Japanese films at Berlin

mark schilling 0934611501
Mon Jan 21 21:24:40 EST 2002


Thanks to Don Brown for the heads-ups on the Honogurai Mizu no Soko story. To return the favor, here's my current list of Japanese films scheduled to screen at Berlin, which I prepared for Screen International's daily issues at the festival. Updates and corrections appreciated. The total, ten, is that same as that selected for the various sections at Cannes last year. Also, three are documentaries, which must be some sort of record. 

Mark Schilling



Competition

KT

Dir: Junji Sakamoto

An ambitious Japan-Korea thriller whose investors include Cine Quanon, Satellite Theatre, Mainichi Broadcasting and Digital Site Korea, KT focuses on the political intrigue swirling around Kim Dae Jung, the current Korean president, after he went into exile in Japan in October 1972. Attacked by Korean dictator Park Chun-hee as a "North Korean spy," Kim rightly feared for his life, even though he was the leader of Korea?s largest opposition party. A mixture of documentary and drama, the film depicts the plot of Park?s notorious KCIA to assassinate Kim and then, on August 8, 1973 to kidnap him from a Tokyo hotel, despite the efforts of his local bodyguards and Japan?s police and Self Defense Force to thwart them. Directed by Junji Sakamoto, whose credits include the award-winning drama Face and gang epic Another Battle, the film stars Koichi Sato, Michitaka Tsutsui, Yoshio Harada and Kim Jae-soo. The film is set for a May 2002 release, in time for the start of the Japan-Korea World Cup. 

Panorama

All About Lily Chou Chou (Lilly Chou Chou no Subete)

Dir: Shunji Iwai

Named as one of the best ten Japanese films of 2001 by Kinema Junpo, Japan's oldest film and most prestigious magazine, All About Lily Chou Chou is the latest by Shunji Iwai (Love Letter, Swallowtail Butterfly) one of the hottest younger Japanese filmmakers of the past decade. Set in the idyllic Japanese countryside, the film relates the hellish adolescence of a sensitive boy who becomes the victim and tool of school bullies and retreats whenever possible into his Web site -- a shrine to the mysterious pop singer Lily Chou Chou.



Dark Water (Honogurai Mizu no Soko) 

Dir: Hideo Nakata 

Dark Water stars Hitomi Kuroki as a woman with a troubled past who leaves her husband and begins a new life with her five-year-old daughter, only to find that their new apartment building has a past -- and a mind -- of its own. Based on a best-selling short story collection by Koji Suzuki and directed by Hideo Nakata, Dark Water opened in Japan on November 19 on 213 screens. Suzuki also wrote the novels for and Nakata directed two of the entries in the hit Ring horror series 

Kadokawa Shoten, a leading Japanese publisher with extensive media interests, has reached a basic agreement with Pandemonium, former Fox president Bill Mechanic?s production company, to remake Dark Water. The rights fee is reported to be $400,000, though Kadokawa has not yet announced an amount. Also, Disney is negotiating with Kadokawa for worldwide distribution rights for the film, with a North American release next year on 2000 screens anticipated. 

Dreamworks is currently producing a remake of The Ring, starring Naomi Watts, for summer release. Also, Dark Water is scheduled to screen in the Panorama section of the Berlin Film Festival. Commenting on these developments, Kadokawa president Tsuguhiko Kadokawa jokingly said that "Horror is becoming globalized." 

God's Children (Kami no Kodomotachi)

Dir: Hiroshi Shinomiya

Hiroshi Shinomiya God's Children is a documentary about Filipino children and their families who scavenge at the Payatas dump in Quezon City. A former member of the theatre troupe of avant garde legend Shuji Terayama, Shinomiya made his directorial debut in 1986. His previous feature documentary was the 1995 Scavenger: Forgotten Children, a documentary about children at Manila's Smoky Mountain -- Payatas' notorious predecessor.

A Painful Pair (Itai Futari)

Dir: Hisashi Saito

A Painful Pair is a drama about a couple who can literally feel each other's pain, both physical and psychic. Problems arise when they become involved with other people, including, in the man's case, an S&M dominatrix. Active as a scriptwriter from the mid-'80s, Saito made his directorial feature debut in 1998 with French Dressing. His second film, Sunday Drive (1999), was screened at the Toronto, Montreal and Hawaii film festivals.



Forum

Alexei's Spring (Alexei to Izumi)

Dir: Seiichi Motohashi

Another documentary screening in Berlin is Alexei's Spring, by Seiichi Motohashi. Shot in a village only 180 kilometers away from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the film follows the lives of the villagers, nearly all of whom are elderly pensioners, over the course of seasons. Despite the radioactive pollution that has driven nearly all their fellow villagers away, they are able to remain on their ancestral land because of a spring that has remained miraculously pure. Motohashi also directed the award-winning Nadja's Village (1998), a documentary set in the same area of Belarus.

Daughter from Yan?an

Dir: Kaoru Ikeya 

A documentary originally broadcast on Japanese public broadcaster NHK?s Hi-Vision HDTV service, Daughter from Yan?an depicts the horrors of the Cultural Revolution through the eyes of a woman from a rural village in China?s yellow earth region. Abandoned at birth by former Red Guard parents who had been sent to the countryside, she begins to search them thirty year later with the aid of a man who himself had been internally exiled for being a counterrevolutionary. Director Kaoru Ikeya has been making documentaries about China for Japanese television for more than a decade; Daughter from Yan?an is his first feature-length film.

Manzan Benigaki 

Dir: Shinsuke Ogawa & Peng Xiaolian

A documentary about persimmon growing and processing in the Japanese countryside, Manzan Benigaki was started by legendary Japanese filmmaker Shunsuke Ogawa in 1984 and remained uncompleted at the time of his death in 1992. In 1999, a Chinese director who had studied under Ogawa, Peng Xiaolian, shot additional footage and edited the completed, with Ogawa?s wife, Yoko Shiraishi, serving as producer. Much in the spirit of Ogawa?s Furuyashiki Village and Magino Village -- A Tale, Manzan Benigaki documents a traditional rural way of life under pressure from modernization and Westernization. 


The Mars Canon (Kasei no Canon)

Dir: Shiori Kazama

A drama about an extramarital affair that becomes an ungainly foursome, The Mars Canon is Shiori Kazama?s first feature since How Old Is the River, winner of Tiger Award at the 1995 Rotterdam Film Festival. The story centers on Kinuko (Makiko Kuno), a 29-year-old single woman who is seeing a middle-aged married man every Tuesday. Then she meets Manabe (KEE), a street poet, and Hijiri (Mami Nakamura), a woman who is crashing with him, and they become fast friends. When Hijiri is kicked out of Manabe?s apartment, she comes to stay with Kuniko -- and ends up moving in next door. Naturally, the married lover does not approve; complications ensue. 

The Princess Blade (Shura Yukihime)
Dir: Sato Shinsuke 

Set in a mythical feudal past,. The Princess Blade is MTV-influenced re-invention of the samurai swashbuckler genre. Princess Blade, a girl belonging a band of professional assassins, discovers that the leader kill her mother. She confronts him, but is badly wounded in the ensuing struggle. A boy belonging to an anti-government group saves her and she feels, for the first time, the glimmering of human emotion. Pop star Yumiko Shaku stars as Princess Blade. 



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/private/kinejapan/attachments/20020122/e108f931/attachment.html




More information about the KineJapan mailing list