On memory

Films by Chikako Yamashiro, Umi Ishihara, Shun Ikezoe and Meiro Koizumi

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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


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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