Jasper Sharp » Sakura Ando

Go Go Yubari!

Jasper — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:49:10 +0000

Yubari International Film Festival 2010

So here I am once more, seated in my customary position somewhere in the murky depths of south-east London staring at my face partially reflected in the monitor of my Mac. Wasn’t it always thus? It seems so, the past few weeks now reduced to a fragmented fever dream of regurgitated sense memories; floating faces from a previous life, flashing neon signs of alien characters, the repetitive blare of electronic melodies echoing through my subconscious. But no – the paper trail of ticket stubs in my back pocket and appointments jotted in the pages of my diary, the unpacked suitcase overflowing with dirty laundry, DVD screeners and chirashi one-sheets, and a camera memory card full of surreptitious snapshots seem to indicate that somewhere within the blur of the past month or so, I was there, back on the other side of the world again.

The main venue, the Adire Yubari

I don’t know why I always feel the need to make such disclaimers, but yes, I had originally intended to give regular updates on my movements during this last trip to Japan, if only for my own benefit as some sort of confirmation that I was actually there as much as to jot down my impressions on current developments within the Japanese film scene. Somewhere along the way however I was absorbed into the vortex, with barely a moment to draw breath between the stream of meetings, screenings, research sessions and barroom re-acquaintances with old friends. Even sleep was a rare luxury.

Nippon Connection's Alex Zahlten in the izakaya that served as the main main post-screening meeting point

This post, then, is the first of several, I hope, in which I will attempt to set down the salient points of my stay, beginning with my first weekend at the legendary Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival in Hokkaido. This isn’t intended as any sort of review or festival report. You’ll be able to find these from previous years on Midnight Eye, with Eija Niskanen’s piece on last year’s here and Tom Mes’ from the one before here. No, basically this is just an excuse for my to put up some of my photos from that weekend and assemble them into some sort of narrative.

Freezing at the saturday night stove party with Eija Niskanen

I’d been in Tokyo a couple of days before flying up to Hokkaido, the evening before spent back in a bar run by a certain pink director best known for his work in the 1990s. All this meant I didn’t get a huge amount of sleep before heading to Haneda airport at some ungodly hour on the morning of Thursday 25th Feb. Turns out I needn’t have bothered rushing as the flight was delayed by several hours due to the dense fog encircling Tokyo, so several hours were spent loafing around drinking coffee and saying hellos to all the others heading up north. These included such notable luminaries as director Nobuhiro Yamashita and actor Ryo Ishibashi, both of whom were sitting on the festival jury – as well as a whole swathe of festival staff members, casts and crews of the films playing there, and numerous others drawn to the buzz of one of the high-points in the Japanese movie world’s social calendar. My own reason for going, aside from the sheer joy of being there and looking out for some decent titles to introduce to England, was to participate in a panel discussion with two other Japanese film specialist programmers, Marc Walkow (NYAFF) and Alex Zahlten (Nippon Connection), about the overseas appreciation of Japanese cinema, which all went pretty swimmingly, I thought.

Hand-painted hoarding for Carmen Comes Home

Without saying too much about the individual titles that played at this years fest, which I’ll have ample opportunity to do over the coming months, my overall impression of YIFFF was that the overall emphasis was on the fun and the films rather than glitzy red carpet posturing (the various financial difficulties suffered over the past few years, not only by the festival but the actual town itself, have been well-documented elsewhere). Outside of the festival, Yubari town was quite an experience in itself. A tiny place about an hour-and-a-half drive from Sapporo otherwise better known for its melons and its now defunct coal industry, it consisted of little more than a couple of hotels and a handful of buildings surrounded by snowy mountains and linked by a main road covered in a thick sheet of ice that made crawling between its small selection of screens, bars, eateries and karaoke joints a pretty perilous experience.

Hand-painted hoarding for Ozu's An Autumn Afternoon

The other most noticeable thing about the town is that its streets are festooned with hand-painted classic film posters, both Japanese and western. This is a clearly a town that takes its cinema pretty seriously. Aside from skiing and melon farming, one can’t imagine there’s much more for people to do here other than watch films, although outside of the festival one imagines that opportunities to catch the latest releases on a big screen must be pretty limited. The eclectic programming mixed recent foreign hits such as District 9, The Hurt Locker, Sherlock Holmes and An Education and home-grown premieres like Tomoyuki Furumaya’s Bushido Sixteen and Shusuke Kaneko’s Bakamono- The Idiots with a host of modestly-budgeted jishu eiga titles, the best of which screened in the separate Off-Theatre section. The less said about the opening film, Surely Someday, the better. A puerile caper movie involving a boy band starring and directed by Shun Oguri (from Boys over Flowers, Crows ZERO), it did at least provide a welcome opportunity to catch some shut-eye. Elsewhere however, there were some great discoveries, with the premiere of Yu Irie’s 8000 Miles Part 2, the follow up to last years Off Theater winner 8000 Miles (the Japanese title Saitama Rapper gives a better indication of the film’s contents) capped off with a sprightly performance from its pert ensemble cast of girl rappers (comprised of Love Exposure’s Sakura Ando and the newcomers Maho Yamada, Fumi Sakurai, Kumiko Masuda and Mayumi Kato) providing an uplifting end to the Friday evening.

Onstage shenanigans from the cast of Saitam Rapper 2: Girl Rappers

It also soon became clear that in packing for my trip to Japan, I’d failed to appreciate just how damn cold it got in Hokkaido in March. Ok, so it wasn’t so much of an issue while watching films of course, but the walks between the various venues and post-screening drinking holes might have been a little less gruelling had I thought of bringing along a pair of gloves, at the very least. The Saturday night ‘stove party’, which followed a mind-blowing selection of ero-guro anime including Naoyuki Niiya’s revelatory kami-shibai workout, Man-Eater Mountain (Hitokui yama), was great fun, swilling down warm sake and feasting off charcoal grilled dear meat, octopus and scallops, although sadly the cold soon got the better off us and we beat a hasty retreat to the cosy Grace Karaoke bar for a lengthy singsong session.

Naoyuki Niiya's experimental kami-shibai movie Man-Eater Mountain

Christ knows what the place is like once all traces of the festival have gone, but it was clear that the locals definitely appreciated the massive influx into their town, and were the epitome of politeness and welcoming geniality. Lovely people. The cosy friendliness of the place was infectious, meaning that it was easy to rub shoulders with the other festival guests, including the highly-personable Ryo Ishibashi, and the legendary Johnny To, who generously treated all of the other guests to a farewell party at a local sushi restaurant. Yes, Yubari 2010 is a memory I am going to treasure for a long, long time, as it was one of the best film events I’ve ever attended in Japan. I pray I make it back again sometime in the not-too-distant future.

Kakera – A Piece of Our Life up for UK Theatrical release in April

Jasper — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:36:21 +0000

Hikari Mitushima in Momoko Ando's Kakera - A Piece of Our Life

Some rather joyous festive season news courtesy of Third Window Films. The company has just announced that is has acquired UK theatrical and DVD rights for Momoko Ando’s touching debut, Kakera – A Piece of Our Life. As has been mentioned on these pages several times, the film played to great aplomb at this year’s Raindance Film Festival back in November, with Momoko in attendance for two sold-out screenings along with former Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha, who contributed the film’s score. It was greeted with a similarly enthusiastic reception at Stockholm Film Festival and Kinotayo in Paris, where Momoko was awarded the ‘Prix Nikon de la Plus Belle Image.’ The film opens in London on April 2^nd 2010, coinciding with the Japanese release, although there will be a premiere in London the week before this, which I’m rather hoping that Momoko Ando will be over for.

This is probably as good a time as any to correct a piece of misinformation that somehow crept on to the Raindance website and has found itself replicated on the Internet Movie Database, but Kakera was directed and WRITTEN by Momoko Ando – the credit for Yuko Shiomaki is incorrect, so I hope this gets changed on the IMDB sometime soon. Momoko is the daughter of the famous actor-director Eiji Okuda, and sister of Sakura Ando, one of the most exciting new actresses to emerge from Japan in recent years. Sakura can be seen in Yuki Tanada’s Ain’t No Tomorrows, but also in Love Exposure, which Third Window put out theatrically a month or so ago to an overwhelmingly positive critical response. Love Exposure and Kakera also share the same actress, Hikari Mitsushima.

Still on the subject of Love Exposure, other news from Third Window is that this films DVD release has been put back a fortnight to January 25^th, although it is still up for Amazon pre-order.

Momoko Ando interview on Electric Sheep website

Jasper — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:29:51 +0000

Momoko Ando in London

It’s only been about a month, but it already feels so long since Raindance that I was going to hold back for further news about festival guest and juror Momoko Ando’s debut feature Kakera – A Piece of Our Lives. For those who weren’t there for the screenings in London, I can promise there will be more postings here about it sometime in the near future, including an interview at some point on Midnight Eye, into which I’ll integrate some of the comments from the q&a with Momoko and ex-Smashing Pumpkin James Iha during their trip to the festival. I know Momoko Ando herself is heading off to Sweden to present her film as part of the Asian Images section at Stockholm International Film Festival, held 18–29 November, and to Paris for the fourth Kinatayo festival of contemporary Japanese film, held during the same period. No doubt there’ll be more screenings at other festivals over the next year too, and UK audiences should also be getting another chance to see it before too long.

To whet your appetites, I wanted to draw your attention to an interview with Momoko by Eleanor McKeown of Electric Sheep, the first of several conducted at Raindance that will appear on the magazine’s website over the next month or so. Japanese readers might also be interested in checking out Momoko’s own account of her trip to London on her blog.

Lala Pipo, playing at the ICA, London from November 13th.

Momoko Ando’s sister, the actress Sakura Ando also has a new film out in Japan sometime next year, Kenta to Jun to Kayo-chan no Kuni (trans. Kenta, Jun and Kayo’s Country) – the website and trailer are now online. Sakura, if you haven’t cottoned on by now from my various postings, can be seen right now on London screens in Sion Sono’s Love Exposure, putting in a sterling performance as the cult leader Koike, with the film promising to pop up at various future junctures in the UK over the next few months, including screenings at The Cube in Bristol and the Eden Court Theatre in Inverness according to the website of UK distributor Third Window Films. And while I’m on the subject of Third Window Films, their next release, Lala Pipo – A Lot of People is also out very soon, opening at the ICA on November 13th. This film was also part of my Japanese selection at this year’s Raindance, all of which brings us nicely full circle…

Sion Sono’s Love Exposure released in London from this Friday.

Jasper — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:25:31 +0000

Hikari Mitsushima in Sion Sono's Love Exposure

It’s done great guns on the festival circuit and now, courtesy of Third Window Films, Love Exposure is just about to get its official UK release with a month-long run at the ICA in London this November, with a screening on November 14^th at Leeds International Film Festival and no doubt other dates in the UK to follow. It’s surely a bold move on the behalf of both Third Window Films and the ICA, but (and I’m getting almost tired of saying this), DO NOT BE PUT OFF BY THE 4-HOUR RUNNING TIME! This is the strongest film from Japan I’ve seen in a long-time. Read any review you can find online about it, ask anyone who has seen it. They’ll all tell you the same thing – it’s an absolutely fantastic experience, so intense you’ll be still struggling to assimilate it all for days, nay weeks, after you’ve seen it. The film whips along at such a cracking pace that you’re barely registering the time, and when the interval occurs, it seems like a major inconvenience.

Takahiro Nishijima, the star of Love Exposure

I’ve experienced the film twice already, firstly on DVD while looking for suitable titles for this year’s Raindance, and secondly at Raindance itself. The first time I thought it would take a couple of sittings to get through, but it didn’t take too long for me to realise I was in for the long haul. The second time, at the festival itself, was my first chance seeing it on a big screen, and I was so immersed in it that even then I knew I simply had to see it again, so I’ll most certainly be trotting off to the ICA at some juncture. And this seems to be the typical response. Several at the Japanese guests at Raindance had already seen the film several times. One chalked up their sixth viewing at the festival – that’s a full day in total of Sion Sono’s masterpiece! Another reported their experience of seeing the film in Tokyo, in which during the interval the other viewers could be seen wandering around with ecstatic expressions on their faces, and I couldn’t but help notice a similar phenomenon at Raindance. Ooh, I’m getting goose-pimples just thinking about it. My only regret is that the film was originally meant to be six hours, and Sono had to cut it down by a quarter at the insistence of his producer. I can only pray that at some point we’ll ever get a chance to see the full cut.

Sakura Ando and friends

Not sure what else I can say to anyone but to implore you to go see it. If you’ve seen it once, then see it again, tell your friends what a masterpiece it is. And if you have no idea of what I am talking about, then here’s a quick taster in the form of the trailer.