness and depression stand for the city itself as she refuses and rejects the process of living with all of its attendant risks. Ishii paints the city in all the colours of the night, but for all of its beautiful sadness it’s also a place of noise and chaos where existence is exhausting and the price of living high. It is, however, also a place of ordinary miracles offering hope to the hopeless if only they are willing to accept it.

The Tokyo Night Sky Is Always the Densest Shade of Blue was screened at the 17th Nippon Connection Japanese Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Yamato (California) (大和（カリフォルニア), Daisuke Miyazaki, 2016)

May 26, 2017February 28, 2020by Hayley Scanlon4 Comments

When you think of the American military presence in Japan, your mind naturally turns to Okinawa but the largest mainland US base is actually located not so far from Tokyo in a small Japanese town called Yamato which is also the ancient name for the modern-day country. The US has been a constant presence since the end of the second world war prompting resistance of varying degrees from both left and right either in resentment at perceived complicity in American foreign policy, or the desire to reform the pacifist constitution and rebuild an independent army capable of defending Japan alone. Daisuke Miyazaki’s second feature, Yamato (California) (大和（カリフォルニア) dramatises this long-standing issue through exploring the life of hip-hop enthusiast and Yamato resident Sakura (Hanae Kan) who idolises an art form born of political oppression in a country which she also feels oppresses her as a Japanese citizen living on the other side of the fence from land which technically still belongs to the US government.

As the camera pans around a ruined landscape which turns out to be a junkyard, it eventually finds Sakura as she sits alone atop a pile of rubbish rapping about her existential misery, the hopelessness of her life, and her constant anxiety. Sakura has left high school but has no hopes, aspirations or plan. She works part-time at the eel restaurant owned by a family friend but he rarely has enough custom to need her help. Still living at home with her single mother (Reiko Kataoka) and older brother Kenzo in a cramped apartment where space is divided by a series of hanging sheets, Sakura is put out to learn that the half-Japanese daughter of her mother’s American G.I. boyfriend will be coming to stay. When Rei (Nina Endo) finally arrives, Sakura makes a point of ignoring her but the two eventually bond over a shared love of hip-hop and an awkward sense of recognition.

Tellingly, Rei’s (late) mother was from Okinawa – another reminder of the wider American presence, but her long absent father, Abby Goldman, is as distant a protector as America itself. Communicating only through handwritten letters, Abby is neither seen or heard but somehow believed in like an invisible god. Strangely, Rei asks Sakura what her father was like as if she’d never met him only for Sakura to awkwardly answer that he was somewhere between a bother, a friend, and a father but that she’s also grateful to him for introducing her to her beloved hip hop. Later she takes her mother to task on this same issue, Abby hasn’t visited in years and doesn’t even provide for them anymore yet he dispatches the daughter he rarely sees himself for them to care for instead. Abby, like America, offers little and takes much, at least in Sakura’s increasingly hotheaded assessment.

Sakura is quite clearly in a state of depression. Sullen and angry, she lashes out at all around her but is mostly at war with herself and understandably anxious about her future. Her mother and brother both understand this about her and are patient and understanding, naturally cheerful people faced with adversity. With no work to go to and the prospect of finding any slim, Sakura spends her time perfecting her rap technique and hanging out alone in an abandoned trailer in the woods. Despite dressing in the accepted rapper style of loose grey tracksuit bottoms and a hoodie Sakura is a poor fit for the world she’s chosen. Lyrical writing more suited to performance poetry or, as she later puts it, the avant-garde, doesn’t gel with the aggressive, mostly male posturing she sees from her peers yet Sakura is determined to make her way into this arena as a means of self-expression rather than any deluded idea of fame and fortune.

Rei, her American friend, eventually sparks an epiphany following a fiery argument during which she accuses Sakura of being nothing more than an American copycat, adopting a foreign art form to mask an insecurity in her own fragile identity. Rei, trying to get through to her knew friend, has pushed too deep and hit all the wrong nerves leading to a surreal sequence which finally sets Sakura off on a voyage of self discovery and results in a concerted vow of “independence” but also of rejoining the world, accepting others rather than refusing to engage, and stepping forward together but on an equal footing with no leaders and no followers.

Miyazaki’s balanced view does not shy away from the less pleasant aspects of his own society from the protest group which wanders through the frame carrying banners calling for the immediate expulsion of migrants from Asia, to a group of yankees throwing rocks at the homeless, and Kenzo’s straightforward remark that he’s only interested in meeting Rei if she’s pretty – according to him mixed-race Japanese girls often aren’t. Grey mixes with green as brutalist shopping malls break through the vegetation leaving even an errant pagoda entirely intact in the central square. Like Sakura’s own soul this is a land of contradictions and uneasy cross-pollinations but it doesn’t need to be as defeatist and unimaginative as a dated shopping mall, wasei hip-hop just might be the next big thing.

Yamato (California) was screened at the 17th Nippon Connection Japanese Film Festival.

Original trailer (dialogue free)

Happiness (ハピネス, SABU, 2016)

May 25, 2017by Hayley Scanlon1 Comment

happiness still “Memories are what warm you up from the inside. But they’re also what tear you apart” runs the often quoted aphorism from Haruki Murakami. SABU seems to see things the same way and indulges an equally surreal side of himself in the sci-fi tinged Happiness (ハピネス). Memory, as the film would have it, both sustains and ruins – there are terrible things which cannot be forgotten, no matter how hard one tries, while the happiest moments of one’s life get lost among the myriad everyday occurrences. Happiness is the one thing everyone craves even if they don’t quite know what it is, little knowing that they had it once if only for a few seconds, but if the desire to attain “happiness” is itself a reason for living could simply obtaining it by technological means do more harm than good?

A man gets off a country bus carrying a large, mysterious looking box. He stops into the only visible building which happens to a be a “convenience” store housing a wizened old woman who tells the man to just take the bottle of water he is trying to buy because once she gets rid of everything in the shop she can finally die and escape her misery. The man leaves the money anyway and exits the shop, only to make a swift return, take a large helmet studded with old-fashioned round typewriter keys out of his box and place it on the old woman’s head. After the man makes a few adjustments the old woman is thrown into reverie, remembering a time when she was just a small child and her mother greeted her when she arrived home all by herself. Overwhelmed with feeling her mother’s love, the old woman comes back to life and rediscovers a zest for living which she’d long since given up.

So begins the strange odyssey of Kanzaki (Masatoshi Nagase) who finds himself in one of Japan’s most depressed towns where everyone hangs around listlessly, sitting in waiting rooms waiting for nothing in particular, passing the time until it runs out. Suggesting one of the women in the strange waiting area might like to try on the helmet, Kanzaki gets himself arrested but after the police try it out too he comes to the attention of the mayor who invites him to stay hoping the “happiness machine” can help revitalise the dying community and stop some of the young people blowing out of town looking for somewhere less soul-destroying to call home. Kanzaki’s request to access the town census, however, hints at an ulterior motive and it’s as well to note that a happiness machine could also be a sadness machine if you run it in reverse.

SABU’s long and varied career has taken him from men who can’t stop running to those who can’t start, but the men and women of Happiness are impeded by forces more emotional than physical manifesting themselves through bodily inertia. Like many towns in modern Japan, the small village Kanzaki finds himself in is facing a depopulation crisis as the old far outweigh the young and the idea of the future almost belongs to the past. Those who don the happiness helmet regain access to a long-buried memory which reminds them what it feels like to live again. Almost reborn they start to believe that true happiness is possible, that they were once loved, and that their lives truly do have meaning. Yet they can experience all of this joy only because of the intense collective depression they’d hitherto been labouring under. Happiness is only possible because of sorrow, and so the two must work in concert to create a kind of melancholy equilibrium.

Melancholy is a quality which seems to define Kanzaki, inventor of a machine he says can make people happy. As it turns out, his motives were not exactly all about peace and love but a means to an end, his own sorrows run deep and his solution to easing them is a darker one than simply becoming lost in his happy memories. Turning his own machine against itself, he forces a man to relive what he claims is the worst night of his life – one which he could not forget, and one which plagues him every night before he tries to go to sleep. Showing him happy memories too only seems to deepen the pain, though the explanation they eventually offer for his subsequent actions makes him a victim too, betrayed by those who should have protected him and eventually taking his revenge on innocents whose only crime was to be a happy family in front of a man from an unforgiving one.

Painting his world in an almost comforting green tint which can’t help but recall the dull but calming colours of a hospital, SABU channels Roy Andersson by way of David Lynch in his deadpan detachment which becomes humorous precisely because of its overt lack of comic intent. The clues are planted early from a flash of Kanzaki’s wedding ring but refusal to answer question about his family to his hangdog expression and general air of someone who carries a heavy burden, but SABU neatly changes gear surreptitiously to explore what the true explanation is for Kanzaki’s strange machine and improbable arrival in such a small, uninteresting town. Memory is a cruel burden, offering both joy and sorrow, but there can be no happiness without suffering and no life without a willingness to embrace them both the same.

Happiness was screened at the 17th Nippon Connection Film Festival.

Busan trailer (no subtitles)

Nippon Connection 2017 – Nippon Retro Preview

May 22, 2017by Hayley ScanlonLeave a comment

sada abe poster Each year the Nippon Connection film festival runs a retrospective programme alongside its collection of recent indie and mainstream hits. The subject for this year’s strand is Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno. Heading into the 1970s, Japanese cinema was in crisis mode as TV poached cinema audiences who largely stayed away from the successful genres of the 1960s including the previously popular youth, action, and yakuza movies which had been entertaining them for close to 20 years. Daiei, one of the larger studios known for glossy, big budget prestige fare alongside some lower budget genre offerings went bust in 1971, Shochiku kept up its steady stream of melodramas, but Nikkatsu found another solution. Taking inspiration from the “pink film” – a brand of soft core, mainstream pornography shown in specialised cinemas and made to exacting production standards, they created “Roman Porno” which made sex its selling point, but put big studio resources behind it, bringing in better actors and innovative directors to lend an air of legitimacy to its purely populist ethos.

Over 40 years later, Nikkatsu Roman Porno has been rebooted for the modern era and two of these more recent films – Kazuya Shiraishi’s Dawn of the Felines, and Akihito Shiota’s Wet Woman in the Wind will also be screening in the festival’s Nippon Cinema strand. The retrospective offers the opportunity to see some of the original 1970s offerings curated by pink film expert Jasper Sharp who will also be in attendance to present some of the films as well as a lecture on the history of Roman Porno and Japanese erotic cinema.

All the films on offer are directed by one of two directors each of whom is closely associated with the Roman Porno movement:

Tatsumi Kumashiro

Tatsumi Kumashiro’s career took a while to get going – in fact he made his feature debut at 41 with A Thirsty Life (AKA Front Row Life) – the story of a stripper and her daughter who also wants to strut her stuff on the stage. Sadly, although the film attained some critical success, it flopped at the box office. Kumashiro retreated into television before making a return to the cinema when Nikkatsu launched its Roman Porno line. In contrast with Tanaka, Kumashiro leant towards gritty realism and stylistic experimentation which brought him critical acclaim even from overseas, mainstream critics.

ecstacy black rose Ecstacy of the Black Rose is a more comedic effort than most of Kumashiro’s output and takes an ironic look at the genre as a put upon director gets fed up when his leading actress falls pregnant and becomes obsessed with finding a woman whose moans he overheard at the dentist’s.

FOLLOWING DESIRE still Following Desire received a Kinema Junpo award for best screenplay as well as the best actress prize for Hiroko Isayama who plays a stripper intent on taking down her rival for the top spot!

TAMANOI, STREET OF JOY (A.K.A. STREET OF JOY) still Kumashiro’s Tamanoi Street of Joy takes place on the last day of legal prostitution in 1958 and follows the girls as they mark the occasion in their own particular ways.

Further proving Kumashiro’s critical stature, Twisted Path of Love was among Kinema Junpo’s 1999 list of the greatest Japanese films of the 20th century. The story of a young man who returns to his hometown but attempts to shed his identity, burning a hole in the conventional village life through sex and violence, Twisted Path of Love also displays Kumashiro’s interesting use of common censorship techniques for artistic effect.

woman with red hair still Often regarded as Kumashiro’s masterpiece, The Woman with the Red Hair picked up a Kinema Junpo best actress award for Junko Miyashita, as well as ranking fourth in their annual best of the year list. The story centres on construction worker Kozo who, along with friend Takao, rapes his boss’ daughter who subsequently becomes pregnant. While she asks Takao to marry her, Kozo embarks on an affair with the mysterious red-haired woman.

world of the geisha - still Another of Kumashiro’s most well-regarded Roman Porno, The World of the Geisha takes place in a geisha house in 1918 and examines the various tensions which exist between the women themselves and their customers who have come to the house to escape external political concerns. The film again demonstrates Kumashiro’s tendency to ironic commentary as he tampers with intertitles to make a point about censorship.

Noboru Tanaka

Though Tanaka was often overshadowed by Kumashiro and another director, Chusei Sone, he is now regarded by some as the finest of Roman Porno filmmakers. Interestingly enough, Tanaka studied French literature at university but later developed in interest in poetry which eventually led him into filmmaking as a way of expressing his rich visual world. After working as a production assistant on Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, Tanaka applied to Nikkatsu and was accepted onto the directing track where he worked with such legendary figures as Seijun Suzuki and Shohei Imamura. Where Kumashiro’s films lean towards realism, Tanaka’s are often surreal and known for their poetic qualities and unusual use of colour.
NIGHT OF THE FELINES still Night of the Felines provides the inspiration for Kazuya Shirashi’s reboot Dawn of the Felines and follows the comical adventures of three prostitutes.

stroller in the attic still Stroller in the Attic is among the best known in the Roman Porno canon and adapts an Edogawa Rampo short story about a ’20s boarding house filled with eccentric guests.

Inspired by the same real life case as In the Realm of the Senses, Noburu Tanaka’s Sada and Kichi takes a more lurid look at the strange case of Abe Sada who strangled her lover after a brief affair and then cut off his genitals to wear as a kind of talisman.

You can get more information on all the films via Nippon Connection’s official website, but tickets for this strand are only available directly from the Deutsches Filmmuseum. Behind the Pink Curtain author and pink film/Roman Porno expert Jasper Sharp will also be giving a lecture on the genre on Friday 26th May at 3pm at Mousonturm Studio 1 (admission free!).

Nippon Connection 2017 takes place from May 23 – 28, 2017 in Frankfurt, Germany. You can find the full details for all the films, screening times and ticket links on the festival’s official website and you can also keep up with all the latest news via the Nippon Connection Facebook Page, Twitter account, Instagram channel and blog.

Nippon Connection 2017 – Nippon Animation Preview

May 18, 2017by Hayley ScanlonLeave a comment

silent-voice Nippon Connection aims to showcase all sides of Japanese cinema from the mainstream to arthouse and documentary and this, of course, includes animation.

silent voice still 1 A hit at festivals around the world, A Silent Voice is a poignant tale about guilt, redemption, and attitudes to disability.

in this corner of the world horizontal Mai Mai Miracle’s Sunao Katabuchi returns with the multi-awardwinning In This Corner of the World – a coming of age story set in Hiroshima before and after the atomic bomb.

There is also a selection of animated movies aimed at younger audiences which will be shown in their original languages but with both English subtitles and German live voice over.

ちえりとチェリー still Chieri and Cherry is a charming puppet animation in which Chieri, who has recently lost her father, develops an intense bond with her stuffed toy, Cherry. Travelling to her grandmother’s house for her father’s funeral, Chieri experiences a fantastic adventure which helps her to cope with grief and fear of the future.

rudolf the black cat still Rudolf the Black Cat stars titular black cat Rudolf from Gifu who ends up accidentally homeless in Tokyo!

Shorts

Poetic Landscapes – Recent Gems in Japanese Animation is a selection of some of the best in recent short animated films curated by Catherine Munroe Hotes.

TOKYO UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS- ANIMATION Tokyo University of the Arts: Animation – a selection of animated graduation films from Tokyo University of the Arts.

Nippon Connection Blog Up and Running for 2017 Festival

May 17, 2017May 17, 2017by Hayley ScanlonLeave a comment

emperor in August still Nippon Connection returns for 2017 in just under a week’s time and to whet your appetite for all the amazing films about to shown in Frankfurt from May 23 – 28, the festival has re-launched its very own blog. The best way to keep up with Nippon Connection 2017 as it happens, the blog will be updated throughout the festival with diary entries, reviews, essays, and interviews so it’s the next best thing to actually being there! The very first entry is dedicated to the recipient of the 2017 Nippon Honour Award, Koji Yakusho, whose The Emperor in August and Tampopo will both be screened during the festival.

Nippon Connection 2017 takes place in Frankfurt from May 23 – 28, 2017. Ahead of the opening on Tuesday, you can check out our previews of the Nippon Cinema and Nippon Visions strands as well as previews for the animation on offer and the Roman Porno retrospective (which includes a lecture with film scholar Jasper Sharp) arriving later in the week.

Be sure to follow the blog for all the latest during the event, and you can also keep up with the festival via the official website, Facebook page, and Twitter account.

2017 Festival trailer

Nippon Connection 2017 – Nippon Visions Preview

May 4, 2017by Hayley Scanlon1 Comment

THE TOKYO NIGHT SKY IS ALWAYS THE DENSEST SHADE OF BLUE still So, Nippon Cinema aimed to bring some of the best mainstream leaning hits to festival screens, but what does Nippon Visions have to offer? As the name implies, this strand is dedicated to indie, experimental, and innovative forward-looking filmmaking.

Nippon Visions

Nippon Visions is home to this year’s festival focus, documentaries, as well as a selection of art house and independent films. This section involves two awards – the Nippon Visions Jury Award which offers free subtitles courtesy of Japan Visualmedia Translation Academy (JVTA), and the Nippon Visions Audience Award which features a €1000 prize sponsored by Japanisches Kultur- und Sprachzentrum.

Documentaries

95_And_6_To_Go_Still4 Japanese-American director Kimi Takesue’s 95 and 6 to Go was filmed over six years during which she travelled to Hawaii following the death of her grandmother to learn more about the history of her family. Talking to her grandfather about his life and her own stalled film project, Takesue neatly weaves the personal and the universal for a meditation on life, love, loss and endurance.

Produced by Ian Thomas Ash (A2-B-C, -1287) Boys for Sale is the debut feature from Itako and focuses on the world of male prostitution in Tokyo’s Shinjuku 2-chome.

Come on Home to Sato is the debut feature from Yoshiki Shigee. Filmed over three years, the film follows the social workers and professionals involved with Kodomo no Sato – a safehaven for children of all ages and backgrounds in Osaka’s Nishinari district.

GUI AIUEO-S A STONE FROM ANOTHER MOUNTAIN TO POLISH YOUR OWN STONE still The intriguingly titled Gui Aiueo:S A Stone From Another Mountain To Polish Your Own Stone is a strange road movie/documentary/performance piece from Go Shibata featuring UFOs, hermits, and sustainable toilets.

doc shorts A selection of three short NHK documentaries :

The Phone of the Wind: Whispers to Lost Families – a documentary about a disconnected phone box used to call absent loved ones.

Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki

What You Taught Me About My Son – a documentary about The Reason I Jump author Naoki Higashida

LA TERRE ABANDONNÉE still Gilles Laurent’s La Terre Abandonée follows the residents of Tomioka who refused to obey the evacuation order after the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Kurosawa-Mifune-Venice Steven Okazaki’s Mifune: The Last Samurai is an attempt to chart the legendary actor’s career as it intersects with the history of samurai cinema.

Atsushi Funahashi’s Raise Your Arms and Twist! Documentary of NMB48 follows the aspiring idol stars as they go about their tightly controlled lives in one of the most controversial sectors of the Japanese entertainment industry.

Start Line charts deaf filmmaker Ayako Imamura’s bicycle journey through Japan.

Narrative

Masked wrestling provides a ray of hope for a directionless little boy in Kohei Taniguchi’s Dynamite Wolf. Sponsored by the Dotonbori Pro Wrestling League.

ERIKO, PRETENDED still Ayako Fujimura’s charming family drama Eriko, Pretended follows its aspiring actress protagonist as she travels home for the funeral of her older sister. Having pretended to be much more successful than she really was, Eriko makes the abrupt decision to stay behind in her hometown, look after her sister’s orphaned son and take over her job as a professional mourner.

going the distance still Boxing trainer Asahi plans to marry his long-term girlfriend Kaori and has found a job for his close childhood friend, Hiroto, to bring him to Tokyo. Everything seems fine but Hiroto has fallen victim to a scammer and needs Asahi’s help. His first instinct is to postpone the wedding and help his friend whom he regards as a “brother” as they grew up in the same orphanage but Kaori wants her elderly grandmother to come so it needs to be as soon as possible. Going the Distance is the debut feature from director Masahiro Umeda who is expected to attend the festival in person to present his film.

good:bye still Tamaki and Kaori just can’t say Good/Bye in Izumi Matsuno’s nuanced drama. Despite having “broken up” the pair continue to share their apartment, marking their individual territories with coloured tape but new romantic possibilities force them to re-examine their peculiar relationship.

innocent 15 still Hirokazu Kai’s hard-hitting coming of age drama Innocent 15 tells the story of an abused teenage girl and a boy just discovering that his widowed father is in love with another man but as bleak as things get there are always signs of hope. Review.

LOVE AND GOODBYE AND HAWAII still Another technically broken up but still living together drama, Shingo Matsumura’s Love and Goodbye and Hawaii presents its heroine Rinko with a problem when she realises her ex Isamu might have found someone else.

parks still Set in Inokashira Park, Natsuki Seta’s Parks stars Ai Hashimoto as a college student who teams up with Shota Sometani and Mei Nagano to recreate the missing portions of a mysterious love song.

POOLSIDEMAN still The latest film from Hirobumi Watanabe, Poolsideman won the Japanese Cinema Splash Award at the Tokyo International Film Festival 2016 and focuses on the dull and lonely life of a lifeguard whose existence changes when he’s sent to a different pool.

sower still Yusuke Takeuchi won the best director award at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival for The Sower. Dealing with guilt and atonement, this sombre film follows Mitsuo as he returns from three years in a mental institution and bonds with his two nieces only for his fragile happiness to be disrupted by unexpected tragedy.

472_scr_1 The latest film from Yuya Ishii, The Tokyo Night Sky Is Always the Densest Shade of Blue stars Shizuka Ishibashi and Sosuke Ikematsu in an exploration of youthful alienation.

yamato california still Daisuke Miyazaki’s Yamato California explores themes of cross cultural pollination through the story of teenager Sakura who lives near the biggest American military base in Japan and dreams of becoming a rapper. When she meets the Japanese-American daughter of her mother’s boyfriend, she finally finds an ally in an otherwise alienating place.

Shorts Programmes

Skip City Shorts includes four of the short films created for the Skip City International D-Cinema Festival in Saitama.

Vanish – Yusuke Hatai

Ping Pang – Yoichi Tanaka

Son of the Bakery – Shintaro Hihara

Lies – Yuji Mitsuhashi

Six young filmmakers show different sides of Tokyo in the TKY2015 Short Film Series.

Homerun – Shumpei Shimizu

Get My Hair Washed – Akira Ikeda

45 x 45 – Daisuke Shimote

The Light Dances – Hajime Izuki

After Hours – Tatsuo Kobayashi

An Interview on the Street in Ginza, Tokyo, Conducted on 27th December 2015. – Yusuke Shibata

NC17_Visions_TUOA Shorts_06 Two shorts made by students of the Graduate School for Film and New Media at Tokyo University of the Arts.

Icarus and the Son – Kohei Sanada

Snake Beneath the Flower Petals – Rina Takada

Nippon Connection takes place in Frankfurt, Germany from May 23 – 28, 2017. You can find the full details for all the films, screening times and ticket links on the festival’s official website and you can also keep up with all the latest news via the Nippon Connection Facebook Page, Twitter account, and Instagram channel.

Nippon Connection 2017 – Nippon Cinema Preview

May 2, 2017by Hayley Scanlon2 Comments

her love boils bathwater still Following the first previews around six weeks ago, the world’s biggest festival dedicated to Japanese cinema has now unveiled the full lineup for 2017! Taking place in Frankfurt from May 23 – 28, Nippon Connection is divided into six strands featuring everything from the latest blockbusters to retrospectives, animation, a children’s section and a selection of cultural events and lectures. There are around 100 films on offer and we’ll be previewing some of the strands separately over the next few days beginning with:

Nippon Cinema

The Nippon Cinema section aims to showcase some of the biggest mainstream cinema hits of recent times with a few old favourites thrown in to boot. The Nippon Cinema award, bestowed by the festival’s audience, includes a prize of €2000 sponsored by Bankhaus Metzler.

At the terrace テラスにて Kenji Yamauchi adapts his own play At the Terrace – a tense yet farcical comedy of manners in which the artifice of propriety is gradually stripped away from a collection of wealthy party guests. Check out our review for a more detailed description.

bangkok-nites Katsuya Tomita makes a welcome return following his critically acclaimed Saudade with a lengthy yet engrossing tale of love and the red light district as a Thai girl tries to make a life for herself in Bangkok’s Japan-centric hostess bars and brothels. Take a look at our review of Bangkok Nites from late last year for more information on this impressive, expansive film.

rip van winkle still Shunji Iwai is another director making a welcome return with the equally epic A Bride for Rip Van Winkle. This quietly melancholy tale of a drifting shy girl gently nudged into a more positive place through a series of seeming crises is another beautifully drawn character study from Iwai who has been absent from cinema screens for far too long. Check out our review here.

daguerrotype still Daguerreotype is something of a departure from the other films on offer as it’s entirely in French. Starring one of France’s best young actors in Tahar Rahim, the film also marks the first production mounted outside of Asia for veteran director Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Taking him back to his psychological horror roots, Daguerreotype is a creepy gothic ghost story inspired both by Edgar Allen Poe and his Japanese namesake, Edogawa Rampo.

dawn of the felines still Dawn of the Felines is one of the films created for Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno reboot project which is also being celebrated with a Roman Porno retrospective (more on this later on). Directed by Devil’s Path director Kazuya Shiraishi, this melancholy tale of three girls working in Tokyo’s red light district takes its name from Noboru Tanaka’s classic pink film Night of the Felines.

death note light up the new world still Directed by one of Japan’s foremost blockbuster helmers Shinsuke Sato (whose I am a Hero is also screening in the festival) Death Note: Light up The New World is the latest in a series of films inspired by Tsugumi Ohba’s manga in which a death god drops his precious ledger which has the power to kill anyone whose name is written inside it. Starring some of Japan’s best young actors in Masahiro Higashide, Sosuke Ikematsu, and Masaki Suda this latest installment promises exciting thrills with a philosophical edge.

Destruction-Babies If Death Note wasn’t nihilistic enough for you, the festival will also feature Tetsuya Mariko’s Destruction Babies. This hard-hitting tale of violent youth and hopeless futures again stars some of Japan’s best younger actors in Yuya Yagira, Masaki Suda, Nana Komatsu and Sosuke Ikematsu. Director Tetsuya Mariko is also expected to attend the festival in person to present the film. Review.

emperor in August still Moving back in time a little, 2015’s The Emperor in August is Masato Harada’s attempt to chronicle the last days of the war as Japan reconciles itself to surrender and considers the best way to do it. The film stars veteran actor Koji Yakusho who will also be receiving the festival’s Nippon Honour Award in celebration of his long and successful career.

gukouroku still The debut film from Kei Ishikawa, Gukoroku: Traces of Sin stars Satoshi Tsumabuki as an ambitious reporter trying to find the truth behind the brutal, unsolved murder of an ordinary Tokyo family.

happiness still In the first of two films presented at the festival, SABU goes on an existential journey in Happiness as a mysterious man appears in town with a strange helmet which allows the wearer to re-experience the happiest moment of their lives. Stars veteran actor Masatoshi Nagase.

harmonium still Koji Fukada returns to the themes of family and disruptive interlopers but skews darker than ever before in Harmonium. Tadanobu Asano stars as the home invader recently released from prison and taking refuge with “an old friend” but there’s something decidedly strange about his relationship with the father of the family and generally ominous presence. You can check our review of the film from late last year here.

her love boils bathwater still 2 Her Love Boils Bathwater officially opens the festival and stars Rie Miyazawa as a single mother diagnosed with a terminal illness who is determined to bring her disparate family back together and save the family bathhouse in the process. Rie Miyazawa picked up the best actress award at this year’s Japan Academy Prize ceremony for her role in film which is far funnier than its synopsis sounds.

I am a hero still From one hero to another, the second movie helmed by director Shinsuke Sato to feature in the festival stars comedian Yo Oizumi as a mildmannered, unsuccessful mangaka who finds hidden reserves inside himself when faced with the zombie apocalypse. I am a Hero is adapted from the manga by Kengo Hanazawa and you can check out our review of the film here.

LET_S GO, JETS! still From one plucky underdog to another – Let’s Go Jets! From Small Town Girls to U.S. Champions?! stars a team of aspiring Japanese cheerleaders who want to strut their stuff all the way to the top spot in the US championships.

the long excuse still Miwa Nishikawa returns with The Long Excuse – an adaptation of her own novel starring Masahiro Motoki as a self centered author and minor celebrity who is unmoved when his wife dies in a bus accident but finds his humanity reawakening after bonding with the bereaved children of the best friend who died beside her.

Mr Long still SABU’s second film in the festival, Mr. Long, sees a hardened Taiwanese hitman taken in by a kindly little boy and his family after a job goes badly wrong.

my uncle still Nobuhiro Yamashita is another director with not one but two films making it into the festival this year. The first of them, My Uncle, is a hilarious tale of an exasperated nephew’s eventual bonding with his father’s younger brother – a part time professor of philosophy who has an answer for everything but spends most of his time lying on his futon “thinking” or “resting his brain” by reading children’s manga. Check out our review here.

over the fence still Yamashita’s second entry, Over the Fence, is a slightly less cheerful affair. Joe Odagiri stars as a recently divorced man returing to his hometown of Hakodate who eventually learns to open himself up to new possibilities through an intense relationship with zookeeper/hostess Yu Aoi whose emotional volatility neatly counters his internal numbness. Review here.

projects still Rumour and speculation dominate a housing estate when one half of a recently arrived older couple abruptly disappears. Moonlight flit? Murder? Divorce, affairs, scandal? The truth is stranger than fiction in Junji Sakamoto’s absurd comedy The Projects.

satoshi still Satoshi: A Move for Tomorrow is the true life story of tragic shogi player Satoshi Murayama who first developed a love of the game during a childhood illness and subsequently devoted his entire life to its mastery despite his declining health. Review.

shin godzilla still Godzilla is back and bigger than ever! Directed by Evangelion’s Hideaki Anno along with live action Attack on Titan director Shinji Higuchi Shin Godzilla (Godzilla Resurgence) is equal parts classic monster movie and biting political satire.

Survival family landscaep Godzilla’s not the only existential threat posed to Japanese society as one ordinary family find out in Shinobu Yaguchi’s black out drama. Survival Family begins with the unthinkable as a simple power outage lasts for days with no official explanation. After waiting patiently for the problem to be resolved, the Suzuki family decide to escape the city to find Mrs. Suzuki’s survivalist father in the hope that he will know how to cope with the post-electric world. Review.

tampopo still Now for something completely different – Juzo Itami’s noodle western Tampopo will also screen as a Nippon Film Dinner during which bento boxes filled with delicious Japanese treats will be served.

tony takitani still After dinner comes breakfast! This one is screening with German subtitles only but if you can understand German or Japanese or don’t mind not understanding anything at all you can enjoy a delicious breakfast buffet whilst taking in Jun Ichikawa’s adaptation of the Haruki Murakami short story Tony Takitani in which a lonely man meets and falls in love with a beautiful woman only for her obsession with shopping to come between them.

wet woman in the wind still Finally, Akihiko Shiota’s Wet Woman in the Wind is the second of the Roman Porno Reboot movies to be featured in the festival and follows the adventures of a playwright with writer’s block who tries to retreat to the country for some peace, quiet, and time to reflect. Then he hooks up with a nymphomaniac waitress instead!

That’s all for Nippon Cinema – join us again next time for a look at Nippon Visions, a strand dedicated to bold new innovations and special formats. You can find the full details for all the films, screening times and ticket links on the festival’s official website and you can also keep up with all the latest news via the Nippon Connection Facebook Page, Twitter account, and Instagram channel.

Nippon Connection 2017 to Showcase Japanese Documentary

April 17, 2017July 21, 2019by Hayley Scanlon1 Comment

Mifune_Last_Samurai Nippon Connection is the largest festival dedicated to Japanese Cinema anywhere in the world and returns in 2017 for its 17th edition. Once again taking place in Frankfurt, the festival will screen over 100 films from May 23 – 28, many of which will also welcome members of the creative team eager to present to their work to an appreciative audience.

This year’s festival has a special focus on documentary film – an area often neglected by other mainstream film festivals. Leaving heavier topics to one side, documentaries already announced to headline the strand include Atsushi Funahashi’s idol documentary Raise Your Arms and Twist – Documentary of NMB48 (道頓堀よ、泣かせてくれ! DOCUMENTARY of NMB48, Doutonbori yo, Nakasetekure! Documentary of NMB48)

raise your arms and twist Director Atsushi Funahashi has hitherto been known for hard hitting fare such as the Fukushima documentary Nuclear Nation as well as narrative films including the heartrending Cold Bloom and cross cultural odyssey Big River. Consequently he steps into the slowly growing genre of idol documentaries from the refreshing position of a total novice. Adopting an objective viewpoint, Funahashi rigourously dissects this complicated phenomenon whilst taking care never to misrepresent the girls, their dreams, or their devoted fanbase.

Trailer (no subtitles)

Returning to the internationalist leanings of Funahashi’s Big River, Kimi Takesue’s 95 and 6 to Go sees the director begin a collaborative project with her widowed grandfather – a Japanese immigrant to Hawaii.

95_And_6_To_Go_Still4 Shot over six years, 95 and 6 to Go begins with a stalled fim project and some unexpected grandfatherly advice but eventually develops into a moving meditation on life, love, loss, and endurance.

Trailer:

In a neatly circular motion the last of the three highlights of the documentary section takes a look at one of the giants of Japanese cinema – Toshiro Mifune.

Kurosawa-Mifune-Venice Previously screened at the BFI London Film Festival, Steven Okazaki’s documentary Mifune: The Last Samurai focuses firmly on Mifune’s place within the history of samurai cinema through exploring not only his life but also the early history of “chanbara” movies and the genre’s later echoes in American cinema as related by talking heads including Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese.

Of course there will also be a host of narrative features on offer with frequent Nippon Connection favourite Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Daguerrotype (Le Secret de la chambre noire) a definite highlight.

Le-Secret-de-la-chambre-noire-affiche-filmosphere-790x1071 Back in 2012, Kiyoshi Kurosawa planned his first international movie, 1905, which would have featured 90% Chinese dialogue and was set to shoot in Taiwan with stars Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Shota Matsuda and Atsuko Maeda. Sadly, political concerns of the day put paid to 1905, and so Daguerrotype marks Kurosawa’s first foray into non-Japanese language cinema. Starring one of France’s most interesting young actors in Tahar Rahim, this French language gothic ghost story takes the director back to his eerie days of psychological horror.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Returning to modern day Japan, Capturing Dad director Ryota Nakano’s second movie Her Love Boils Bathwater (湯を沸かすほどの熱い愛, Yu o Wakasu Hodo no Atsui Ai) is another suitably offbeat family drama.

Pale Moon‘s Rie Miyazawa stars as a warmhearted woman who discovers she only has a short time left to live and is determined to get her estranged family back together whilst saving the family bathhouse. Rie Miyazawa won the Japan Academy Prize best actress award for her role in Her Love Boils Bathwater, with supporting actress Hana Sugisaki also taking home a prize at the 2017 awards.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Family drama is, after all, Japan’s representative genre and is featured once again with Miwa Nishikawa’s adaptation of her own novel, The Long Excuse (永い言い訳, Nagai Iiwake).

long excuse poster Masahiro Motoki makes a welcome return to leading man status as a self-centered B-list celebrity and former author who finds himself largely unmoved after his wife is killed in an accident but later bonds with the bereaved children of her best friend who died alongside her.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

When talking of family drama, one most often thinks of Ozu and of the gentle passing of time as the old are left alone to contemplate the vagaries of life and young ones make a start on their own. Koji Fukada’s Harmonium (淵に立つ, Fuchi ni Tatsu) is not Ozu, it’s not the wry eye of Yoshimitsu Morita in The Family Game, or of Sogo Ishii in the Crazy Family, it’s a harsh and unforgiving look the status of the modern family unit.

harmonium You can check out our review of this one from the London East Asia Film Festival and it’s also scheduled for a UK release courtesy of Eureka Entertainment in June 2017 following a cinema run from 5th May.

Eureka trailer (English subtitles)

It would be a stretch to describe Tetsuya Mariko’s Destruction Babies (ディストラクション・ベイビーズ) as a family drama but in a way it sort of is in its dissection of the relationship between two orphaned brothers.

destruction-babies Beyond nihilism, Destruction Babies paints a bleak prognosis for the youth of Japan who live without hope, disconnected from reality, and know only the sensation of violence. You can check out our review of the film here from its screening in the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme, and it’s also currently available in the UK courtesy of distributor Third Window Films.

Original trailer (English Subtitles)

Concluding the list of newer mainstream releases is the first in the festival’s anime strand – Naoko Yamada’s A Silent Voice (聲の形, Koe no Katachi).

silent-voice Distributed in the UK by Anime Limited, this alternately heartrending and heartwarming drama examines the effects of social stigma, disibility, and the legacy of cruelty as its perfectly matched central pair confront the ghosts of their respective pasts and futures. You can check out our review from the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme over here (mild spoilers for the concluding half of the film).

International trailer (dialogue free, English captions)

Revisiting the past in an altogether different sort of way, Nippon Connection will also play host to two films from Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno Reboot Project. Roman Porno was a fairly short lived offshoot of the “pink” genre, essentially softcore pornography intended to bring the dwindling cinema audiences back through the promise of sex and (sometimes) violence. In celebration of the 45th anniversary of the Roman Porno line, Nikkatsu have brought it back as a special tribute with five directors hired to film their take on the classic genre – Sion Sono, Hideo Nakata, Akihiko Shiota, Kazuya Shiraishi and Isao Yukisada.

The first of two featured in the festival is Kazuya Shiraishi’s Dawn of the Felines (牝猫たち, Mesuneko Tachi) . From the director of Twisted Justice and Devil’s Path, Dawn of the Felines follows the adventures of three prostitutes in Tokyo’s red light district.

Trailer (English subtitles, NSFW)

Akihiko Shiota directed one of the best (and criminally underseen) films of the 2000s in 2005’s Canary and his instalment in the Reboot series, Wet Woman in the Wind (風に濡れた女, Kaze ni Nureta Onna), proved an unexpected festival hit receiving high praise from critics at Locarno.

wet woman in the wind Shiota’s film follows a former playwright who tries to get out of town for some peace and quiet but runs into a nymphomaniac waitress instead. Oh well, a change is as good as a rest?

Original trailer (English subtitles, NSFW!)

The full programme is announced on 29th April when tickets are also expected to go on sale via the official Nippon Connection website. You can also keep up with the festival via their Facebook Page, Twitter account, and Instagram.