Norman Yonemoto

Directing

Norman Yonemoto

Born January 1, 1946 · Chicago, Illinois, USA

Died February 28, 2014 · aged 68

Norman Yonemoto was a Japanese-American filmmaker who frequently collaborated with his brother Bruce Yonemoto.

Known For

Savage StreetsSavage Streets · 1984
Savage Streets
6.31984
MovieActionCrime
Brenda, vivacious leader of the "Satins", a fun-loving group of pretty high school girls, searches for deadly vengeance against the gang members who assaulted her deaf-mute sister.
Chatterbox!Chatterbox! · 1977
Chatterbox!
5.11977
MovieComedyFantasy
A young woman who works in a beauty parlor discovers that her vagina can talk, which causes her no end of trouble.
Made in HollywoodMade in Hollywood · 1990
Made in Hollywood
7.31990
Movie
A parable of the Hollywood image-making industry told through a pastiche of narrative cliches.
RomanicRomanic · 1980
Romanic
1980
Movie
A couple's violent argument is repeated three times in this video, first in long shot, then in medium shot, and finally in close shot. As the camera moves in, the sound moves in the opposite direction; from a close perspective to silence. The subject of the argument satirically underscores the role electronic media plays in undermining the basic tenets of romantic relationships.
KappaKappa · 1986
Kappa
7.01986
MovieDocumentaryAnimation
Deconstructing the myth of Oedipus within the framework of an ancient Japanese folk story, the Yonemotos craft a highly charged discourse of loss and desire. Quoting from Bunuel, Freud, pop media and art, they place the symbology of Western psychosexual analytical theory into a cross-cultural context, juxtaposing the Oedipal and Kappa myths in a delirious collusion of form and content. The Kappa, a malevolent Japanese water imp, is played with eerie intensity by artist Mike Kelley; actress Mary Woronov plays Jocasta as a vamp from a Hollywood exploitation film. Steeped in perversions and violent longings, both the Kappa and Oedipus legends are presented in highly stylized, purposefully "degraded" forms, reflecting their media-exploitative cultural contexts. In this ironic yet oddly poignant essay of psychosexual compulsion and catharsis, the Yonemotos demonstrate that even in debased forms, cultural archetypes hold the power to move and manipulate.
ahistoryahistory · 1992
ahistory
1992
Movie
Europe’s enchantment with American consumer culture is depicted, as well-known European architectural landmarks – the Eiffel Tower, the Acropolis, London Bridge – are reflected in the glossy surface of a 1960s Cadillac convertible, the ultimate symbol of the “golden age” of American consumerism.
Garage SaleGarage Sale · 1976
Garage Sale
3.01976
Movie
GARAGE SALE is a campy feature centered on a story of marital upheaval between drag queen Goldie Glitters and her fair-haired husband, Hero. A onetime member of San Francisco’s legendary Cockettes theatre troupe, Goldie was famously crowned Santa Monica College’s 1975 Homecoming Queen, captured in Bruce Yonemoto’s documentary HOMECOMING (1975). GARAGE SALE subverts the drag aspect of Goldie’s performance enabling her to sympathetically play a woman whose fantasies and expectations have been shaped by Hollywood romance films. The film follows the couple as Hero tries to regain Goldie’s love by seeking the advice of a cast of eccentric characters.
Spalding Gray's Map of L.A.Spalding Gray's Map of L.A. · 1984
Spalding Gray's Map of L.A.
5.01984
MovieComedy
Spalding Gray comes to LA to perform a set of monologues.

Filmography

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KappaKappa · 1986
Kappa
7.01986
MovieDocumentaryAnimation
Deconstructing the myth of Oedipus within the framework of an ancient Japanese folk story, the Yonemotos craft a highly charged discourse of loss and desire. Quoting from Bunuel, Freud, pop media and art, they place the symbology of Western psychosexual analytical theory into a cross-cultural context, juxtaposing the Oedipal and Kappa myths in a delirious collusion of form and content. The Kappa, a malevolent Japanese water imp, is played with eerie intensity by artist Mike Kelley; actress Mary Woronov plays Jocasta as a vamp from a Hollywood exploitation film. Steeped in perversions and violent longings, both the Kappa and Oedipus legends are presented in highly stylized, purposefully "degraded" forms, reflecting their media-exploitative cultural contexts. In this ironic yet oddly poignant essay of psychosexual compulsion and catharsis, the Yonemotos demonstrate that even in debased forms, cultural archetypes hold the power to move and manipulate.

Director

An Impotent MetaphorAn Impotent Metaphor · 1979
An Impotent Metaphor
1979
Movie
Created as part of the Yonemotos’ Soap Opera Series (together with Green Card: American Romance), this postmodern tale navigates artistic and sexual crises in Southern California. Boredom and alienation, the banality of fantasies and reality and the need for idealised romance afflict the characters that wander through this narrative representation of the LA art scene. The pervasive cultural malaise is seen as conditioned behaviour — conscious psychological manipulation by the mass media. Against this dominant ideology, the film’s central figure Norman, played by Norman Yonemoto, approaches art as a means to ‘expose the derivative nature of the romantic ideal’ and ‘promote the examination of our personal contexts.’

Director

VaultVault · 1984
Vault
1984
Movie
In this tour-de-force of stylized deconstruction, the Yonemotos rewrite a traditional narrative of desire — boy meets girl, boy loses girl. Employing the hyperbolic, melodramatic syntax of Hollywood movies and commercial TV, they decode the Freudian symbology and manipulative tactics that underlie media representations of romantic love, and expose the power of this media “reality” to construct personal fictions. Using the psychoanalytic language of advertising, cinematic and television texts to tell the love story of a pole vaulter/concert cellist and a cowboy/Abstract Expressionist painter, they rupture the narrative with psychosexual metaphors and references to pop media and art. Self-conscious strategies such as overtly Freudian symbols, flashback reconstructions of childhood traumas, Wagnerian orchestration and loaded cliches are wielded with deft irony.

Writer