French Cinema

"Over 8" is a joint project from a Shimokitazawa theater and young directors to create new wave films. Their latest is an omnibus film on the theme of "nakedness," directed by five up-and-coming directors. The producer is Shu Kageyama, who has worked with directors Shozin Fukui and Hideaki Anno on their films as one of the main crew members. Truth, emotional problems, trauma, desire, minority....some things can only be fully revealed through "nakedness." Come and witness the freshly-told stories of five vividly different colors and styles, all about "nakedness."

Production and sale of Fujichrome RT200 sound film stock ended in 1999. It was the ultimate analogue technology allowing audio to be simultaneously recorded. As the director develops his film shot with expired RT200 stock, unique visuals and sounds begin to emerge.

Fragments of scenes from the lives of men and women who are tormented and bullied appear in this film. Using the film camera as a medium, the film attempts to objectify the never-ending time of their lives, but in fact the actions that unfold here are staged in order to generate a physical voice, and at times it seems that it is the landscape itself that witnesses their actions.

A film correspondence between Yuri Obitani and Ming-Yu Lee, between Tokyo and Taipei, starting from 2019 to 2021. In the era of the pandemic, they communicate and understand each other through letter films.

Divergence between cameraman and sound man in tense street scene.

Flower psychedelia accompanied by the droning cry of a young boy X as he drowns in tens of thousands of cosmos flowers swaying in the wind.

An eight minute romp in the grass shot from a low angle and a subjective point of view as a small child or a stray dog, in which the main character young boy X who blows a melodica.

Crazy Yuri is going to live with his girlfriend Maki in Kunji, Tokyo, so he doesn’t have to worry about his everyday needs. Yuri, is pretty unreliable and has two other girlfriends, Masami and Maya. He ‘visits’ their homes with his super8 camera and keeps this secret from Maki. Yuri and Maki were once destined to have a child, but they have given up worrying about that; nor are they relieved. Without any special reason, the moving pictures and sounds continue.

"I in-scene" met a boy again to smell the fragrance of the tide, and to count a wave. ...Features a meditative and obsessive drone just produced for no reward, in the name of the place by the ringing of dhonipattro (begging bowls) of two monks on a pilgrimage by the sea and a melodica boy.

An episode from the "Mystic Tube" series continues the same simple basic plot of “a pilgrim passes through a tunnel, playing music as he makes his way to his destination”. This work shares the same technique and form as AN ACID FIELD or WILD SHAMAN MAIDEN described above, but its theme is limited to “the changes in the echo of a sound as its mix in the dark as the harmonies of the drone made by a chanting pilgrim and its harmonic overtones evolve inside the 650meter tunnel with its reverberations that last more than 10 seconds.

The newest work by OBITANI Yuri, who has been making unique, experimental films in the Japanese personal filmmaking scene since the 1990s. “I” run into a man playing a toy piano in the street looking for “Tenten,” and then… Incorporating entirely first-person shots and sound images that can be described as the pronoun of the filmmaker, the film draws viewers into a strange everyday world. The long take of a road cutting across farmers’ fields is particularly striking.

An episode about a morbid man who is nervously frustrated by a small animal, supposedly a cat intruding his own property (land).

The second episode from the "Mystic Tube" series ascertains the variations of "transitions of the reverberations as the sound sources are moved" with continuing the same basic simple plot of "pilgrims pass through a tunnel, playing music as they make their way to their destination". This episode is about the four pilgrims who are led into a high-key sunbeam. The drones and Mevrevic riff in three different folk flutes (Quena, Shinobue, Suling) are intoxicated under the interference of the fluorescences, still, the four continue with their pilgrimage.

8mm short by Yuri Obitani.