A pair of star crossed platonic lovers take flight from society in Isao Fujisawa’s surrealist road trip through 70s Japan. Channelling the avant-garde spirit of the American New Wave, Bye, Bye Love establishes a dazzling universe of psychedelic poetics to narrate Utamaro and Giko’s search for freedom and liberation in the free love era. Nuanced depictions of gender fluidity and queer relationships mark it out as a seldom-seen gem of countercultural cinema
A quiet, atmospheric portrait of an elderly store owner in the small town of Yagi, Kyoto Prefecture. Yu Araki’s camera carefully observes the curiously named Mr. Yagi’s daily routine and interactions with local customers during the last autumn season for his shop, which is no longer in business. Documenting the passage of time in parallel with processes of depopulation, the title Tempo conjures a double meaning; playing on the Japanese word “tenpo (店舗)” which means “store”.
Films by Dani ReStack & Sheilah ReStack, Cooper Battersby & Emily Vey Duke, Adam Khalil, Zack Khalil & Jackson Polys, Anya Tsyrlina & Sid Iandovka and Heidrun Holzfeind
History is what’s happening. It’s constantly unfurling never static and always in flux. Rather than being resigned to it, it’s incumbent upon us to shape and mould it into the gooey, slimy substance that we want our world to resemble. The time is now, the place is everywhere, all at once…
Q&A with filmmakers Emily Vey Duke, Anya Tsyrlina & Sid Iandovka and Heidrun Holzfeind
This adults-only screening pairs two erotic fairytales by women artists. Niki de Saint Phalle’s rarely-screened 1976 feature Un rêve plus long que la nuit is a fairytale trip through the female erotic psyche. Young Camelia, searching for the meaning of life, death and love, finds herself transported to such unpredictable settings as a dreamlike orgy or a raging battlefield. Mari Terashima’s 1989 short Hatsukoi is a silent, gestural film of gothic symbolism, a story of first love that never comes true.
Naomi Kawase is amongst the most renowned of contemporary Japanese filmmakers and Genpin is a sensually shot documentary revelation. In the heart of a dense Okazaki city forest, we follow Dr. Tadashi Yoshimura, midwives and expectant mothers during four seasons at a natural childbirth clinic. Employing centuries old practices that often run askew from contemporary medicine, Kawase’s tender film oscillates between the intimate moments of joy, pain and doubt in honouring this way of life.
The title Genpin recalls the words of the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu: ‘The valley spirit never dies / It is named the mysterious woman (genpin).’ In the film, Yoshimura reflects on the relationship between childbirth and death, and observes—more as a human being than a doctor—that to deny death is to deny life. Life born into this world, life that ends at the moment of birth, life that ends before birth. Lives do not cease as a solitary life but are carried on by the species, and continue. Through the flux of the Japanese seasons, Naomi Kawase entered the circle of the women giving birth at the Yoshimura Clinic and the world of Dr. Yoshimura—who has spent 40 years on the path of natural childbirth—and wove the footage she shot with her own 16mm camera into this film.
A dive, the midday sunlight filtering down through the water. The air in her lungs has to last until she can dislodge the abalone. Dives like these have been carried out in Japan for over 2000 years by the Ama-San, that literally translates “women of the sea”.
A pick ‘n’ mix bag of some of the best short animations from all over the world – all dialogue-free and specially selected to delight the whole family, from age three upwards.