Nippon Connection 2020 - Day 2

For this second day of the Nippon Connection 2020 Festival, the event we wanted to follow was a Lecture by Goro KOYAMA entitled: The Secret Of Sound In Cinema, dealing with the art of Foley, creating and recording the sound of many things you hear in movies, but also TV-series and video games. Not to be confused with the movie's soundtrack (watch the 2016 documentary Score: A Film Music Documentary for more on that one).

Nippon Connection 2020 - Day 1

Let us try something new this year!
We now have less time to watch movies and even less to go to Film Festivals. On top of that, travels are restricted in this COVID-19 period so attending movie Festivals is out of the question anyway.
Some of them have moved online for this year's edition, which is for us a renewed opportunity to attend at our pace and from home. We are thus here today to cover the Nippon Connection 2020 Online Festival specialized in, you guess, Japanese Cinema. We have always wanted to visit it and never could. It seems a nice alternative to our beloved Udine Far East Film Festival, which will also be online this year and which we also plan to cover.
We will post reviews about the movies we see as usual when we attend Festivals, and maybe publish a report at the end, but we also wanted to try and report on the Festival on a daily basis. Here we go for our first report!

Nippon Connection 2020 - Day 6

For the sixth and last day of the Nippon Connection Festival, we have attended a panel and watched one movie each. The topic of the panel discussion was: "The Post-COVID Future Of Japan’s Film Industry" and we definitely didn't want to miss it.
The movies we have seen are the interesting Documentary Ainu – Indigenous People Of Japan by Naomi MIZOGUCHI and the very funny Mockumentary Extro by Naoki MURAHASHI, reminding us of others in the sub-genre like Ski Jumping Pairs: Road to Torino 2006 or Big Man Japan.
You can find below our video comment on those three events, as well as some pictures.

Nippon Connection 2020 - Day 5

The fifth day of the Nippon Connection 2020 was our busiest day with two movies and an event.
The first movie was The Journalist by Michihito FUJII, based on the book with the same title by journalist Isoko MOCHIZUKI, who is also portrayed in the documentary film i -DOCUMENTARY OF THE JOURNALIST-, in the Docu Section of the Festival, and also present at the Far East Film Festival where we will try to see it at the end of the month.
The event was a demonstration of Rakugo: Japanese Comedy With Katsura Sunshine. It was nice to discover this 400 year-old form of Japanese Comedy, performed in English by maybe the only non-Japanese doing it in the World. To discover this Art like we did, you can have a look at Katsura Sunshine's Rakugo YouTube channel, his Facebook page or the page for his Broadway show.
Finally the second movie, A Life Turned Upside Down: My Dad’s An Alcoholic by Kenji KATAGIRI, turned out to be the best we have seen in the Festival so far. Dramatic, sad but with some hilarious moments.
You can find below our video comment on those three events, as well as some pictures.

A Life Turned Upside Down: My Dad’s An Alcoholic

Nippon Connection 2020 - Day 4

In lieu of event on this fourth day of the Nippon Connection Festival, I watched a collection of short films directed by women and gathered under the title Constant Metamorphosis – Independent Animated Shorts By Women.

Nippon Connection 2020 - Day 3

On this third day of the Nippon Connection Festival, we couldn't follow any event, so let us talk straight about the movie we watched: the docu-fiction Family Romance, LLC by Werner Herzog, director of the classics Aguirre Wrath of Gods and Fitzcarraldo with Klaus Kinski, more recently Queen of the Desert with Nicole Kidman and the Documentaries Grizzly Man, Into the Inferno and Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World. He also recently acted in the Disney Star Wars TV-series The Mandalorian.

Kinta and Ginji (2019)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2019
	Director: Takuya Dairiki, Takashi Miura
	Actors: Takuya Dairiki, Takashi Miura
	Country: J
	Genre: Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 09.06.2020, NCF2020, 14" computer screen
Synopsis: Kinta and Ginji are best buddies. Sometimes they get on each other’s nerves, but they don’t hold a grudge for long. They are way too straightforward for that. Every other day, they meet up and roam the fields and forests, lie around in the grass, or make music. Just two normal guys – but one of them is a tanuki (racoon dog), the other a robot. Things get even more curious when other talking entities and objects appear!
Review: This is a very experimental movie presented in the VISIONS section of the Nippon Connection 2020 Festival. Basically two friends shooting scenes with a miniDV camera. This explains the lack of everything and the poor image quality. But that's not the point, in fact the image quality is irrelevant. Early on, this movie reminded me of Quentin Tarantino, because of the dialogs about small things in life, and which will have no impact on the main story whatsoever. This is something which is lacking in most movie, because every dialog has to contribute, but this characteristic made Tarantino's success. The whole of Kinta and Ginji is small talk in fact, and a weakness is that it doesn't have a main story, which makes it harder to watch as it goes. There is some conclusion (spoiler, highlight to read: they enter a fog so they think they died and then they come back), but it hardly makes a difference. But there are some hilarious scenes, I will come back to that later. The second connection I made is with the French Electro band Daft Punk (Dog and Robot costumes, the Homework album someone?), in particular their 2006 arty movie Electroma, which they released at the top of their fame, has a big budget and looks good, but is even less entertaining than Kinta and Ginji and not funny at all. So the concept of the movie is funny, as are the cheap costumes, but the best are the dialogs and sometimes juxtaposition of scenes. I have collected the favorite two scenes from each of the viewers from our group: Jo: the little song about peaches and insects made me burst of laughter, as did the little dance the dog does. Raf: the discussion about turtles and the Rocky movie (do their really breathe from their butts?) and the unexpected apparition from a stray rhinoceros, apparently filmed through the bars of a zoo Rudi: the static and narrow shots composing 95% of the movie, and the fact that there is just a handful of scenes depicting some kind of civilization. The rest takes place in deserts or forests. Alex: the dam scene, and ow they insult each other while keeping the same tone. In the end, we concluded that the movie is as if it were made by children: enjoying little things in life like polishing rocks or climbing trees, lying to each other to appear better, and telling more or less interesting stories one after the other with no precise goal. Warning: for hardcore fans of Japanese experimental Cinema only!
Rating: 4 /10

An Ant Strikes back (2019)

	Also Known As: Ari jigoku tengoku (original)
	Year of first release: 2019
	Director: Tsuchiya Tokachi
	Actors: -
	Country: J
	Genre: Documentary
	Conditions of visioning: 08.06.2020, NCF2020, 14" computer screen
Synopsis: The case of a moving company sales agent who decides to no longer accept illegal employment contract clauses and a humiliating work environment.
Review: This is the first movie we watched at the Nippon Connection Online Festival, and in that case it is a nice re-immersion in Japanese culture. A documentary that shows us a life far from what we know in the Western Countries. People working hard for the love of their company. But what happens when this company follows the principles of American ones like Wallmart or McDonalds? This leads to abuses that few people other than the Japanese would take: unpaid extra-hours (and I mean 40 hours a week extra!), holidays only if compensated with extra-hours, you have to pay for anything you break like a paper shredder but even a car, and not mentioning the racism and discrimination. It is hard to understand why the guy just doesn't quit, but in fact this is what is noble from him, not simply accept the situation, give up and leave others suffer after him. The main character that we follow is an example of courage and determination, even facing an adversary much bigger than him. One also wonders: what does the law do against such obviously illegal abuses? In the end it does its job, but it wouldn't have happened with years of fight from a supportive Union. I hope not all companies in Japan are like that. The Documentary itself is more of an advertisement for this story, something the main character promised to do to a friend who died from overworking (like one person a day in Japan as we learn). Nothing special about the editing or storytelling, rather straight-forward, and it could probably have been shortened to 1 hour for the same impact. So I cannot rate the movie-making skills very high, even though the topic is heart-breaking, and deserved to be broadcasted more, in Japan and outside.
Rating: 4 /10