Jasper Sharp » Nippon Connection

Back in Blighty!

Jasper — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 13:45:27 +0000

I'm the King of the World!!!! Cruising back to Dover.

Wow, that was a longer trip abroad than I expected! Finally got in midnight last night, after a 12 hour car/ferry journey courtesy of a ride-share agency, a concept all but unknown in the UK, but very popular in Germany, and in this particular instance, invaluable – my flights got cancelled twice, and I was getting rather itchy feet in Frankfurt, so am just amazed I am now back at home in one piece. Piles upon piles of stuff to catch up on now I’m back, so this post will be brief, but I just want to say a huge thanks to Marion, Holger, Alex, Mayu, Christiane and all the others at the fest, not only for their work in putting together such a great event, but for their amazing behind-the-scenes level-headedness in making sure all of us were housed and entertained during our extended stay, while they attempted to find ways of getting us all back home. I’d also like to say thanks to my hosts for my final days, Heiko and Kerstin, who kindly provided me with a bed while I ummed and ahed about the best way of making it back home.

Freak volcanoes notwithstanding, this year’s Nippon Connection was the most fun I’ve ever attended, with great films, great guests, and a generally excellent atmosphere all round. Sadly, I fear, few of the organisers got the chance to enjoy the festival as much as they should have, considering it was the tenth anniversary, occupied as they were by these unexpected events in Iceland. Film festivals are an immense amount of work at the best of times, so I really feel for the Nippon Connection staff who had to spend the past few days dealing with the volcanic aftermath, and as far as I know, are still dealing with it now. Hope they get a chance to relax soon and realise what a great job they’ve done. For these and so many other things, I salute them all. See you next year, Frankfurt!

Update from Nippon Connection

Jasper — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 12:08:18 +0000

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.

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 Mochinaga’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 Mochinaga'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.

Nippon Connection Programme Taster for 14-18 April 2010

Jasper — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:42:45 +0000

As some of you may know, the start of 2010 for me has been a rather gruelling period spent finishing off another book manuscript which I’ll post details about on this website closer to its publication date. This is the reason why my posts during January have been rather sporadic, and are going to continue to be so for February, I’m afraid, as I’m going to be taking a well earned holiday before heading off to Japan at the end of the month for the legendary Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival in Hokkaido. I’ll post on my adventures from Yubari while I’m there. I’m going to be partaking in a panel discussion there with a couple of other guys who are also active in curating Japanese cinema programmes across the world, namely Marc Walkow of Outcast Cinema and Alex Zahlten of Frankfurt’s Nippon Connection, which should be a lot of fun. Which leads me on to this particular post, as Nippon Connection have just sent me through a taster of what’s in store this April, promising an end to this long dark winter of the soul.

Nippon Connection is the largest event devoted to Japanese film outside of Japan, and in fact, probably inside Japan too. This year’s festival celebrates its tenth anniversary between 14-18 April, with another impressive programme, which is set to include the latest from 9 Souls/Blue Spring/Hanging Garden director Toshiaki Toyoda, The Blood of Rebirth; Takashi Miike’s Crows II; Miwa Nishikawa’s Dear Doctor, the best Japanese film of last year according to the critics of Kinema Junpo magazine; actor Koji Yakusho’s directing debut, Toad’s Oil; Tekkon Kinkreet director Michael Arias’ live action debut Heaven’s Door; and many other titles.

I should also point out that beyond the big name titles on the press release, Nippon Connection boast a brilliant selection of independent work from first time directors, which always lead to some exciting discoveries. In previous years, they’ve presented the likes of Yasutomu Chikuma’s Now, I… and Tokachi Tsuchiya’s A Normal Life, Please, so there’s always plenty of fresh new gems to stumble across in its packed programme.

Just before I head off however, I’d also like to remind all UK Japanese film fans that the Japan Foundation UK’s touring programme is kicking off at the ICA on Tuesday 9^th February with six films going out under the banner “Girls on Film: Females in Contemporary Japanese Cinema” which will be also travelling to the following venues:

9 to 17 February – ICA, London

22 February to 4 March – Showroom, Sheffield (Except German plus Rain)

5 to 9 March – Queen’s Film Theatre, Belfast (Except Non-ko)

10 to 14 March – Filmhouse, Edinburgh

13 to 21 March – Arnolfini, Bristol

A look back at Toronto’s first Shinsedai New Generation Japanese Film Festival

Jasper — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:35:08 +0000

Well, I am back at home now after a joyous weekend at the inaugural Shinsedai Festival, and I must say, the experience was wholeheartedly a positive one. I know I promised to do daily updates during the fest, but with so much crammed into such a short time, this sort of fell by the wayside, and after wrestling with jetlag and getting back to the huge pile of things that urgently needed attending to back in London, it’s only now that I’ve had time to post my thoughts.

Peaches organizer Atsuko Ohno raising a kampai with Vortex director Yoshihiro Ito

It’s always pretty tough launching a new film festival, especially one that doesn’t deal with cult or genre material, but all in all, attendances were good, the comments on the response forms positive, and everyone seemed to have a great time, myself included. I was mightily impressed with the calibre of the audience, who seemed intelligent and receptive to new and sometimes challenging material. I guess the choice of venue, the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre was a key factor in this: the audience members either had firsthand experience of Japan or a genuine interest in the culture, meaning that films such as Yutaka Tsuchiya’s The New God, Yasutomo Chikuma’s Now, I… and Hiroki Iwabuchi’s Freeter’s Distress got the audiences they deserved and provoked animated discussions after the screenings. A lot of people really had their eyes opened by these titles, which show a completely different side of Japan to the one portrayed in the films that usually circulate in the West.

Akinoh Kondo's animated short The Evening Traveling

On the other side of the coin, we had more experimental material. Yoshihiro Ito’s Vortex and Others shorts programme and Aruongaku, a concert film on the avant-garde filmmaker/musician Masakatsu Takagi were met with a unanimously positive response. (I should add to European readers with a taste in such material, many of these films received their first international screening at the world’s greatest Japanese film festival, Nippon Connection in Frankfurt).

With festival co-organizer Chris Magee, and Thunderfish star Junko Kimoto at opening ceremony.

We were also lucky so many of the filmmakers came out to Toronto to join us too. Yasutomo Chikuma, Yoshihiro Ito, Peaches festival organiser Atsuko Ohno, animator/illustrator Akinoh Kondo, and the Thunderfish-gumi of director Touru Hano, cinematographer Tetsuhiro Kato, and leading lady Junko Kimoto (pictured here quaffing sake with me and Chris Magee during the opening ceremony) all had a great time chatting with the audience, and participating in the panel discussion about the state of independent cinema. It’s a near certainty that we’ll be able to build upon this success for next year, with an even bigger and bolder programme, but I should add at this point that none of this would have been possible without the generous sponsorship of Subaru Canada (oh that UK-based companies were as generous!), the guiding hand of the unsung hero behind the scenes James Heron (rather like the cat in Hong Kong Phooey) and his colleagues at the JCCC, as well as the smiling, ever-helpful legions of volunteers. And of course, a huge thanks to Chris Magee of Toronto’s own J-Film Pow-Wow for his sterling work in bringing this all together in such a short time, and my personal thanks to him and the delightful Polly for putting me up for the weekend and keeping the whiskey flowing. Until the next time…