Nippon Connection officially came to an end on Sunday evening, although you’d hardly know it. As I write, there are currently still around 40+ guests hanging around Frankfurt trying to work out how and when they’re going to get home, myself included. On the one hand, there’s a kind of feeling that the festival is still ongoing, minus the films of course, as everyone rallies round to make the best of a bad situation, huddled around in bars trying to ignore the obvious realities of the situation. On the other, as boredom sets in, it’s only a matter of time before we all get sick of the site of one another, tired of saying our final farewells only to find everyone back at the festival centre next day awaiting new updated information about our imminent departures.
Of course, things could be a lot worse. If the volcano had blown a few days earlier, there would have been no guests, no prints and basically no festival, hardly a fitting celebration for Nippon Connection’s tenth year. I’m actually in a better situation than most of the others here who need to get back to Japan or North America, because in the worst case scenario, I can always hitchhike up to Calais and stand on the beach, as in Atonement, amassed with all the other Brits awaiting repatriation. And we should spare a thought for the poor jishu eiga director who has been grounded for the past 5 days in Istanbul, where he was meant to be transferring flight…
I have to say, I’ve been fairly in the dark about the whole situation until today. I’d not read any newspaper coverage nor seen any TV reports about the volcano in the English language. The only screens I’ve been looking at have been filled with Japanese films. I knew over the weekend that the whole incident was going to be a damn inconvenience, but buried my head in the sand as I realised that there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it and didn’t want it to affect my enjoyment of the festival. Now it looks like I’m here for a couple more days, at least I’ve got my laptop, internet access, and a few DVDs to watch, so things could be a lot worse.
Nippon Connection Audience Award winner Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror, directed by Shinsuke Sato and produced by Production IG
Well, that brings me to the festival, which is, after all, the reason we are all here, and though we’re all going to look back and laugh in a year or so on the events that overtook the tenth Nippon Connection, the festival was memorable for other reasons too, namely the films. This year, I was accorded the honour of sitting on the jury for the Nippon Digital Award, alongside Bernt Brehmer and Dr Roland Domenig. It is the first year Nippon Connection has had a competition for the digital selection, which has got stronger and stronger over the years and at present provides the best showcase anywhere in the world for some of the most important discoveries in the world of Japanese indie filmmaking, documentary and experimental animation, courtesy of the pioneering efforts of programmers Alex Zahlten and Christiane Borchert. Basically, if you’re into the edgier, more innovative side of Japanese film, Nippon Connection’s annual selection is second to none. This meant, however, that I had to spend much of the fest in the digital screening room, so never got the chance to watch any of the more mainstream fare playing on the big screen. Some of these I’d seen before, but I didn’t catch any of the films that got the audience award this year: in third place was Hitoshi Matsumoto’s Symbol; second was Shuichi Okita’s The Chef of South Polar; with the main prize going to Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror, a 3DCG animation from Production I.G. directed by Shinsuke Sato – well, I never saw that one coming, but the Nippon Connection audience has always been an unpredictable lot.
Noriko Eguchi in Kota Yoshida's Yuriko’s Aroma
There was some great stuff playing in the Nippon Digital selection however, including Daishi Matsunaga’s documentary on the bizarre transgender performance artist Pyuupiru, which you can read all about on Midnight Eye and Yu Irie’s 8000 Miles Part 2: Girls Rappers, which I mentioned in my Yubari report. However, we were all particularly impressed with Kota Yoshida’s Yuriko’s Aroma, a slick and sexy comedy-drama starring Noriko Eguchi of Moon and Cherry fame, playing a not dissimilar role as an aromatherapist with a particularly sensitive olfactory organ who develops an unhealthy obsession with her employer’s sweaty teenage nephew.
Pyuupiru, in Daishi Matsunaga's film of the same name
It wasn’t the winner, but we gave it a special mention anyway, and hopefully I’ll find a way of bringing it to the UK before the year’s out. The man of the moment, though, was Tetsuaki Matsue, who impressed me a lot about ten years ago with his promising documentary debut, Annyong Kimchee, detailing his own “coming out” to his friends about his Korean ancestry. I’d always felt that Matsue had subsequently rather coasted along on his talents, but it seems he’s finally come of age this year. It’s true, his Annyong Yumika, also in competition this year, his portrait of the legendary AV and pink actress Yumika Hayashi, who tragically died in 2005 and who is perhaps best known with foreign audiences for her role in Shinja Imaoka’s Lunchbox (2003), wasn’t a million miles away from his usual style. It manifested both the strengths and weaknesses of Matsue’s previous films, though it was engrossing enough, and for those who don’t know much about Japan’s sex film industry and its surprise hidden links with Korea, it was certainly a revelation. Still, it wasn’t quite winning material, so it’s just as well that Matsue also had another film in competition, the near work of genius that is Live Tape. I’m going to be covering this film in a whole lot more detail on Midnight Eye very soon, but for the moment, the nutshell description is this is a single-shot film of the musician Kenta Maeno (also at the fest) as he wanders around Kichijoji performing with his guitar. It’s actually a whole lot more than that too, but basically we were all agreed this was the most innovative, refreshing and inspiring uses of a single DV tape we’d seen in a long, long time and a much-deserved winner. Matsue’s prize is the subtitles of his next film provided completely free of charge, courtesy of the Japanese Visualmedia Translation Academy (JVTA). It should be finished before the year’s out – there’ll be more info on this nearer its release, but for now I’ll just say it is going to be set around Tokyo’s celebrated otaku enclave of Akihabara.
Star of the show: Kenta Maeno in Tetsuaki Matsue's Live Tape
Unfortunately I didn’t get my camera out for any of the festival, so you’ll have to make do with stills of some of the films I’ve mentioned for now. Anyway, this is me signing off for the day. Can’t get back to London for the Takahiko Iimura films, but it doesn’t really matter as he can’t make it either, which leaves me with no other choice other than to pop out for a coffee and a Bratwurst, and try to amuse myself while I await further news on my travel plans.
Posted at 13:08 on 20 April 2010
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