On (im)possible futures

Films by Maiko Endo, Shigeo Arikawa, Rei Hayama, Yoriko Mizushiri and Koi Tanaka

Event Slider

Japan has a reputation of being futuristic with its embrace of technology, while it is also grappling with whether it will have much of a future at all with its low birth rates and an ageing population.

This programme brings together works that speculate on what may lie ahead and what skills and tools we should retain –from collectivity to imagination– for the times ahead.

Offering a glimpse into the exhilarating world of Japanese artists’ moving image, ‘Engawa Films’ seeks to stake a place for its existence in Japanese contemporary art and cinema.

Duration: 90 min.


'Jizai', by Maiko Endo

2024
Japão, 15’
In Japanese and French with Portuguese subtitles

Working with a robot integrated with him, a boy tries to make a new body part to expand the limits of human abilities. The boy is communicating to two other kids simultaneously via the specially made glasses. Their visions reflect the real world and also the cyber world. Everything seems like connected each other, but…

Credits

Writer, Editor, Producer and Director

Maiko Endo

Cast

Yotaro Endo
Maya Schmidt
Tenma Hayakawa

Director of Photography

Naoki Noda

Set Designer

TakayukI Mitsuizumi
Natsuki Fujioka

Lighting Director

Yuki Maeshima

Production Sound Mixer

Mikisuke Shimadzul

Still Photographer

Nojyo

Sound Designer

Nicolas Becker

Re-recording Mixer

Naoko Asari

Music and Sound Effects

Takashi Hattori

VFX Artist

Hiroaki Hotta

Colorist

Mari Yasuda

Title and Credits Designer

Masaaki Kuroyanagi

Festival Coordinator

Nanako Tsukidate

Publicist

Gloria Zerbinati

Co-producers

Harumi Kusumi
Junki Nakagawa
Naoki Noda

Executive Producers

Masahiko Inami
Tomo Suzuki

Supervisor

Masahiko Inami

Special Cooperation

Shunji Yamanaka

Cooperation

The University of Tokyo
Waseda University
Toyohashi University of Technology
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS-France)
The University of Electro-Communications

Executive Production

JST ERATO
Inami JIZAI-Body Project
Tomo Suzuki Japão

Production

3 Eyes Film a Fool

Associated Producers

Art & Science Communication Lab
Jizaie inc.
Three-Films


'Am I dreaming of others, or are other dreaming of me?', de Shigeo Arikawa

2014, 10’41’’
Japan, Netherlands
No dialogues

A film about "a dream". A dream exists in vague borders between I and others, life and death, the present and the future. A dream metamorphoses these borders into a spiral and leads two things to the gapless continuity – circular movement. This work is the second film of the series called ‘PIXCANNING’. The word ‘PIXCANNING’ is coined from ‘pix(picture/pixel)’ and ‘scanning’. It's a method to scoop up elements that pass through the meshes of recognition when images appear or images are constructed.


'Their Bird', by Rei Hayama

2010 – 2012, 13’08”
Shot in 8mm film
Subtitles in English

Their bird is based on Hayama’s childhood memories of the forests of central Japan, where she often visited during vacations. As an adult, Hayama returned to these forests again with her sister, and together they made this film. One pretending to be a bird and the other became a photographer with 8mm camera for the first time. Hayama unfolds the enigmatic story of a human visiting the forest and striving to become a bird. By the end of the film, however, the two will have to leave the mountain. In the final scene as they descend the mountain, an area inhabited by humans can be seen below.

In Hayama’s early works with film, the film often appears to crawl around the screen as if the film medium itself has a single consciousness, as if searching for where the life of the story lies. This is a transfer of the film itself, the medium of the image, onto film using the photogram technique, which Man Ray and others also used extensively.


'Futon', by Yoriko Mizushiri

Japan, 2012 
No dialogues

Wrapped in the futon, memories are coming up to the mind, the future is imagined, senses are recaptured, physical feelings as a woman are deeply ingrained. Everything melts pleasantly all together. In the futon, the body wonders seeking for these sense.  

Credits

Director and animation

Yoshiko Mizushiri

Music

"Dark End" (original song from Mari Fukuhara's album "karakuri" rearranged by Seiji Toda) 


'A Haircut by 9 Hairdressers at Once (Second Attempt)', by Koki Tanaka

2010
USA, Japan, 28’
In English with Portuguese Subtitles

«Temporarily Collaborating 

There is documentation of a number of collaborative projects undertaken at different sites by people from various professions: five pianists attempt to compose a score together while playing the piano all at once; nine hairdressers collaborate on cutting a model’s hair; five potters attempt to make a single pot; five poets try to compose a single poem together. 

Why did I choose people who make things to be the participants in these projects? To do something collaboratively is an ethical proposition. Suppressing individual ego, one must try to perform the work in accordance with others. In this process, the participants must temporarily set aside the ideas, approaches, and practices they have cultivated to that point, and figure out how to compromise with others. You could say the collaborative process is one of negotiation and compromise. The microsociety that results from collaboration requires of its participants a certain kind of ethics. Adhering to the form of these ethics may even require one’s own transformation. Such is collaboration: both self and other must change in order to achieve consensus. 

Perhaps the reason I wanted the participants to be people who make things is because I thought those with creative practices would be best suited for addressing this ethical form. Each according to their own approaches, the participants all give form to music, hairstyles, clay, and language. The differences in how they handle the materials express the differences between each person. They also begin to reflect differences in ethos. In this way, as they move their hands, the participants give shape to society itself. What is documented here is the process of this kind of social sculpture, and as such it is also a document of the failure of that process. The process of having multiple participants give shape to society necessarily entails failure. We repeat a process of trial and error. This is also a current issue related to how we can continue rethinking democracy.» 

Koki Tanaka (March, 2014) 

Credits

Director

Koki Tanaka

Participants

Victor A. Camarillo
Kristie Hansen
Nikki Mirsaeid
Olga Mybovalova
Sandra Osorio
Anthony Pullen
Brian Vu
Nicole Korth
Erik Webb
Karen Yee

Location

Zindagi Salon
San Francisco

Curator

Julio Cesar Morales

Commissioned by

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco

Production and photography

Tomo Saito

Engawa – A Season of Contemporary Art from Japan

‘Engawa’ is a programming that brings to Lisbon a set of creators from Japan and the Japanese diaspora, many of them for the first time in Portugal. More info


Biographies

Duration: 90 min.

Credits

Curatorship

Julian Ross

Partnership

Collaboration

The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation reserves the right to collect and keep records of images, sounds and voice for the diffusion and preservation of the memory of its cultural and artistic activity. For further information, please contact us through the Information Request form.

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