(Box!) A Tale Of Two Friends - Richard

Hello JFFers! The festival has just a few days remaining in Melbourne before moving on down to Hobart, so don't miss out on the chance to see some great films! Today we take a look at the very popular "Box!", from the director of "Detroit Metal City". We are running a special Buy 1 Get 1 Free deal for "Box!", so we hope you take advantage of it! And don't forget to send in your festival reports for the chance to be featured on the blog!

"Sport films tend to follow a fairly standard pattern, and are always good for a bit heart-string pulling in the audience. We’ve already had one sports film this year at the Japanese Film Festival in Feel the Wind, two if you count the competition performance calligraphy of Shodo Girls, both of which featured the underdog battling against the bigger competitors for the ultimate prize. Boxing films have always been at the heart of this genre, possibly due to the protagonist having to literally fight his or her way to the top. Going back to at least 1976′s Rocky and the operatic heights of Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull,  it seems that strapping on the gloves and stepping into the ring is Oscar gold, with the more recent Million Dollar Baby earning four Academy Awards including Best Picture.

Box! distinguishable from Richard E. Kelly’s similarly titled The Box by the handy ‘!’ at the end of the title, follows this grand tradition with the tale of two friends. When high-school student Yuki (Kengo Kora, Solanin) is rescued from some street toughs on a train by Kabu (Hayato Ichihara, Rookies), they realise that they were childhood friends prior to Yuki moving away. Reunited, Kabu convinces Yuki to join the high school boxing club, and eventually compete in regional tournaments. The most feared boxer in their weight division is Inamura (professional boxer Suwa Masashi), and it is only a matter of time before one (or both) of them must face him.

Box! follows a fairly predictable path, with a fairly set path towards the final confrontation between newcomer Yuki and his foe Inamura. By the time they meet, it isn’t so much about winning for Rocky…erm… Yuki, it is about going the distance. So the path they follow is a predictable one, but the real appeal of any sports film are the characters and their ability to illicit emotion from the audience.

Kengo Kora plays completely against his terrific drifter role in Solanin, where he spent most of his energy simply existing. Here he is single-mindedly driven, although is character is similarly singular in his motivations. This isn’t really surprising when your primary foe is non-actor Masashi, whose own performance is restricted to a series of snarls and menacing (and occasionally homoerotic) stares in the direction of our two leads. Only Ichihara, as the all-brawns-no-brains Kabu, is given a bit of depth to play with, especially during his own downslide and the unresolved relationship with the terminally ill Satoko (Mitsuki Tanimura, Summer Wars).

One can be fairly certain of what they are getting when they step into the ring with Box! While this will undoubtedly garner some interest from fans of Toshio Lee and his previous cult hit Detroit Metal City, it merely remains another crowd-pleasing trip of one man going the distance." - Richard Gray, DVD Bits.

Cheers to Richard for the review. You can see his recap on the entire Sydney JFF14 on The Reel Bits, including what his favourite films of the festival where! He managed to catch 18 of the 22 films at the festival, so their is a great range of reviews and thoughts on the festival line-up.

See you at the festival!

(Hanamizuki) Timeless Love - Samson

It was the fastest selling session at JFF14. It sold out in a matter of days and was in high demand. Whether you managed to catch it or not, you surely heard the fuss about "Hanamizuki (Flowering Dogwood)". Did it live up to the hype? Samson Kwok takes a look at the teen romance, which was intruiingly based on a famous love song in Japan. Read on to see what you missed out on!

"Hanamizuki is a personal favourite of mine amongst all the films that I have seen at this year's Japanese Film Festival. It is perhaps not as accomplished in various aspects as a few of the others, but it has managed to touch me and tug at my heartstrings in a way that no other films have done.

Based on the lyrics of a moving love song by Yo Hitoto (played in full at the end of the film), this story about 2 young lovers is set in Hokkaido. Sae is a college girl who falls in a love with Kohei, a handsome young fisherman. The relationship is strong until Sae decides to move to Tokyo to fulfil her dreams. There, she meets Kitami, a talented photographer who happens to share her dreams...

Yui Aragaki gives a wonderful performance as the main character, though at times her stunning good looks actually serve as a distraction. The male lead, Toma Ikuta, is charming as the fisherman whom Sae loves. He starts off boyish but as the story goes on, he becomes a mature young man. There is much chemistry between Aragaki and Ikuta, which is key to the success of the film. The other main character is Junichi Kitami, the photographer Sae meets in Tokyo, played by Osamu Mukai who gives a likeable performance.

Hanamizuki begins with the line "May your love bloom for a hundred years." For the 2 hours that follow, viewers get to go on a journey with the film's 2 main characters, as their relationship develops and matures, turning from pure innocent love to deep undying love. It is quite an emotional journey, consisting of both happiness and bitterness, but bittersweet never feels as good as this.

Director Nobuhiro Doi certainly knows how to draw emotions from the audience. Many scenes are memorable and incredibly touching. My favourites are all ones that involve Sae yelling across a long distance to reach the boat Kohei is on. The dialogues are well-written. One line that impresses me the most is said by Sae's mother: 'Experience love and pursue it without regret'. And that, is exactly what Sae and Kohei did.

Hanamizuki is a beautiful and romantic film. It comes as no surprise that it became a box office hit upon its release in Japan earlier this year. If you have dreamed of love, found love, or been waiting for love, I would wholeheartedly recommend this film to you. I sadly suspect it will not receive a wide release in Australia, and so may I suggest for those of you who live in Sydney (Hanamizuki will only be screening in the Sydney leg of the Japanese Film Festival) to grab this opportunity to see it, hopefully with someone you love." by Samson Kwok

Thanks to Samson for that recap for all of us that missed it. This is a notice, remember to book early for JFF15 as films are going to be selling like Wasabi Hotcakes!!!

See you all in Melbourne!

(Shodo Girls) Martial Crafts - Richard

Today saw 800 plus students and teachers fill Cinema 4 at Event Cinemas all in the name of "Shodo Girls". In what has become a major annual event, our special school screening at the Japanese Film Festival was a massive hit. The session sold out in a matter of days, with tens of schools having to be turned away due to high demand. See what all the fuss is about with the repeat session of "Shodo Girls", this Saturday at 1:00pm. Tickets are still available but will surely be in demand. Richard Gray continues his look at the festival with a review into the martial arts calligraphy piece that is "Shodo Girls".

"The thing that has always excites me about cinema is that I am constantly learning new things. Prior to Shodo Girls, I had no idea that there was such a thing as competition performance calligraphy. Yes, the gentle art of fancy lettering is a no-holds-barred bloodletting that gets pretty fierce. Plus, it’s all based on a true story! Well, except for the bloodletting part. I just got kind of carried away. One has to admit, that theatrical poster (to the left) does make this look like an action epic. That aside, Shodo Girls is one of the most unlikely delights I have seen in quite some time.

Satoko (Riko Narumi) leads her high-school calligraphy club, but struggles to keep the numbers of people up. Their little world is rocked when a new substitute teacher, Ikezawa (Nobuaki Kaneko, Crows Zero II) arrives and brings a fresh new approach to calligraphy. Resigned to the fact that their calligraphy is boring, the girls decide to revitalise their economically ailing town by staging a bit of performance calligraphy. After some false starts, and a Rocky-style training montage with music (the second of the festival, following Feel the Wind), the girls enter themselves in the “Shodo Girls Koshien”, in which they must make calligraphy on giant sheets of paper to music.

The tension between traditional and radical modernisation is a theme that runs strong throughout Japanese cinema, and indeed throughout Japan, and Shodo Girls conveys this tension effectively. Yet in some ways the films can’t escape another cinematic tradition: that of a small team of misfits overcoming great odds at competition level. Indeed, some of the similar themes can be seen in this year’s festival hits Feel the Wind and Solanin to a lesser extent. However, Shodo Girls manages to transcend this cliché to some degree via a cast of terrific characters that the script spends some time getting to know.

The film’s lead, Riko Narumi, has been in a number of similar films over the last few years. Indeed, her most recent film before this one, Bushido Sixteen, is about a rivalry that grows during kendo training, leading up to one final tournament. Her character is at first somewhat overbearing, but thanks to the other members of the team – including singer/actress Mitsuki Takahata, who is absolutely wonderful in the role of the overly earnest Kiyomi, whose beaming enthusiasm inspires the rest of the group – manages to become a rousing leader capable of drawing words on big pieces of paper with the best of them.

Perhaps what is most surprising about Shodo Girls is that it is all based on a true story. Like Happy Family Plan in 2009, Shodo Girls is designed to act as something of a cultural ambassador to the Japanese Film Festival, complete with language learning activities for the school groups who have no doubt bought out the first session of this film. After all, where else but Japan would performance calligraphy be met with such unbridled enthusiasm? It is the perfect antidote to the overbearing high-school glee clubs from High School Musical, Spectacular! or TV’s Glee, and instead takes us on a gentle journey through personal development, complete with male cheerleaders. Along with giving us an insight into the importance of this gentle art of the Japanese psyche, it is designed as a wholesale “feel good” picture that is guaranteed to having people roused and ready to enrol in calligraphy lessons by the end of its swift running time.

Like the art it portrays, Shodo Girls is a film with charms that become more apparent the longer one reflects on them. Director Ryuichi Inomata has a strong history of television film production, and his previous feature film – 2007′s weepy dog-drama A Tale of Mari and Three Puppies, a film I randomly managed to catch on television in Hiroshima late last year – had a distinctly “movie of the week” feel to it. Although Shodo Girls pays a strong debt to these traditions, it is nevertheless a thoroughly enjoyable character-driven piece that is sure to be a crowd-pleaser at this year’s festival circuit." by Richard Gray, DVD Bits.

"Shodo Girls" is a part of our stellar Saturday lineup, which features 8 films across 6 sessions. Come along and experience the 14th Japanese Film Festival, before it moves on to Melbourne. See you at the festival!

(Solanin) A Must See Love Story - Richard

4 Days down, 3 Days to go.

7 Sessions down, 13 Sessions to go.
8 Films down, 14 Films to go.

JFF14 is marching on, with a stellar Friday line-up that could well be the most popular night of the festival. "Confessions" is sold out following on from its submission for contention at the Oscars, and "Solanin" is a fine piece of filmmaking for those who love a good romance tale. Don't miss them tonight. Richard Gray, who is attending nearly every session at the festival, takes a look at the early screening, "Solanin".

"There’s a line in a song from the late Jeff Buckley that goes “Too young to hold on, and too old to just break free and run”. For anybody who feels trapped or obligated by the circumstances of their life, their job or their family, these words resonate deep inside us. They could also be readily applied to Takahiro Miki’s debut film Solanin, where music is represented as a powerful inspirational force for change. Based on the popular manga series by Inio Asano, first published in Shogakukan’s Weekly Young Sunday in 2005 and 2006, the film adaptation was released earlier this year in Japanese cinemas. Thanks to the 14th Japanese Film Festival in Australia (JFF14), Australian audiences now get a chance to enjoy this theatrically as well.

Meiko (Aoi Miyazaki, The Summit: A Chronicle of the Stones - JFF14) and Taneda (Kengo Kora, Box! - JFF14) have been together since university. It has been several years since they graduated, and they both find themselves at a loose end. Meiko is stuck in a dead-end office job, and Taneda knows that his true passion is playing music with his friends (although they are reluctant to actually plan in front of an audience). When Meiko quits her job in the hopes of “finding herself”, Taneda worries about what will happen to them financially and his dreams of making a living from his music. The pair fall headlong into the future, not knowing what it will bring.

Not since Toy Story 3 earlier this year have I found myself openly weeping so frequently during a film. Perhaps this is because that all people of a certain post-university age will have an instant connection with Solanin. Completely capturing the vibe of a generation lost in a sea of choice, but simultaneously having no particular goal to strive for, Solanin taps into the angst and uncertain future that all young adults around the world share.

The theme resonates in particular with this particular generation of Japanese youth, who are largely free of the same expectations that their parent’s generation endured (and is explored from two different perspectives in JFF14 stable-mate Hanamizuki). Following the Japanese economic downturn of the 1990s, it wouldn’t make sense for many to so carelessly give up ‘sensible’ working careers in favour of pursuing ‘frivolous’ dreams.  Yet this is something that is common to many around the world now, who find themselves in a post-global financial crisis state wondering if the pursuit of money is worth the hassle.

Don’t mistake this for a cookie-cutter coming-of-age drama, however, as there is genuine weight and emotion to be found here. While not driven by a overly dramatic narrative or indie rock attitude as some of the marketing might suggest, much of the exertion of the film (and of the characters) is used in managing their day-to-day existence. Solanin is content to observe these characters as they are. Wonderful characters they are too, with the lead performance by Aoi Miyazaki (recently featured in the JFF Newsletter, Issue 6) one of the standouts of the year. At veteran in the industry at the tender age of 24, she earned a Best Actress Award at the Cinemanila International Film Festival for her lead performance in Harmful Insect.

Her performance here is filled with a quiet strength: we first meet her at the depth of depression and (without spoilers) we leave her at a much more accepting place, with the young actress showing incredible range and nuance. Kengo Kora (also featured in the JFF Newsletter, Issue 7) , who we are soon to see in the Haruki Murakami adaptation Norwegian Wood, also convinces and endears as the often slack but always lovable Taneda. During the moments he is not on screen, his absence is keenly felt, particularly through the powerful supporting roles of band-mates Kenta Kiritani (Beck) and real-life bassist Yoichi Kondo.

Solanin is easily one of the must-see entries at this year’s Japanese Film Festival. Emotionally buoyed by a strong soundtrack and a cast of real characters who just get by on getting by, it will be a cynical person indeed who leaves the cinema without at least taking a second look at their life and wondering where it is all going next." by Richard Gray, DVD Bits.

Thanks again to Richard Gray. You can stay up-to-date with all of his coverage of JFF14 on the blog TheReelBits, which is a great chance to catch up on the films you may have missed. If you do manage to catch "Solanin" and are wowed by the great Kengo Kora, remember he stars in Saturday's "Box!" of which we are running a special BUY 1 GET 1 FREE deal. See details here of this great offer, and bring your friend along this weekend! 

See you at the festival!

Classic Japanese Cinema - Jung

Another couple of busy sessions took place last night as the 14th Japanese Film Festival continued its march forward. We hope you are all enjoying the experience, and most of all the films. Today we have a first time entry from KOFFIA (Korean Film Festival in Australia) Director of Programming, Jungyeob Ji. Jung shares his wealth of knowledge of classic Japanese cinema with a bit of a history piece behind the original 'Zero Focus' and other thrillers of the time.  Read on to solve the mystery!

"I don’t really know much about Isshin Inudo. Unfortunately I haven’t seen any of his films, but "Zero Focus" is based on the novel by the one of the greatest Japanese crime mystery writers, Matsumoto Seicho. You might not have heard the name, Matsumoto Seicho, but if you happen to follow a Japanese TV drama series, you have probably seen some of his work. I am not sure exactly how many times "Zero Focus" has been adapted either for TV or screen. As far as I know "Zero Focus" directed in 1961 by Nomura Yoshitaro is the only one; incidentally Yoji Yamada apparently started his career as an assistant director to Nomura Yoshitaro, and also co-wrote the script of the film.

Nomura Yoshitaro’s "Zero Focus" is a great film and a psychological thriller at that. He was a prolific Matsumoto Seicho adapter. In fact, he closely collaborated with Seicho himself. Their best collaborative work is arguably "Castle of Sand" (1974) which is also considered as Nomura Yoshitaro’s best film. The film, obviously, was based on Seicho’s novel of the same title; there is also a 2005 TV drama adaptation of "Castle of Sand" if you want the modernized one.

In "Zero Focus", a newly wed man disappears. His wife goes on searching for him, but the search becomes more than just a man-hunt. Her own investigation reveals to her that he is not exactly what she thought he was. Matsumoto Seicho, however, never lets his novels become a simple whodunit story. He is profoundly interested in human behavior and motives behind crime. Also he never forgets to make his novels relevant in contemporary society. Especially, this is prominent in ‘the inspector Imanishi’ series.

In "Castle of Sand" (read a great review of it here), devils breed a devil, and a man tries to escape from that vicious circle, but in his desperation, he murders the only human being who ever showed him kindness and generosity in the world. For detectives, the investigation is an dead-end. The clues seem all simply isolated without any connection to the other. But as they persistently reach to where each clue independently leads them to, the brutal social layers of post-war Japan is unraveled.

 

Matsumoto Seicho                           Nomura Yoshitaro

Through his novels, Seicho shows primordial human goodness, and evilness at the same time, but when the relentless fear of this very evil overcomes human goodness, his characters resort to violence. In this sense, Seicho isn’t just a mystery novel writer with social consciousness. He is also a writer who deeply engages with the theme of human bondage by using a crime mystery genre. In his novels, a murder is not just there simply to be solved, but to be contemplated." by Jungyeob Ji, Hardboiled Land

Thanks to that terrific piece from Jung, another welcome contributor to the JFF Blog. Remember to head out tonight to catch the remake of "Zero Focus", starring a wealth of Japanese acting talent, with the likes of Ryoko Hirosue ("Departures" - 12th JFF, "Flowers" - 14th JFF), Miki Nakatani ("Flavor of Happiness" - 14th JFF) and Tae Kimura ("All Around Us" 13th JFF). It will be a great night and we hope to see you there!

See you at the festival!

(Feel The Wind) Catch A Fan Favourite - Richard

The entries just keep getting better here on the JFF blog, with a great piece from Richard Gray today on "Feel the Wind". The film has been winning awards for both the first time director and the great story, and is being touted as the Japanese "Chariots of Fire". It is a fun piece, and for that reason it will screen in 5 regions around Australia, second only to "About Her Brother" which featured across all 6 territories. Read why below!

"The Hakone Ekiden is one of the biggest university athletic events in Japan. Run every year on January 2 and 3, the two-day relay marathon follows a course of almost 220 kilometres between Tokyo and Hakone and is a matter of massive prestige for the universities involved. Seasoned writer Sumio Omori, who became the youngest winner of the Kuniko Mukoda Award for screenwriting, uses this difficult course to make his directorial debut with Feel the Wind, a fictionalised account of a struggling team to overcome great odds. Winner of Best New Director at the 19th Japan Movie Critic Awards and the 31st Yokohama Film Festival, Feel the Wind is the kind of film engineered to make audiences feel good.

University student Haiji (Keisuke Koide, from the blockbuster "Rookies" and "Cyborg She") is a former runner whose career has slid due to injury. He had all but given up on the dream of running the Hakone Ekiden until he meets elite runner Kakeru (Kento Hayashi), who has left running due to a fight with his coach. Gathering eight other housemates, who have never run before, they form the necessary team of 10 athletes to fulfil Haiji’s dream of qualifying for the ekiden (marathon relay). Most of them are not up to the challenge, but the rag-tag team of roommates are determined to help Haiji fulfil his seemingly impossible dream.

Sports movies are always popular with crowds, and there is something about marathon running that seems to particularly appeal to the masochist is all of us. From at least "Chariots of Fire" onwards, which was admittedly about sprinting taken to balletic heights, track athletics have been taken as a convenient outlet for personal pain and anguish. Everybody on the team has something to work through, from Haiji’s injury to the manga-obsessed Prince (Yuichi Nakamura) and his lack of self-worth, and by the end of Feel the Wind, we get the impression that their accomplishments in the race have also worked through some of those “issues” as well. As the distributor Shochiku succinctly puts its “Through the training and the experience, each member finds their inner strength and the joy of feeling the wind”. Wind joy, that’s what it’s all about.

Feel the Wind misses a few steps during the middle act, which drags on a little too long, and by the end of the marathon itself audiences may feel like they have run the entire distance. Perhaps this is a side-effect of the bookish origins, as the film is an adaptation of Shion Miura’s novel that centres on the race. One would imagine we get much more personal insight into the personal pain of the competitors in the novel, although this highly emotional film borders on the melodramatic at times. However, Feel the Wind has that "Rocky" spirit, without Sylvester Stallone’s endless monologues to nobody in particular.

It’s appeal is indicated by Feel the Wind‘s Top 10 rankings in Japanese Film of 2009 lists in both the Kinema Junpo  and Yokohama Film Festival. Indeed, the latter puts it in such fine company as the brilliant "Love Exposure", Japanese Film Festival stable-mates "Dear Doctor" and "Villon's Wife", and one of my personal favourite films of the year, "Summer Wars". On the Brisbane leg of the 14th Japanese Film Festival, this was voted an audience favourite. This will no doubt connect with audiences, but just be prepared to watch a lot of running." by Richard Gray, DVD Bits.

Feel the Wind screens on Thursday, and is one of the few films in the festival that the whole family can come along to. It is rated PG so feel free to bring the little ones along for a trip to Japan, well at least for a couple of hours!

See you at the festival!

(Confessions) Nakashima Confesses - Joseph

Welcome back to the JFF Blog! We have been so busy in the office that it's taken a while to update here, but we promise you lots of content over the next 2 weeks as we lead up to the festival. Here we have another entry from a JFF volunteer, this time its Joseph who takes a look at the creative works of Tetsuya Nakashima.

"This year’s Japanese Film Festival brings to audiences in Sydney and Melbourne the most recent film by award-winning director Tetsuya Nakashima, Confessions. Nakashima-san adapted Confessions (Kokuhaku) from a best-selling and critically acclaimed mystery novel written by Kanae Minato.  The premise is irresistible: a teacher, on the verge of retiring, confronts her class with the revelation that two students among them murdered her young daughter, triggering a slow-burn cycle of revenge and retribution.  The movie moves swiftly from a whodunit, to a psychological thriller to a full-blown, heart-stopping, revenge tragedy.  

Confessions will put you on the edge of your seat.

It will make you squirm.

It will affect you.

It will impress you.

 "Confessions"

Confessions stars the brilliant Takako Matsu, who is also featured in Villon’s Wife, playing in this year’s festival and who some readers may have seen in K-20: Legend of the Mask at the 13th JFF.  A crop of talented young actors are also cast in Confessions and Nakashima wrings incredible performances from his entire cast.  The film has been submitted as Japan’s entry for Best Foreign Language Film for 2010, and it may well follow the path of Departures (12th JFF) which won in that category in 2008.

Cinemagoers from previous years’ Japanese Film Festivals may recognise Nakashima as the director of other brilliant and moving features, including Memories of Matsuko (12th JFF).  Matsuko, like its predecessor in Nakashima’s filmmaking oeuvre, Kamikaze Girls (10th JFF), showcased the director’s talent for merging the stark reality of gritty and confronting issues with a fairytale-like quality. 

 "Memories of Matsuko"

Kamikaze Girls achieved this synthesis by means of the distinctive appearances of its lead actresses, the gorgeous Kyoko Fukada (yes, here the writer betrays his bias) and Japanese-American Anna Tsuchiya, the fantastic costume designs (including fully realised rococo trappings) and mix of animation with live action storytelling.  The animation featured less heavily in Memories of Matsuko, which used creative musical numbers, clever cutaways and editing, skilled lamp-shading of character tropes and elaborately stylised sets and costumes to imbue the movie with a dark fairytale quality.  Then, of course, there are times when all of the stylistic cues are briefly stripped away, making the emotions and tensions onscreen suddenly hit the audience with a very visceral thud. 

"Kamikaze Girls"

Confessions is a very different sort of movie.  In a sense, Nakashima is playing against type, subverting the expectations of his viewers by presenting the hardboiled, emotionally exacting elements present in his previous work, without much of the overt whimsy seen therein.  Nevertheless, the figurative and the fantastic which are the hallmark of Nakashima’s work find their way into Confessions by other means.  Some scenes are slowed down and the point of view is inverted, making otherwise mundane events and occurrences take on a significance and importance that reminds the audience that the surreal is never far removed from the reality.

Much of the film is shot with heavily saturated light pouring through the frame, unconventionally focused, slowed down or with unusual framing devices, such as mirrors, the display on a camcorder or (I kid you not) a refrigerator.  As well as again creating a dreamlike environment, it makes it hard to find a reliable perspective as an audience.  These techniques and this effect lend themselves handily to a morality tale in which the moral and the side of right are almost impossible to divine.  In this way, a visual ambiguity reflects the thematic ambiguity of the story’s compass. 

Nakashima Tetsuya 

If you are looking for clarity and a strictly defined sense of right and wrong, madness and sanity, you will not find easy answers in this film.  Each and every major player is at once possessed of each of these things and their individual pain and instability makes them ricochet against one another with devastating effect.  Overall, viewers have to struggle to maintain their bearings, with the result that you will question until the end just what each character is truly capable of doing.

Confessions challenges its viewers to think and to look deeper into the interactions and motivations evident onscreen. Confessions manages to say a lot about contemporary society, not just in Japan, but globally.  It neatly portrays issues of bullying, prejudice, viral fear, familial breakdown and criminal responsibility in the space of 105 minutes." - Joseph Sampson

Thanks to that wonderful analysis by Joseph, dont forget that if you want to contribute to the blog you can go in the running to win some cool prizes, so get in touch with us at assistantcoordinator@jpf.org.au if you are interested. Don't forget tickets for the Sydney leg of the festival are now on sale, and if you need any questions answered look out for our festival info booth located at Event Cinemas. We will be there every afternoon during the weeks running up to the festival.  

See you at the festival!

Nakashima-san makes movies which are complex and topical but he is smart enough to provide a buffer for the audience along most of the ride.  The surreal composition of the movie can cushion the audience, distracting somewhat from the sometimes painful events of the story.  They function like a visual and aural equivalent of ‘Nadsat’, shielding the audience to some extent from the confronting reality of what is happening.  At the same time, though, the merging of fairytale aspects with gritty and tense narratives occurs without the surreal elements seeming forced or lacking in integration with the overall work.