Archipelago: Exploring the Landscape of Contemporary Japanese Women Filmmakers

BARE ESSENCE OF LIFE | Director: Satoko Yokohama
6.30pm

Yojin is an energetic and troublesome young man who has his brain ‘wired differently’. Working with his grandmother on their small organic vegetable farm, Yojin’s eccentric lifestyle changes when he meets Machiko, a primary school teacher who arrives from Tokyo, and he becomes self-destructively determined to win her heart. Satoko Yokohama’s second feature film is impossible to categorise: a bizarre hybrid between comedy and offbeat surrealism, which takes a turn into existential reveries that bend all logic with bold originality.

Directed by Satoko Yokohama, 2009, 120 min, English subtitles

DEATH OF A JAPANESE SALESMAN | Director: Mami Sunada
6.30pm

Tomoaki Sunada was a Japanese typical sales representative working more than 40 years in the same company. After retiring, at 67 years old, he was diagnosed with cancer on the final stage. This was the miscalculation of life for a business soldier. In order to sum up his whole life and leave the message to his family, he laid on his last project, i.e. making an “ending note” by his own. Then, the “setup” of his departure was launched. * An “Ending note” is a memorandum for the family of the deceased, like a testament without legal force.

Directed by Mami Sunada, 2011, 90 min, English subtitles
Image: © 2011 “Death of a Japanese Salesman” Production Committee

WILD BERRIES | Director: Miwa Nishikawa
12.00pm

The Akechi family is just an ordinary family, spending simple but peaceful days – kind mother, hardworking father, a daughter with a sense of justice and silly but cheerful grandfather. One day, the roving son returns home after ten years of silence, and that leads to unveil the hidden truth behind Akechi family. Little by little, the family bonds loosen…

Directed by Miwa Nishikawa, 2003, 108 min, English subtitles
Image: © WILD BERRIES Project Team

PANEL DISCUSSION
2.30pm

Following the screenings, this panel discussion will examine the proliferation of Japanese female filmmakers in the last fifteen years. In a discussion chaired by East Asia selection lead film programmer for the BFI London Film Festival, Kate Taylor, featuring Japanese cinema expert, writer and curator Jasper Sharp; film researcher Alejandra Armendáriz Hernández, and season curator Irene Silvera, the panel will bringing insight into the work of the directors as well as provide a retrospective focus on the part women have played throughout the history of the Japanese film industry. In doing so, framing debate on the current position of women behind the scenes both in Japan and across the globe.