The Portrait Studio (寫眞館, 2013)

It is rare that an animated film moves me to tears, but Takashi Nakamura’s tender depiction of the passage of time during one of Japan’s most turbulent eras in The Portrait Studio (寫眞館 / Shashinkan, 2013) truly left me reaching for a handful of tissues.  This 18-minute short tells two stories: one of the relationship between a photographer and one of his subjects and, intertwined with it, a visual tale of the modernization of Japan. 

It begins amongst the lush greenness of Meiji Japan (the late 19^th century), when photography was in its infancy.  A rickshaw brings a newly married couple across a spring meadow to the foot of a hill.  The man is dressed in a military uniform and the woman in an elegant European-style gown with a large hat.   They ascend a stone staircase to a lovely European-style wooden house that is home to the Hinomaru Portrait Studio.  The woman sits for her portrait but is too shy to raise her face to the camera, so the friendly photographer picks a bouquet of flowers for her.  His intuition proves correct, for the woman raises her head smiling and the photographer successfully catches the woman’s smile on film.

Thus begins the relationship between the photographer and this family.  Time passes, and the woman brings her infant daughter for a photograph.  The woman has lost her shyness in front of the camera but the baby startles the photographer with the angry expression on her face.  The photographer does his best to cajole the baby girl into smiling but it is all in vain.  As the baby grows up into girlhood and then womanhood, she comes back again and again for portraits of herself, her students, and her son, but she never smiles.  Despite this, a bond grows between subject and photographer and Nakamura creates suspense in us as spectators as we watch with growing anticipation to see if the woman will finally relent and smile for the camera.   

It is a moving tale that explores how photographs in the modern era have become such an important part of how we remember both our personal and collective histories.  I was reminded of something the renowned American photojournalist Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) – who lived during the same period and is famous for her photographs of the Depression and of the WWII Japanese relocation centres – once said: “Photography takes an instant out of time, altering it by holding it still.”

Photographs are reminders of happy times that have passed, and the bonds of friendship between the photographer and his subjects – the central character in this film is really a symbol of the whole community – remain steadfast in the face of a rapidly changing landscape.  Shot in glorious widescreen (21:9), Nakamura – who wrote, directed, and did the key animation for this labour of love – depicts the dramatic changes that happened in Tokyo and environs during this period from the Edo times through the devastation of the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923, the rise of nationalism in Japan, the second devastation of Tokyo due to American bombing, and into the modern trains and buildings of the immediate post-war era.  The film has no dialogue, with additional aural context provided by special effects (incidental noise) the lovely classical piano score composed by Jun Ichikawa.  This animated short is a visual delight with each frame a piece of art in its own right. 

CREW

Direction, Story, Key Animation:

Takashi Nakamura

Art Director:

Shinji Kimura

Animation Check:

Mitsunori Murata

Colour Designer:

Terumi Nakauchi

Director of Photography:

Mitsuhiro Satō

CGI Director:

Daisuke Oyabu

Music:

Jun Ichikawa

Sound Director, Sound Producer:

Yoshikazu Iwanami

Sound Effects:

Yasumasa Koyama

Sound Mixer:

Takayuki Yamaguchi

Production Company:

Studio Colorido

Takashi Nakamura (中村たかし, b. 1955) is a seasoned Japanese animator and director from Yamaguchi.  He began his career in animation as an inbetweener in 1974, and his debut work as an animation director on Golden Warrior Gold Lightan (黄金戦士ゴールド・ライタ, 1981-2) was influential to many of his peers including Kōji Morimoto.  More recently, his anime feature A Tree of Palme (パルムの樹, 2002) made the official selection at the Berlinale.  Nakamura is a founding member of the Japan Animation Creators Association (JAniCA) labour group. 

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014

I saw this film at Nippon Connection 2014 #nc14

Antonym (螺旋銀河, 2014)

On Sunday night, Natsuka Kusano won the Nippon Visions Jury Award at Nippon Connection 2014 for her debut feature Antonym (螺旋銀河/Rasen Ginga, 2014).  This is high praise indeed for the international jury consisted of Alex Zahlten, assistant professor at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard, Alex Oost, director of the Camera Japan Festival (October 1-5 in Rotterdam, 10-12 in Amsterdam),  and Japan Times film critic Mark Schilling. 

antonym/アントニム (noun): word that means the opposite of another word

People often say that opposites attract, and this seems to be the case for Sachiko Fukada (Asami Shibuya/twitter), an office worker who becomes transfixed by a beautiful fellow employee, Aya Sawai (Yuri Ishizaka), who she encounters in a staff washroom.  The two women appear to be the complete opposites of one another.  Shy Sachiko is plain and unadorned.  Even when not wearing her dull office uniform, she dresses in nondescript clothing.  In contrast, Aya wears a bright red jacket and takes a great deal of care with her appearance, touching up her make-up in the washroom mirror and wearing her hair long.  She exudes the kind of haughtiness one associates with the cliquey “cool” girls in high school.

However, appearance can be deceiving.  While Aya may appear confident in herself, she is actually masking a lot of insecurities.  Her night class writing teacher calls her out on it when he selects her radio drama “antonym” to be produced for air.  Rather than complimenting her on her writing, he tells her that the script is terrible and accuses her of seeing the world with blinkers on: “You think the world is yours, don’t you?  You only think of yourself.  No others exist.”  He wants to pair her up with a co-writer to teach her a lesson, but she digs in her heels at the thought of losing complete control over her work.  She lies and says she has a manga-ka friend who can help her, and her teacher calls her bluff, insisting she bring this friend to their next chat. 

Desperate to have her radio drama produced, Aya decides to use her new acquaitance, Sachiko, to deceive her writing teacher.  She asks Sachiko to pretend to be her manga-ka friend, thinking that she can manipulate the situation, but Sachiko is not as meek and simple as she outwardly seems.  The conflicting options and behaviour of the two women concerning the script and their relationship to one another triggers the façades they both hide behind to crumble, revealing that they may have more in common than they realize.

First time feature filmmaker Natsuka Kusano, has constructed a carefully considered narrative that puts a magnifying glass on relationships between women. Although the film is set in Osaka, thanks to a grant by the Cineastes Osaka Project CO2 (see: OAFF2014), it really could be set in any urban environment.  The film captures the loneliness of modern life against the cold lights of the city.  Most poignant is the scene in which Sachiko sits alone in the coin laundry staring at the washing machine as it cleans the shirt lent to her by Aya.  It’s a cool reminder that many of us spend more time conversing with machines than we do with other human beings. 

The climax of the film is very unusual in its stillness.  We witness Aya and Sachiko performing the radio drama in the studio.  In this minimalist environment we are obliged to concentrate on the words the women are saying and the feeling they instil in their words: “I want to be the same like you.  Even the faults, scars, pains, madness.  If there is a big hole on your body, I want to make the same [-sized] hole on the same place [on] my body.”  It is an inward looking film that delves deep into the conflicting emotions of envy, love, desire, ambition, and self-loathing that many people are confronted with daily. 

Natsuka Kusano (草野なつか, b. 1985) is from Yamato, Kanagawa Prefecture.  During her Creative Writing studies at Tokai University, Kusano took a class by film critic Sadao Yamane which kindled her interest in film.  Upon graduation, she studied filmmaking at the Film School of Tokyo, and participated in some independent films as production manager and other positions.  Antonym is her first feature film and was made possible by a grant by the Cineastes Osaka Project CO2 (see: OAFF2014).  Kusano is currently based in Tokyo.

CAST

Yuri Ishizaka

Asami Shibuya

Tetsu Onji

Seitaro Ishibashi

Kuniaki Nakamura

CREW

Director: Natsuka Kusano

Screenplay: Tomoyuki Takahashi, Natsuka Kusano

Cinematographer: Yoshihiro Okayama

Sound: Mikisuke Shimadzu

Music: Hiroshi Ueno

2014 Catherine Munroe Hotes

The Blooms (2013)

“Deep down in the forest there lived flower fairies in flower gardens, waking up with the sunrise, eating sweets, and chatting with each other.  One day they had a visit from him and then.  .  .”

– Geidai 2013 DVD description

“A richly coloured, horticultural emporium of all-sizes, an operatic break-out, a techno-hued extravaganza.”

- MIAF 2013 catalogue description.

There is a lot of pressure on Japanese women to keep a slender figure, so it is delightful to find a young filmmaker who has made a film that celebrates the Rubenesque form.  For her graduate film for Geidai (Tokyo University of the Arts), Ayasa Kugenuma collaborated with students from the Geidai music department to create The Blooms (2013).

Over the quiet stillness of a watercolour garden scene, a female operatic voices tells us that these deep red blossoms can be found in a tranquil garden in the deep forest.  Morning has broken, and the flowers open to reveal the chubby ladies who inhabit them.  The buxom forest fairies are dressed in negligee, some wearing heart-shaped sunglasses.  Some of the other blossoms are laden with objects of decadence: cakes, fruit and berries, jewellery, and wrapped presents. 

After a morning of indulgence a fat caterpillar appears, singing in his bass voice “Hello Honey!”  The women embrace the caterpillar and compete with each other for his affection.  When he leaves, they cry and mourn his departure.  The next day, the women bloom again in a spectacular way, bared their breasts to the warm sunlight accompanied by jazzy music.  It is a sensual declaration that they will enjoy their short lives as indulgently as possible.  It is a colourful tribute to the beauty of the natural world and to voluptuous femininity. 

The music was composed by Kayoko Naoe with sound design by Fumiya Iwanaga.  The music was performed by Saki Nakae and Maki Takimoto (sopranos), Shiho Ogawa (mezzosoprano), Miyako Honda (alto), and Takaki Kurihara (bass), with orchestral accompaniment from Honoka Maki (flute), Nami Sugai (alto sax), Yu Ishimoto (trumpet), Ayaka Suzuki (trumpet, piccolo trumpet), Yurie Shirai (trombone), Tatsuro Kano (bass), Shota Kowashi (drums), Atoko Noda (violin), and Makoto Fukumoto (cello).

Ayasa Kugenuma (久下沼朱紗, b. 1987) was born in Tokyo.  She did her BA in Graphic Design at Tama Art University (2011) and her MA in Animation at Geidai (2013).  In addition to animation, Kugenuma does freelance animation.  Check out her illustrations and other work on her official website or on her tumblr.  The Blooms won best student film at FICAM 2014 and is continuing to screen at international festivals throughout this year. 

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014