Sento (was Kawase)

[Mark Schilling]

Although the Sento Naomi thread seems to have died, I thought list members
might be interested in an interview I did with her last week for 'Winds"
magazine.  I raised topics that had been discussed by list members, not
with any intent of being her adversary or advocate, but simply with the
journalistic intent of hearing her out. I have tried to keep her answers as
complete as possible, while editing my own questions to the minimum. 

In person, I found her to be decided in her views -- perhaps partly a
result of hearing the same questions dozens of times since Cannes. Though
the sweetness she projects in her media photos is not phony, she has the
quiet determination to go her own way that is often more formidable than
the loud kind. Ganbatte hoshii.

Mark Schilling


Naomi Sento interview


Q: What film are you working on now?

A: My next film is going to be a love story. The setting is Nara, where I
was born and raised. I'm writing the screenplay now. I want to start
shooting this summer and finish by the summer of next year. I want to spend
a year on it. I'll shoot it in 16 mm and blow it up to 35 mm. I won't be
filming for 365 days straight, but at certain times of year -- the spring
and summer. . 

Q: The shooting schedule of Moe no Suzaku was also long wasn't it? 

A: We spent 43 days shooting. The staff arrived about three months before
filming started. Also, I started preparing three or four years before I
began filming. If I had gone there and starting shooting right away, it
wouldn't have worked out very well. A lot of the people who appeared in the
film were local villagers. If I had just showed up and started filming
them, they would have been surprised (laughs).
     I wanted bring a  natural feeling to the film. To do that, I needed
time to become accepted by the people of the village. 

Q: You wanted to use the local people as actors.

A: Also, I wanted to film the setting of Nishi Yoshino Mura. just as it
was. I didn't want to build a house for the film's family. I wanted to use
a house that was already there, a field that was already there. So it took
time to make the background I wanted. 
     People can understand each other better once they've met a few times.
If you meet three or four or more times. you can have a closer
relationship. So I had to spend time getting to know the village people and
the actors so they could understand what I was trying to do. 

Q: Did you have a certain image of the performance that you were trying to
draw from the actors?

A:  Of course, I wanted to make the film in a certain way, so there were
things that I wanted them to do, But instead of forcing them to act in a
certain way , I tried to create an environment in which they could perform
naturally. I didn't tell them to "do this" or "do that." Instead everyone
worked together in the field, harvested the crop and built the house. So
when the son came home from school in the film, he could enter the house as
though he lived there. 

Q: Did you also limit the amount of dialogue so as not to put a strain on
your amateur actors

A: That wasn't quite it. When people are sad or lonely there are things
that they can't put into words. After the father died, I didn't want to the
characters to explain why they felt sad. I thought they could better
express that sadness by their expressions. I wanted to do the explaining
with images, not words. 

Q: You wanted the audience to imagine what the characters were feeling,
what was happening on the screen, rather than explain everything for them.

A: People nowadays can get information from a variety of sources. You can
get along without finding out things yourself. Everything is served up for
you on television. But I feel that human beings are animals that naturally
have to experience things themselves, whether  beauty or sadness, but they
can't easily do that anymore. 
     When I was in my early twenties, I went to work every day in Osaka
from my home in Nara, taking about an hour and a half. But riding on a rush
hour train, doing my job, coming home and falling asleep exhausted,  I
didn't feel as though I were living my own life. I only saw the cherry
trees blooming or the maple leaves turning colors on television. I couldn't
see or feel these things myself. 
     Instead of trying to explain everything, I though it would be better
to make a film that would require the audience to use its own imagination
and originality. That's what I tried to do in Moe no Suzaku. 

Q:  Young filmmakers appear to be going into two different directions.
Some, such as Shunji Iwai and Shinji Aoyama, are making films that seem to
be influenced by MTV, that place more emphasis on style than substance,
while others such as Nobuhiro Suwa, Hidekazu Kore'eda and you, are making
quieter, more contemplative films that place more stress on human
relationships. Do you see yourself as belonging to any group?  

A: Directors like Suwa, Aoyama and Suwa are people who have seen a lot of
films, including independent films, and are making their own films using
what they learned from that viewing. I got into filmmaking by a different
route. I grew up seeing almost no movies or television. I'm more like
filmmakers of 60 years ago -- I make films based on what I've actually seen
and felt in my life -- the sadness and the happiness and all the rest -- in
my own way. I haven't followed any filmmaking trend. Instead, my films have
been formed by the environment in which I grew up. 

Q: So you weren't influenced by Golden Age films of Kurosawa, Ozu and other
directors of that era?

A: I haven't seen hardly any films by Kurosawa. So I can't explain what I'm
doing based on a filmmaking theory or tendency. I can't say that I was
influenced by this or that director. Before, directors could say that they
had been the student of such and such a master, had worked under him as an
assistant director and been influenced by his work, but there are few young
people who say that kind of thing anymore. They come to filmmaking by many
different routes.
     Society as a whole is also becoming more diverse. Before, everybody
enjoyed going to movies, or I should say movies, plays and yose But now
there are ten times or sixty times more way to entertain yourself. As a
result, people's way of thinking has changed. 

Q: Also, there aren't as many films schools in Japan are there are in the
United States. 

A: I went to a film school in Osaka, but we couldn't go to an actual film
set and work there. Other film schools in Japan are the same, I think.
There are almost no schools in the Kansai area where you can specialize
only in filmmaking. There are places in Tokyo like Nihon University
Imamura's film school, though. 

Q: Do you think that Japanese films are reviving?

A: I'm trying my best to make everyone think so. (laughs). I don't want to
be thought of a one-film wonder. I want to keep making films as long as I
can. That's the job of my husband (producer Takenori Sento), to make sure
that I have the environment I need to keep working. Otherwise, I might end
as a temporary phenomenon. I can't just coast. I can't assume that just
because I can make a film right away, everything is going to be all right.
It doesn't work that way. 
      The reactions I've gotten from the industry since winning the prize,
including the "who the hell is this" reaction (laughs), have opened up new
doors for me, ,just as winning prizes has for (Shohei) Imamura and
(Takeshi) Kitano. Until a few years ago, the range of possibilities for
Japanese directors was getting narrower, but now its getting wider. Now the
visual arts courses at universities are becoming the hardest of all to
enter. Filmmaking has become trendy. (laughs). 

Q: I also expect that, as a young woman director, you have had expectations
placed on you by feminists and others to make certain types of movies on
certain themes. .How do you respond to those expectations?

A: I ignore them (laughs). I've had members of women's groups tell me I
should make this type or that type of film, but I think it's strange. -- it
becomes a kind of reverse discrimination. They want me to carry heavy
baggage, but I don't have the strength to do it. 
     The (feminists) are always complaining that men aren't treating them
equally. When men make jokes that are a bit risqu?, they immediately say
that it's "discrimination against women." I find that attitude scary. For
me being a woman is like having a shoe size of 23.5 -- it's a natural
condition, not something I think about.

Q: You've been criticized for changing your name from Kawase to Sento after
your marriage. 

A: I really can't explain why I did that (laughs). I respect my husband. I
love my husband. I want to work with him. My grandmother and grandfather
were Kawase, so I was Kawase. It would be less trouble for everyone if had
stayed a Kawase (laughs). But in terms of my family, including my children,
it's less trouble to have one name.  
      I was the one who said I wanted to change my name from Kawase to
Sento. He was surprised -- he was willing to let me leave it Kawase. For me
it was like when I was in elementary school, writing the name of the boy I
liked again and again (laughs). 

Q: Going to foreign film festivals, you've had chances to meet other young
directors and compare notes. What are the biggest differences you've
noticed between filmmaking conditions in Japan and abroad? 

A: In France the government gives a lot of support to filmmakers. Young
filmmakers can go to different places to get their scripts read and, if
they can raise half the money from companies and other sources, the
government will give them the rest. When I heard that, I thought that
conditions are better abroad. 
     Here even if a student has an interesting script, it's almost
impossible to get money from companies to make it into a film. Also, though
the government says it gives filmmakers tens of millions of yen, it rarely
gives young ones anything. There's no system in place -- directors have to
raise all the money themselves. Compared with the West, Japan is still a
developing country in that way
     We do have film festivals like Pia. That's gives new directors a
chance to show people their 8 mm or video films. So it helps that we have
festivals like that in Japan. 

Q: The attitude toward filmmaking here also presents problem. People think
of it the way they do mizushobai. 

A: Yes, something that the yakuza control (laughs). For a long time the
image of filmmaking was dirty, hard, depressing work. When I was in school,
we went to visit the Imagica studio in Osaka. In the video department, they
were using computers in a clean, modern room, but when we went to the film
department, we saw middle-aged men in work clothes processing film by hand
(laughs). There was such a big difference between the two. So the image of
filmmaking in Japan has not been very positive. 

Q: But you decided to make films anyway.

A: Yes, well, I didn't have a lot of information from outside. Also, even
though filmmaking had this image of being dirty and hard, I had the kind of
personality that was attracted to that side of it (laughs). I wanted to
have a hard time. I wanted to do it. 
     We had a video course at school, where you could operate a video
editor just by pushing a button, but I liked the idea of winding the reel
and cutting the film by hand. (laughs)

Q: So even if you had a chance to use more advanced technology, computer
graphics and so on, you wouldn't be interested.  

A: Not really. All the technology that we have today still can't beat the
depth of film. With computer graphics, you can make a figure look as though
someone is moving, but it doesn't look as though real light is on it. 

Q: You were raised in the countryside. Was it like the village in Moe no
Suzaku?

A: No, I lived in an ordinary housing development, on the outskirts of
Nara, close to Nara Park. But it was the countryside. There were fields and
a river close by. 

Q: Did you notice any culture gap when you came to Tokyo? 

A: The first thing I noticed was how tall the buildings were. Of course,
there were tall buildings in Osaka, but the ones here were really tall.
Also, people here were so brisk and businesslike. I would ask the way at a
train station, but no one would help me. I was frightened and didn't think
I would like here. But that was only one side of Tokyo. I found that, it
could ask someone who was taking a walk, he would talk to me. Before I had
tried to approach people working in the station, but because they were so
busy, they wouldn't give me the time of day. Even so, where I grew up,
people weren't like that. No matter what they were doing, they would at
least give you directions.
     So there are various sides to being here. There are still a lot of
things I don't like. 
     I haven't used that gap between city and countryside yet in a film,
but now I lived here a while, I've started to see things in a new way. For
example. I've started to notice things about Nara that I hadn't noticed
while I was living there. I want to expand my range of experience. When I
was at the Cannes in May, I started to understand that there were aspects
to the festvial that I hadn't been aware of before  -- not just the
festival, but the town itself -- the whole environment.

Q: It seems that the personal documentaries you made prior to Moe no Suzaku
represent examples of a kind of growing trend or movement. In the United
States, as well, you have more people making films and writing about their
own lives, the novel Angela's Ashes being only one prominent example. Do
you sense that kind of movement in Japan as well?

A: My documentary Tsutsumarete was shown at the 1992 Image Forum Festival. 
At that time I noticed that a lot of filmmakers, especially women, were
making documentaries about their own lives.
     Until then the image of the documentary had been films about social
issues made by groups of people with a common agenda. But recently,
filmmakers have been making  more documentaries about themselves and their
immediate environment, not the social conditions around them. I'm one of
them -- I made films about my grandmother. A few years earlier, I might
have made a film about the graying society (laughs). 

Q: So you don't have any interest in making films about social issues?

A: Not really. I don't feel that doing that kind of reportage or essay
documentary has a lot of meaning today. Of course, I did research for Moe
no Suzaku, but I didn't try to express what I had learned directly in the
film. There were elements of that research that I wanted to use in the
film, but I had my own image, I expressed what I had learned in my own way.


Q: In Moe no Suzaku, you explore a human world that is still in close touch
with nature. Do you have any trouble understanding young people who were
raised in urban environments, surrounded by mass media? 

A: There are times when, after going for a walk in Nara Park, I return to
my office and find that the young staff members have been playing a
computer game the whole time. That kind of scares me. But for the kids
involved in the game, it's not scary at all -- it just fun. Ordinarily it
would be strange to see people sitting so long staring at a screen,
absorbed in that world. Without eating anything but a piece bread, they'll
sit in that room for hours playing with a computer. Ordinary people might
think there's something strange about that, but maybe ordinary people are
disappearing. 
     When I was living close to nature, I thought that city people were
strange, but after living in a city I think that people can adapt to
anything. Now, when I see nature, I think how wonderful it is, but for
people living in the midst of it, it's nothing out of the ordinary. -- it's
not wonderful at all.
     When I go to the mountains I really fall in love with them, but for
people living there, life is one hardship after another. When it snows they
have to shovel off the roof, clear the roads. They're frozen stiff -- it's
no fun at all for them. They have to get up early, go into the fields and
work all day. But people living in the city see nature and think it's
wonderful.   
     There's a big difference in values (between city and country people).
In the mountains there are places where nature is still stronger than human
beings. City people have forgotten about that.