3.11 Sense of Home

Naomi Kawase was born in 1969, at a time when Japanese cinema was thriving with vigorous underground filmmaking, the initial streak in Kawase’s own young career. While studying photography at the Osaka School of Visual Arts, she started to make films as part of a workshop: “I focus on that which interests me” (1988), a personal symphony of the city, “The concretization of these things flying around me” (1989), a silent study of the homeless, "Presently (1989), a poetic piece visualising the 4 elements (water, air, fire and earth). After graduating in 1989, she taught for 4 years.

In 1992, she made Embracing, a medium length 16mm feature in which she sets up to find her biological father (Naomi was brought up by her grandparents after her parents’ marriage broke up). In 1993, she cast her documentary eye on a striking boy-meets-girl fiction in White Moon. She dedicated her following film Katatsumori (94) to her grandmother. This film and the next one, See Heaven (95), won prizes at the Yamagata International Film Festival. International recognition increased powerfully in 1997 with the Camera d’Or at Cannes and the FIPRESCI Prize at Rotterdam for her first fiction feature, Moe no Suzaku, a tragic family history set against the backdrop of economic recession, shot in her hometown, the provincial city of Nara, a region often featured in her films. The Weald, an intimate depiction of old age, was awarded with a special mention at Visions du Réel in 1999. Mangekyo (1999), her latest documentary about her conflicting working relationship with photographer Shinya Arimoto, was screened at Rotterdam and Visions du Réel. Hotaru, shot again in Nara, is her second fiction feature.

Her producer, Sento Takenori to whom she was married for 2 years, is also the producer of the generation of talented young directors now emerging on the international scene, such as Aoyama Shinji, Hirokazu Koreeda and Nobuhiro Suwa. —Rotterdam Film Festival

Spanish director Victor Erice made two of his country’s most important and critically lauded films, El Espiritu de la Colmena (The Spirit of the Beehive) (1973) and Sur (The South) (1983). Erice had studied political science before entering the Instituto de Investigaciones y Experiencias Cinematográficas in 1960. Shortly after graduation in 1963, he worked as a film critic and worked on the script for Antonio Eceiza’s El Proximo Otoño (Next Autumn) (1963). He also collaborated on Miguel Picazo’s Oscuros Sueños de Agosto (Dark Dreams of August) (1967). Influential producer Elías Querejeta provided Erice his first opportunity to direct by assigning him a chance to helm one of three episodes in Los Desafios (The Challenges) (1969). Following his success with El Sur, Erice became a prolific director of television commercials and worked uncredited on numerous other feature films. In 1992, Erice reemerged on the film scene with his dream-like documentary of painter Antonio Lopez’s quest for perfection, El Sol del Membrillo (The Quince Tree Sun or The Dream of Light).

(From http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=2:89074)

Early Work

While a student at the Beijing Film Academy, Jia would make three short films to hone his skills. The first, a ten minute short documentary on tourists in Tiananmen Square entitled One Day in Beijing, was made in 1994 on self-raised funds. Though Jia has referred to his first directorial effort as inconsequential and “naive”, he also described the short day and half shoot as “excitement…difficult to express in words.” But it was Jia’s second directorial effort, the short film Xiao Shan Going Home (1995), that would bring him to the attention of the film world. It was a film that helped establish Jia’s style and thematic interests and, in Jia’s words, was a film that “truly marks the beginning of my career as a filmmaker.” Xiao Shan would eventually to screen abroad where it won a top prize at the 1997 Hong Kong Independent Short Film & Video Awards. More significantly, the film’s success brought Jia in contact with cinematographer Yu Lik-wai and producer Li Kit Ming, two men who along with producer/editor Chow Keung would come to form Jia Zhangke’s “core…creative team.” With their support, Jia was able to begin work on Xiao Wu, which would become his first feature film. Before graduating, however, Jia would make one more short film, Du Du (1996), a film about a female college student faced with several life-changing decisions. The film, little seen and rarely available, was for Jia an exercise of experimentation and technique, as it was filmed without a script. For Jia, the film was an important learning experience, even if he was “not terribly proud” of the end result.

Underground Success

Upon graduation, Jia embarked on his first feature length film, with producer Li Kit Ming and cinematographer Yu Lik-wai. Xiao Wu, a film about a pickpocket in Jia’s native Fenyang, emerged out of Jia’s desire to capture the massive changes that had happened to his home in the past few years. Additionally, the film was a rejection of what Jia felt was the fifth generation’s increasing tendency to move away from the reality of modern China and into the realm of historical legend. Shot on a mere 400,000 RMB budget (or about $50,000 US), Xiao Wu would prove to be a major success on the international film circuit, bringing Jia a deal with Takeshi Kitano’s production house.

Jia capitalized on his success with Xiao Wu with a two internationally acclaimed independent features. 2000’s Platform, a three hour epic about a provincial dance and music troupe transitioning from the 1970s to the early 1990s. The film has been called the masterpiece of the entire sixth generation movement. Starring Wang Hongwei, Jia’s classmate and star of Xiao Shan Going Home and Xiao Wu, Platform was also the first of Jia’s films to star actress Zhao Tao, a former dance teacher. Zhao would go on to serve as Jia Zhangke’s muse as the lead female role in Unknown Pleasures, The World, and Still Life, as well as acting in 24 City and the short film Cry Me a River (both in 2008).

With 2002’s Unknown Pleasures, Jia began a foray into filming in digital video (although his first experimentation with the medium came a year before, in 2001’s short documentary In Public). Xiao Wu, Platform and Unknown Pleasures are sometimes seen collectively as a informal trilogy of China’s transition into modernity. Unknown Pleasures, a meditation on the aimless “birth control” generation to emerge out of the one-child policy helped cement Jia’s reputation as a major voice in contemporary Chinese cinema. All this despite limited theatrical runs and obscurity in mainland China. Indeed, none of the three films were ever publicly released in the PRC, although pirated DVD sales were brisk, a fact commented on by Jia near the end of Unknown Pleasures when Xiao Wu (Wang Hongwei again) attempts to buy the DVD of Xiao Wu, the film.

Legitimization

In 2004, Jia Zhangke’s The World became Jia’s first film made with official approval by the Chinese government. It was also nominated for a Golden Lion at the 2004 Venice Film Festival, though it failed to win. This foreshadowed his winning the 2006 Golden Lion award for his film, Still Life.

In 2007, Jia released a second documentary (after 2006’s Dong), entitled Useless.

In 2008, Jia released 24 City, an ambitious work that chronicles the lives of several generation of women. At the London Film Festival, 24 City was accompanied by the short, Cry Me a River, a romance starring Summer Palace actors Hao Lei and Guo Xiaodong, and Jia regular Zhao Tao.

(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jia_Zhangke)

Apichatpong “Joe” Weerasethakul (Thai: อภิชาติพงศ์ วีระเศรษฐกุล; born July 16, 1970) is a Thai independent film director, screenwriter, and film producer. His feature films include Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, winner of the prestigious 2010 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or prize; Tropical Malady, which won a jury prize at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival; Blissfully Yours, which won the top prize in the Un Certain Regard program at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival; and Syndromes and a Century, which premiered at the 63rd Venice Film Festival and was the first Thai film to be entered in competition there.

Working outside the strict confines of the Thai film studio system, Weerasethakul has directed several features and dozens of short films. Themes reflected in his films (frequently discussed in interviews) include dreams, nature, sexuality (including his own homosexuality), and Western perceptions of Thailand and Asia, and his films display a preference for unconventional narrative structures (like placing titles/credits at the middle of a film) and for working with non-actors. Cinephiles affectionately refer to him as “Joe” (a nickname that he, like many with similarly long Thai names, has adopted out of convenience). –Wikipedia

Director and writer, So Yong Kim was born in Pusan, South Korea and immigrated to the US when she was twelve. She studied painting, performance, and video art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she earned her MFA. She has made several experimental short films including A Bunny Rabbit, shot by renowned cinematographer Christopher Doyle. Kim also produced Bradley Rust Gray’s award-winning Icelandic feature, SALT, in 2003. In 2006, Kim was featured as one of the “25 Filmmakers to Watch” in Filmmaker Magazine.

Kim’s first feature, In Between Days, was acclaimed by critics and won the Special Jury Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival along with the International Critics’ Prize at Berlin. It was also awarded an LA Critics Prize and Best Film and Best Actress Prizes at Buenos Aires. Kino International and the Sundance Channel released the film in North America, and With Cinema released the film in Korea.

Treeless Mountain is So Yong Kim’s second feature film. The script received support from the Cannes L’Atelier Program, the Sundance Institute’s Writers and Directors Labs, and the Pusan Promotional Program. —spiritawards.com

Jonas Mekas was born in 1922 in Semeniskiai, Lithuania. He currently lives and works in New York. In 1944, Jonas Mekas and his brother, Adolfas, were taken by the Nazis and imprisoned in a forced labor camp in Nazi Germany for eight months. After the War, he studied philosophy at the University of Mainz from 1946-48 and at the end of 1949, he emigrated with his brother to the U.S. settling in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in New York. Two weeks after his arrival, he borrowed the money to buy his first Bolex 16-mm camera and began to record moments of his life. He discovered avant-garde film at venues such as Amos Vogel’s pioneering cinema 16, and he began screening his own films in 1953. He has been one of the leading figures of American avant-garde filmmaking or the “New American Cinema,” as he dubbed it in the late ‘50s, playing various roles: in 1954, he became editor and chief of Film Culture; in 1958 he began writing his “Movie Journal” column for the Village Voice; in 1962 he co-founded the Film- Makers’ Cooperative (FMC) and the Filmmakers’ Cinematheque in 1964, which eventually grew into Anthology Film Archives, one of the world’s largest and most important repositories of avant-garde films. His own output ranging from narrative films (Guns of the Trees, 1961) to documentaries (the Brig, 1963) and to “diaries” such as Walden (1969); Lost, Lost, Lost, (1975); Reminiscences of a Voyage to Lithuania, (1972); Zefiro torna, (1992) and As I was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2001) have been screened extensively at festivals and museums around the world. Recently, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the American Museum of the Moving Image screened Letters from Greenpoint and the Mead Gallery at the University of Warwick, England, Monash University Museum of Art, and Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, Australia, held exhibitions for Mekas this past fall. In May 2006, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. held a lecture entitled “meet the artist” and screened Reminisces of a Journey to Lithuania. The Directors Guild of America awarded Anthology Film Archives a DGA Honors recognizing the center’s dedication to preserving the art of cinema. In its annual selection of 25 films, Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania was esteemed by the United States National Film Preservation Board to be selected for preservation at the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry. His films were also screened at Art Basel Miami and Mekas was honored at the Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s award ceremony for his significant contribution to American film culture. Most recently, the Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center was established in Vilnius, Lithuania and exhibitions will focus on art and film collections by Mekas and his friend and artistic collaborator George Maciunas, founder of the Fluxus art movement. Opening in late 2007, the Center will house an extensive avant-garde film archive and library and has plans to build a Fluxus Research Institute. –jonasmekas.com

Kazuhiro Soda (想田 和弘 Sōda?, born 1970 in Tochigi Prefecture) is a Japanese documentary filmmaker based in New York, USA. He has lived in New York since 1993. He is known for his observational style and method of documentary film-making.

In 2005, Kazuhiro Soda shot Campaign (Senkyo) (2007, 120 minutes), depicting a political campaign in Kawasaki, Japan, by Kazuhiko Yamauchi, an inexperienced candidate officially endorsed by the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party. When completed, it was invited to the forum section of Berlin International Film Festival in 2007. PBS broadcast a 52-minute version, which won the Peabody Award in 2008. The TV version was broadcast under a different title, Campaign! The Kawasaki Candidate as part of the Why Democracy? series, a global media event co-produced by 33 broadcasters around the world, including the BBC, CBC, and NHK. The 120-minute theatrical version won the Best Documentary Award at the Belgrade International Documentary Film Festival in 2008.

From 2005 to 2007, Soda shot Mental (Seishin) (2008, 135 minutes), which focuses on the lives of patients in a small mental clinic Chorale Okayama in Japan. The film was world-premiered at the Pusan International Film Festival in 2008, and won the Best Documentary Award (PIFF Mecenat Award) there. It also won the Best Documentary Award at the Dubai International Film Festival in December 2008. Other awards include Special Jury Mention at the 2009 Miami International Film Festival, Outstanding Documentary Award at the 2009 Hong Kong International Film Festival, and Inter-religious Jury Prize at Visions du Reel in 2009.

In September 2010, Soda premiered a documentary, Peace (2010, 75 minutes), as the opening film of the DMZ Korean International Documentary Festival. Peace depicts the lives of people with disabilities and cats in Okayama, Japan, and was initially commissioned by the DMZ Festival as a short documentary. Peace later won the Audience Award at Tokyo Filmex,Buyens-Chagoll Award at Visions du Reel, and Best Documentary Award at the Hong Kong International Film Festival.

In 2009, Soda started shooting Theater 1" and “Theatre 2”, a documentary series about a playwright/theater director Oriza Hirata and his company, Seinendan. The series was world-premiered at the Busan International Film Festival in 2012, and won the Young Jury’s Prize at the Festival des 3 Continents in Nantes, France in 2012.

He has published several books in Japanese including Mental Illness and Mosaic from Chuohoki Publishing, “The Reason Why I Make Documentaries” from Kodansha Publishing, and “Theatre vs. Film – Can a Documentary Capture Fiction?” from Iwanami Publishing.

Soda attended Tokyo University from 1989 to 1993, majoring in religious studies. He also earned a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in film-making. —Wikipedia