Hong Kong International Film Festival
Aaron Gerow
ryuu000
Mon Mar 9 20:08:38 EST 1998
Thanks to L.C. for giving us info on the HKFF. I checked out the website
and noticed that some Japanese shorts are also playing:
Japanese Short and Video
This program of charming, technically accomplished shorts
maintains the Japanese fascination with things mechanical
but also sports a curious relationship with the environment.
Bird Watching (Yaguchi Shinobu, 1996, 15 min.) is a droll
meditation on human being's relationship with machines,
nature and each other through the story of a girl, her
friends,
her camcorder and a man who calls himself a bird watcher.
Video Answering Machine (Shinozaki Makoto, 1990, 30 min.)
is about a young woman who leaves a camera at her door as
an answering machine for visitors. It is a funny takeoff on
horror flicks that captures a life style in which machine
mediates everything but people still visit unannounced. My
My Tsuburi (Rie Matsubara, 1996, 13 min.) uses different
modes of animation to create a technological representation
of nature, turning a little girl's exploration in the woods
into a
discovery of poetic and mystical proportions. Killer Camera
(Serizawa Yoichiro, 1996, 3 min.) gives new meaning to
media violence, a one-punch joke that knows exactly when to
pull its punches. Fade Into White (Goshima Kazuhiro, 1996,
5 min.) is a remarkable work on the nature of images. Closing
out the program, Crossing and Roundscape (Nakanishi
Yoshihisa,1996/1997, 4/4 min.) are an imaginative animator's
idea of a lively neighborhood, in which objects dance in
unrehearsed orchestration. Total running time: 74 min.
I have to put in a plug for _Killer Camera_, not only for its clever use
of experimental technique, but because I did the subtitles (yes, only
three minutes worth!).
Aaron Gerow
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