On memory
Films by Chikako Yamashiro, Umi Ishihara, Shun Ikezoe and Meiro Koizumi
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Date
- / Cancelled / Sold out
Location
Studio Centro de Arte Moderna GulbenkianPricing
10% – Cartão Gulbenkian
While World War Two is a recurring reference point for Japanese cinema, the output rarely explores beyond familiar touchstones that paint a one-sided picture of the Japanese wartime experience.
This selected memory and collective amnesia is the subject of this programme that ranges from sci-fi to documentary, all testifying to the importance of reckoning with the past to set foot into the future.
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.
'Your Voice Came out through my throat', by Chikako Yamashiro
Japan, 2009, 7’
Documentary, Avant-Garde
Film in Japanese with Portuguese subtitles
Chikako Yamashiro channels the stories of survivors of the Battle of Okinawa through lip-synch and superimposition. With her body as an archive, she stages the link between the donors and inheritors of trauma and, ultimately, the impossibility of transferring memory across generational lines.
Credits
Direction, Photography, Editing, Cast
Yamashiro Chikako
Photography
Sunagawa Atsushi
Support
rat & sheep
Cooperative Niji Clinic
Okinawa Prefectural Archives
'The Pioneer', by Umi Ishihara
Japan, 2018, 27’
Experimental Fiction
Film in Japanese with Portuguese and English Subtitles
In a dystopian Japan, scientists have developed a new pill hailed as the ultimate forget-me-not. Although the miracle drug transforms society by warding off memory loss, it inexplicably has no effect on the narrator’s mother, a patient with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Deemed a threat to national security, the mother is taken into custody and sequestered away, compelling her daughter to embark on a searching journey back through the fog of memory. ‘The Pioneer’ is a love letter to this forgetful mother, a simultaneous symbol of infinite sadness and unparalleled beauty.
Credits
Director
Umi Ishihara
Cast
Erina Nakagawa
Gaku Imamura
Kyoko Shishikura
Mori Masahiro
Cinematographer
Charlie Hillhouse
Sound design
Takuya Kawakami
Hair and Make-up
Mutsuki
Sound
DJ Ibon
'Dissociative amnesia', by Shun Ikezoe
Japan, 2020, 2’
Shot in 8mm film
Film without dialogues
«The more you try to see the things, the less you can see them correctly. People tend to see only what they care about and make one’s sense only with what they see. So sometimes we can’t go back on the right track anymore when we realize the truth. I experimented to see where the viewer would turn their focus to, by making some images missing on screen.»
Shun Ikezoe
'Oral History', by Meiro Koizumi
Japan, 2013-2015, 47'
Film with English and Portuguese subtitles
On the streets of Japan, we asked people a question “What happened in and around Japan between 1900 to 1945? Please tell us as much as you know.” We only shot the mouth of them so that they don’t have to be embarrassed by making mistakes in front to the camera. As expected, most of people could not give appropriate answers. We collected 200 answers, and I edited them onto one timeline to create the image of void in the collective memory.
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
Duration: 90 min.
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Biographies
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Chikako Yamashiro
Chikako Yamashiro (b. Okinawa, 1976) works in photography, video, and performance to create visual investigations into the history, politics, and culture of her homeland. Particularly, she explores themes related to the terrible civilian casualties incurred on the ground in Okinawa during World War II and the on-going troubles surrounding the U.S. military presence there. Her work has been presented at the National Museum of Modern Art (Tokyo), the Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), Jeju Museum of Art (South Korea) and the Contemporary Jewish Museum (San Francisco), among others. Participating film festivals include the Festival Film Dokumenter (FFD), in Yogyakarta (2017) and the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2018), where she was awarded the ZONTA Prize.
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Meiro Koizumi
Meiro Koizumi (b. Gunma, Japan, 1976) is an artist who blends reality and fiction in experimental videos and performances that explore the relationships between the State, the collective, and the individual, as well as the human body and its emotions. In recent years, he has presented numerous works that incorporate AR/VR technology into performance questioning the future of humanity. His works have been presented in numerous biennales and museums and are included in public collections worldwide. Koizumi attended the Chelsea College of Art and Design, London (1999-2002) as well as the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam (2005-2006).
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Shun Ikezoe
Shun Ikezoe (Kagawa, 1988) is a filmmaker and artist. He makes works by collecting individual voices and memories and reconstructing them into an universal voice. His film ‘Jujuba’ (2018) about his life with his Chinese stepmother screened at numerous film festivals including Pia Film Festival and Hong Kong International Film Festival and won the Award for Excellence at Image Forum Festival in 2018. ‘See you in my dreams’ (2020) was about his grandmother who raised him and has screened at festivals including Marseille International Film Festival, Pesaro Film Festival and New York Film Festival. In his new film ‘What is it that you said?’ (2021), made during the pandemic, Shun turned to listen to the inner voices and lives around him.
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Umi Ishihara
Umi Ishihara is a London based artist and filmmaker from Japan. She creates experimental narrative films that weave together personal memories with broader social issues. Her work delves deeply into themes of politics, community, and the sense of alienation that often permeates various social classes. She frequently collaborates with non-professional actors, local residents and people from her immediate surroundings. Her work has been shown and screened in museums and film festivals worldwide, including The Centre Pompidou, ICA London, BFI Southbank, South London Gallery, International Film Festival Rotterdam, CPH:DOC and The National Museum of Art Osaka. I am selected Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2019 and Awarded GQ Global Creativity Awards 2024.
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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