NEWS: Japanese Film Season At The ICA

Confessions

In February, the ICA hosts Back To The Future Japanese Cinema Since The Mid-90s, the Japan Foundation’s Touring Film Programme.

The Japan Foundation explores a fertile period in Japanese filmmaking through a series of films made since the mid-90s. The films include those that were central to the Japanese film industry’s artistic and commercial resurgence, and showcases the work of some of the most important Japanese filmmakers of the past 20 years, including established names such as Kiyoshi Kurosawa and new talent like Yuya Ishii.

Many of the films in the season were popular in Japan and international film festivals when originally released but have been relatively unseen in the UK because they did not find distributors. The 2011 line-up offers UK audiences an insight into a pivotal period that changed the landscape of Japanese cinema and provided the industry with a new lease of life.

The season launches at the ICA, the only London venue, before touring to venues in Belfast, Edinburgh, Nottingham, Bristol and Sheffield later in the year.

Amongst the films being shown are:

Cure (Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
Cure is the seminal work by leader of the J-Horror genre, director Kiyoshi Kurosawa. A spate of murders in Tokyo are linked by a large X slashed across the dead bodies. Detective Takabe (Koji Yakusho) and psychologist Sakuma (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) are called in to track down the serial killer. Kurosawa often looks at how society can shape an individual, which we see here when a young drifter (Masato Hagiwara), suffering from amnesia and possessing strange hypnotic powers, becomes part of the investigation.

The Bird People In China (Director: Takashi Miike)
The Bird People In China is a gentle and understated drama by Takashi Miike. The title refers to an ancient legend that bird people once soared the skies with the aid of large mechanical wings. Workaholic Wada (Masashiro Motoki) heads out of Tokyo to investigate a large deposit of jade accompanied by debt collector Ujiie (Renji Ishibashi) and their guide Shun (Mako). The trio reach the Yun Nan Mountains of provincial China and a village where the titular legend lives on. The film addresses environmentalism, ethics and the value of wealth, and becomes an allegory for man’s loss of innocence and longing to regain it.

Go (Director: Isao Yukisada)
Go tells the story of a Korean teen living in Tokyo and struggling with prejudice, personal identity and first love. Adapted from Kazuki Kaneshiro’s eponymous novel, Go has gained international cult status. The film opens with a raw energy reminiscent of Danny Boyle's Trainspotting with the beleaguered protagonist, Sugihara (Yosuke Kubozuka), receiving a pasting from his own basketball teammates. Sugihara overcomes persecution with help from his father’s boxing lessons until he meets Sakurai (Shibasaki), his first love.

Josee, The Tiger And The Fish (Director: Isshin Inudo)
Josee, The Tiger And The Fish is a romantic drama about a college boy who falls for a girl with cerebral palsy. While at work in his part-time job in a mahjongg parlour, Tsuneo (Satoshi Tsumabuchi) hears talk of a crazy old woman who pushes a huge buggy around the neighbourhood. A chance meeting with the woman introduces him to Josee (Chizuru Ikewaki) who is in the buggy. Josee’s narrow world is opened up as the pair become friends and then lovers. The film was an unexpected indie box-office success in Japan on its release.

Linda, Linda, Linda (Director: Nobuhiro Yamashita)
Linda, Linda, Linda takes an upbeat look at Japanese youth culture, and showcases fresh young talent. Three days before their high school festival, guitarist Kei (Yu Kashii), drummer Kyoko (Aki Maeda, Battle Royale) and bassist Nozumi (Shiori Sekine) are forced to find a new lead vocalist for their band. They choose Korean exchange student Son (Doona Bae, Sympathy For Mr Vengeance) despite her limited comprehension of Japanese. The group struggles to learn their set, which includes ‘Linda, Linda, Linda’ by Japanese ‘80s punk-popsters The Blue Hearts, in time for the performance.

One Million Yen Girl (Director: Yuki Tanada)
One Million Yen Girl is a Japanese road movie about a lonely college graduate Suzuko (Yu Aoi). An incident at work leaves her with a conviction and a criminal record. The shame this brings to her and her family results in her leaving town, moving from place to place, taking part-time jobs and saving one million yen in each before moving on. Problems arise when she falls in love with a co-worker Nakajima (Mirai Moriyama), who hears of her one-million target and reputation for moving on.

Sawako Decides (Director: Yuya Ishii)
Sawako Decides is a comic drama about female empowerment. Sawako (Hikari Mitsushima) leaves a humiliating office job in Tokyo ¬ we see her testing wretched new toys on spoilt children – to return to her rural hometown and her ill father. Sawako attempts to help with her father’s failing clam-packing business, but the elderly female workforce resents and despises her. Meanwhile, Sawako’s hopeless boyfriend tracks her down, and she begins to despair of ever making sense of her life. Yuya Ishii, who began as an indie maverick to become a major talent, turns Sawako's big decision into a credible and uplifting narrative twist.

Confessions Of A Dog (Director: Gen Takahashi)
Gen Takahashi introduces the most dangerous men on Japan’s streets in Confessions Of A Dog, a film deemed too controversial to receive a theatrical release in Japan. The worst perpetrators of violence, illegal pay-offs, drugs and intimidation are not the Japanese mafia but the police force. Takeda (Shun Sugata) begins as an honest officer but becomes embroiled in dirty back room dealings and blackmail, while renegade investigator Kusama (Junichi Kawamoto) considers whether he will expose the force’s institutional corruption.

Confessions (Director: Tetsuya Nakashima)
Confessions is Japan’s official entry for 2011’s Oscars. A teacher whose daughter has been murdered by two of her teenage students controls the narrative, standing before her unruly class and laying out her reasons for the revenge which is to follow. Inexorably, the truth behind the tragedy is revealed as the film moves between numerous perspectives, allowing the audience unprecedented access to the hearts and minds of a cross-section of troubled characters. The film is full of anger, sadness and surprises.

Memories Of Matsuko (Director: Tetsuya Nakashima)
A young man clears out the cluttered apartment of his recently deceased aunt Matsuko, and finds, amid the clutter, the truth about how she came to be beaten to death, homeless and alone, on a riverbank. Director Nakashima has created a moving melodrama of a woman's life from the 1950s to 80s, in which tragedy is offset by wonderful flights of fantasy and moments of magic. Miki Nakatani gives a brilliant, award-winning performance as Matsuko from angelic schoolteacher, through her fall into prostitution, to her final tragic years. This visually vibrant film is an Amelie-esque fairytale of a starry-eyed woman searching for her prince, and is punctuated by flamboyant musical set-pieces reminiscent of Bob Fosse.

Kamikaze Girls (Director: Tetsuya Nakashima)
Kamikaze Girls is a stylistically playful look at Japanese idol culture, based on a manga comic by Novala Takemoto. Teenager Momoko escapes from the boredom of her hometown by adopting a Lolita image, although her doll-like clothing belies a gutsy, forthright attitude. It's the latter aspect of her personality that attracts her fashion opposite, surly biker chick Ichigo. Together the pair form an unlikely alliance. With two J-Pop stars in the lead roles, this cult comedy plays narrative tricks and features frenetic animated interludes.

Memories Of Matsuko