Film Committee Blog

At 6:00 pm, an hour earlier than the usual start of FCCJ screening events, writer-director John Junkerman reassured a surprisingly large audience, “I’ve been told that the film doesn’t feel as long as it actually is.” At 9:30 pm, as the hour-long Q&A session was winding down and hands were still going up, the true extent of his accomplishment became clear. Not only was there consensus that the film’s 148-minute length was warranted by the complexity of its subject, but with the exception of one vocal dissenter, praise was effusive for Junkerman’s even-handed illumination of the troubling history of occupation, human and civil rights violations, and dogged resistance in Okinawa — an ongoing flashpoint in US-Japan relations that is drawing even greater attention in this, the 70th anniversary year since the end of World War II.

The club’s screening of Okinawa: The Afterburn was held just days after Okinawa Gov. Takeshi Onaga’s return from a trip to Washington, DC, where the US departments of State and Defense confirmed their “unwavering commitment” to go forward with construction of the huge new Marine base in Henoko, despite convulsive and constant protests from Okinawans for over a decade, and just weeks ago, a crowd of some 35,000 protestors surrounding the Diet in Tokyo.

For a film programmer, there is nothing quite so satisfying as being able to contribute, however insignificantly, to the launch of an independent film that deserves to be seen and celebrated far more widely than its modest budget may allow. Such was the case with FCCJ’ s screening of Pietà in the Toilet, the feature-fiction debut of award-winning documentary director Daishi Matsunaga (Pyuupiru, Gospel).

Inspired by the final story idea of Japan’s great God of Comics, Osamu Tezuka (Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion), who jotted the outlines of Pietà down on his last diary page before dying of stomach cancer in 1989, Matsunaga has created a big-screen treatment that is by turns distressing, blackly humorous and uplifting — a poignant consideration of life under the looming hand of death. Nearly as impressively, he has directed a handful of major movie stars (Lily Franky, Rie Miyazawa, Shinobu Otake) with the assurance of a seasoned pro, and guided two unknowns in the lead roles who achieve an onscreen chemistry that is a real rarity.

Just two days before the hotly anticipated release of his latest film, Annecy-winning director Keiichi Hara (Colorful) thrilled FCCJ’s audience with a sneak peek of Miss Hokusai, which illuminates the extraordinary lives of iconic artist Katsushika Hokusai and his outspoken daughter O-Ei. Following a spate of recent discoveries, O-Ei is now recognized not only as an essential contributor to her father’s later — and most famous — work, but as a groundbreaking artist in her own right.

It was only the second time in the past decade that the Film Committee had screened an animated film (the other was Eric Khoo’s Tatsumi in 2013), which is admittedly inexplicable from both a creative and financial stance*, given that the anime industry accounts for 90% of all Japanese “content” sales overseas, regularly earns a bigger chunk of change at the domestic box office than all other films combined, and is propelled by some of the biggest names in the global pantheon.

O-Ei (front) and Hokusai (middle) work amidst the detritus of leftovers and failed drawings.
© 2014-2015 Hinako Sugiura・MS.HS / Sarusuberi Film Partners

Kicking off our Q&A session following the screening of KanZeOn, Buddhist monk Akinobu Tatsumi (a/k/a Ta2mi) entered the room in full ceremonial garb and slowly approached the front, microphone pressed close to his mouth. The loudspeaker erupted with an extraordinarily percussive beat-boxing routine and the audience burst into delighted applause.

It was a visual-aural juxtaposition that could sum up Japan’s famed incongruities in a nutshell.

Some of these are evident in the gorgeously photographed film, which one audience member termed “exquisite and profound.” Enveloping viewers in the sights and sounds of a mostly ancient Japan, moving evocatively from forest to temple to mountaintop, celebrating the deep resonance of sound within the nation’s cultural identity — its songs, stories, rituals, performances, faiths and traditions — the documentary explores the mysterious bonds between the traditional and modern, between the spiritual and sensory.

Luscombe and Cantwell talk about the special qualities
of sound as expressed in haiku poems.

During the exceptionally long and insightful Q&A session following the screening of Walking with My Mother, a Japanese journalist in the second row repeatedly dried her eyes and quietly blew her nose, seemingly unable to stem her grief over a private loss. Or perhaps it was regret. Both emotions — and many others, from frustration to despair to hope — are evoked in abundance by Katsumi Sakaguchi’s documentary, which focuses on his mother’s late-life journey over a four-year period.

As the film opens, 78-year-old Suchie Sakaguchi is distraught and distracted, over-reliant on tranquilizers and undergoing a personality shift because of them. She has not recovered from her daughter’s death to illness three years earlier, and now her husband has been hospitalized, with diminishing chances of survival. Suchie’s devoted son arrives to help out, and begins recording her life so as to better comprehend her suffering. Soon, the camera becomes Katsumi’s way of coping, as well as of distancing himself, as his father’s health deteriorates and he eventually dies. Suchie’s mental state declines further, and only when she walks — no matter what the hour — does she become less agitated.

The world needs more filmmakers like Dave Boyle. Maybe then we’d have a better chance to stem the tide of xenophobia, monolingualism and cross-cultural misunderstanding. Every one of his five award-winning, independently produced features is bilingual, and his actors hail from a global village of backgrounds.

“A lot of times at Q&As, the first question I’m asked is ‘What is your obsession with Japanese culture?’” said Boyle, in response to the first question he was asked at the Q&A following the screening of his beautifully shot thriller Man from Reno. “I wouldn’t necessarily call it an obsession,” he explained. “I think there’s a lack of diversity in American film. There are very few movies that deal with culture in an off-hand way, the way it is in real life. [Reno] has people from all different backgrounds in it, but that’s not necessarily the point of the movie… It just so happens that I sort of speak Japanese, and in wanting to explore that space in movies, it naturally progressed from that. ”

(Boyle is being modest: he actually speaks Japanese fluently, and his facility with the language has proven crucial to each of his films.)

Fujitani and Boyle

Following the death of her husband, photographer and longtime FCCJ member Greg Davis, from the affects of Agent Orange, Masako Sakata began crafting her first documentary, Agent Orange: A Personal Requiem (2007). It would win the Mainichi documentary film award, the Paris International Environmental Film Festival special prize, and the Earth Vision special jury award, among others, and be followed by Living the Silent Spring (2011), which depicted the struggles and courage of American and Vietnamese children who bear the imprint of Agent Orange and other dangerous chemical agents.

Marking her third appearance at FCCJ with her third documentary film, Journey Without End, Sakata once again impressed the audience with her commitment to exploring controversial subjects with a soft-spoken steeliness, both on screen and in person. After candidly taking aim during the Q&A session at a variety of deserving targets, including the media (“I think the media is promoting the government’s side more and more”), the nuclear power industry (“One of the things that nuclear policy implies is that it is a state secret”) and the LDP (“Not all Japanese are docile subjects, only 25% support them”), she was asked whether the State Secrets Law might have been one reason she shied away from focusing entirely on Fukushima in Journey Without End. “No,” she responded immediately. “I’m not afraid of things like that.”

Pio d’Emilia, FCCJ stalwart and longtime correspondent for Italy’s Sky TG24, set the stage perfectly for the special screening of his film. Recalling that it all began when he was home on a visit in 2011, he told the audience: “The big news story at the time was how many women were being killed each year by men who pretend to love them,” he said. “In that year, close to 150 women were killed because they didn’t do what they were expected to.”

As part of a report related to the abhorrent situation, d’Emilia journeyed to the province of Yunnan, China, in the breathtakingly beautiful foothills of the Himalayas. There, he reported, one could find a centuries-old matriarchal, matrilineal society that is egalitarian and non-violent, the Mosuo. Recognized in 1995 by the United Nations as a “model society” and “precious source of inspiration,” the Mosuo live a peaceful existence with no domestic abuse, rape or femicide.

d'Emilia answers questions.

It isn’t often that a sneak preview Q&A is hijacked by a celebrity news story — but that’s what threatened to happen at our first screening event of the new year. Just days before, Kabukicho Love Hotel star Shota Sometani had announced his marriage to Oscar-nominated actress Rinko Kikuchi, and FCCJ was his first appearance since the news hit the headlines. The Japanese media were thus out in force, descending in huge numbers upon the club, all hoping for a few words about married life. Sometani complied (in spades, considering that the wedding announcement had been so tersely worded), and coverage of his prime sound bites was extensive. (They logged the longest airtime given to any coverage in Japan the next day: 19 minutes, 7 seconds) (!).

Director Ryuchi Hiroki began the Q&A by congratulating him, and Sometani thanked him with a grin. “I just got married, and I am relishing this happiness,” he said. “We don’t have any children yet, but we hope to in the future, and I’ll work hard at being the patriarch.” His choice of “patriarch” was pointed, since Kikuchi is 11 years his senior.

Hiroki, Sometani, Maeda

The Japanese headlines blared “I Can’t Speak English!” quoting megastar Satoshi Tsumabuki during the Q&A session that followed the FCCJ-Embassy of Canada’s sneak preview screening of The Vancouver Asahi. The headlines were unfortunate, since the comment was made as Tsumabuki was describing his reaction to a post-world premiere crush following the film’s September bow in Vancouver, when everyone imagined he was as fluent as the nisei character he plays in the film.

The Q&A session was far deeper than the Japanese news suggested, with Tsumabuki and director Yuya Ishii eager to discuss their feelings about the film’s approach to some sensitive issues. Based on the true story of the scrappy Japanese-Canadian nikkei baseball team that overcame poverty, discrimination and ostracism to become the five-time Pacific Northwest League champions just prior to World War II, the David vs. Goliath tale evokes a little-known era in Canadian history, when an underdog ball team brought Japanese and Canadian fans together in a jubilant celebration of sport and life.