"Special Screening of Director Kosai Sekine" Film and video are communication tools for deep dialogue with people [Director's Interview Vol.245]

Communication tools for deep dialogue with people

Q: What kind of videos/movies would you like to make in the future?

Sekine: I'm currently working on various film projects and it's a lot of fun. If possible, I would like to continue doing this for the rest of my life. I want to do something that deals with society, and I'm also thinking about what I can do to address environmental issues. On the other hand, I also want to try mystery, although it's a completely different genre. Actually, this time's ``ZENON'' is a short story that I made precisely because I wanted to do a mystery.

But becoming a film director is not my goal. Movies and videos are communication tools that allow us to have deep conversations with people. I think that is a very interesting method of expression.

Q: Lastly, please tell us about the directors and films that have influenced you.

Sekine: If I were to pick the top three in my life, number one would be `` The Way '' (54). While you can feel the sadness of humanity, there is also a fundamental strength within that, making it a film with a great deal of substance that questions humanity itself. This movie has played a huge role in my life, and I'm surprised by that fact.

I also really like `` Underground '' (1995), which depicts political stories from a radical and free perspective. What particularly surprised me was how the connection between humans and their hometown was expressed in such an amazing way. I was shown in an expression I had never seen or heard before how human beings need a place to return to. If you look back at it after a disaster like the nuclear power plant accident, it will make you think deeply about returning home.

The last one is Wim Wenders' `` Paris, Texas '' (84). When I saw this movie, I really wanted to go to America, and I actually went there. I wanted to go to Paris, Texas, which is featured in the movie, so I took a cheap long-distance bus called Greyhound, but it was the mid-1990s and there were no Asian people there. Since I went to such a place as a Japanese person, everyone at the motel was surprised. I explained the reason why I came, but to begin with, everyone knew nothing about Paris, Texas . A movie named after their city won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, but they don't even know about the Cannes Film Festival. I was really shocked to see so little harvest (lol). It was a movie that I became obsessed with, including those memories. But this was the first time I realized that being a movie director seemed like a lot of fun. At the same time, I also thought that I would never be able to make such a great movie (lol).

Kosai Sekine

Filmmaker and film director. With cross-cultural storytelling and a reflective visual style, he directs and produces video works in a wide variety of genres, including feature films, short films, commercials, music videos, and art installations. Born in Tokyo to parents who are plastic artists. While enrolled in the Department of Philosophy at Sophia University, he became interested in photography during a short study abroad in the United States and decided to become a video producer. After The Graduate, I started working as a production assistant at an advertising video production company in 2000. In 2005, he released his first short film, ``RIGHT PLACE,'' which won the Best Foreign Film Award at the New York Short Film Festival. The following year, along with the trailer work he directed for the British Raindance Film Festival, he won the top award in three categories, including the Grand Prix, at the Young Directors Awards at the Cannes Advertising Festival, and was ranked number one in the world's new director ranking by the British magazine SHOTS. It becomes the rank. After becoming independent in 2008, he increased his international recognition by directing many short films, commercials, and music videos both domestically and internationally, and then joined Stink, a video production company with offices in several cities around the world. HONDA's ``Ayrton Senna 1989'', which he worked on in 2014, became the advertising video work that won the most awards in the world that year, including the Grand Prix in the Titanium category at the Cannes Advertising Festival. In 2018, he directed and wrote his first full-length feature film, ``Just Being Alive, Love.'' ” (Original work: Yukiko Motoya) has been released. This film, which depicts the conflict experienced by a woman with hypersomnia, won the Shindo Kaneto Silver Award, which is given to new film directors, and the Jury Award at the Kino Tayo Film Festival in France. In the same year, the feature-length documentary film ``Tower of the Sun,'' which began at the Osaka Expo and questioned the structural problems of modern society, was also released. Currently, he is directing a variety of videos including feature films, and continues to create with the social art production group NOddIN, which releases works with themes such as nuclear power issues, anti-war issues, and refugee issues. ing. Co-founder of video production company NION.

Interview and text: Fumio Koda

Editorial staff and writer for CINEMORE. My favorite movies are ``The Goonies'' and ``Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.'' My recent favorites are 4K digitally remastered classics by Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu.

Photography: Kazunari Aoki

" Special Screening of Director Kosai Sekine "

Screening period: September 9th (Friday) – October 6th (Thursday)

Venue: Shimokita-Ekimae-Cinema “K2”

Address: 2-21-22 Kitazawa, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo (tefu)lounge 2F

Screened works:

“ZENON” (2021/30 minutes)

“Until she wakes up from her dream” (2021/30 minutes)

"Nighthawks in Bangkok" (2012/22 minutes)

“Tailor’s Circus Cut the Fish” (2020/66 minutes)

“Moriyama Mirai Re:Incarnation” (2020/127 minutes)

“ Tower of the Sun ” (2018/112 minutes)

“ Just being alive, love. ” (2018/109 minutes)

" BUNGO ~Modest Desire~'Sushi' " (2012/37 minutes)