Garden of the Lower Depths

Night after night, two travellers cross paths at a university library. The library's symmetry, rhythms and recurrences form a fantastic geography for their stories and adventures.

Short film by UMMMI.

Footage from a party. The Smiths' song "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" is sung by the partygoers.

"Ummmi’s Lonely Girl features a young Shibuya girl, sometimes she messes things up, sometimes she is sad or depressed but she lives her life for the fun moments. In these moments she can forget everything which has come before her in life. She needs these moments to keep her going. In constructing this work I tried to embracing the feeling of the fluctuating heart, bouncing between happiness and sadness. Playing with the stereotypes of youth culture, such as loneliness, and a life of excess, I carried this drunk girl from my parents apartment on edge of Shibuya, to Shibuya Station to wait for the first train home. This is a performance archive video." -UMMMI.

"Janitor of Lunacy follows a young woman’s descent into a digital wormhole via her obsession with a BDSM account run by an unknown user. The film examines social media’s ability to acquire organicity whilst also distorting subjective reality." -UMMMI.

"One day when surfing through the internet, a young women discovers an old blog from several years ago. She attempts to delete it but cannot remember the password. This film attempts to go beyond borders through mixing up personal areas of the Internet by bringing out online records and analogue records, personal spaces lived in by the actor and old blogs and e-mail log in screens, and mixed video footages of various qualities." -UMMMI.

A film inspired by Italian author Cesare Pavese’s novel called The Beautiful Summer

Short by UMMMI.

Hikari is a newly expectant mother cohabiting with her boyfriend Taro. However, their relationship seems to be on the rocks. The couple has had trouble finding steady employment since graduating from college, and mounting financial problems further strain their relationship. Taro has a secret: he’s been relying on his eccentric aunt Kyoko, who has been acting strangely since losing her husband at a young age. Hikari’s first encounter with Kyoko does not go well, but Hikari visits Kyoko’s home unbeknownst to Taro and is introduced to a world where young women take part in bacchanals. This could spell doom for her relationship with Taro...

"A couple with some issues has just moved into the town. Driving through the town, they saw many “weird” people from a car window. They began to wonder why they had decided to come to this place. They stepped in an old Chinese restaurant and...? This is a story about the "Disgraced Heaven" for the failures, a only utopia in a hellhole." -UMMMI.

Former gangsters, former homeless people, abuse victims, people struggling with the meaning of life... these hurt and lovable "sinners" gather at a Christian church in Kitakyushu that supports the needy. A documentary that intersects the passion play of Christ performed by them, the hardships they went through, and their current stories.

"This installation piece explores the forewarning signs which occur before a defining event taking place. It develops through a mixture of documentary and scripted footages of my father, with texts related to my memory of him mixed into it. Since the Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster of 2011, I have felt that the people of Japan are now forced to live more consciously of the forewarning signs before an incident. This feels as if it’s universally bearing over general social issues as well as miniscule personal level incidents. I decided to feature my own father in this video piece filmed in the style of a fictional documentation. This is all bout Drinking, and weakness." -UMMMI.

Video installation by UMMMI.

"This work takes the form of a private home video, left unseen, which probes the relationship between love and suicide. Hinging upon Goethe’s seminal novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, my monologue speaks of the events that transpired between my parents on their slow dance toward destruction. This monologue unfolds quietly over footage filmed mere months ago -- intimate footage of my lover’s elder sister with her husband, footage I had intended to show my parents. Communication can be painfully, heart-wrenchingly difficult, especially with those we love. When will our life end? When will our love end? Adrift on a sea of the unknown in an age of stillness rocked by chaos simultaneous and scattered, perhaps the only response is to pause in place, and stand allied with those unable to fulfill their love and life. To cope is to quietly confront the "impossibility of communication."" -UMMMI.

"Whilst staying for 3 months in New York City in 2014, I noticed that the city had a unique presence of psychic stores. Seeing their signs on the streets reminded me of how my mother used to sell power stones, herbs and spiritual material in Tokyo. My mother became interested in psychic spirituality after she went through a hard situation, she became engrossed in its power. When I told this story to my friend Lauren who lives in New York, she was surprised and told me she had just been to psychic therapy to try to get a bad romance off her mind. We started to talk about love which we lost and the possibilities of new love. Sometimes you have to rely on things you can’t see in life, like the power of the psychic. This video is about the tension between real and illusionary life, irremediable sadness and women dealing with difficulty. The actress in the film is Lauren mixed with her interpretation of my mother’s story." -UMMMI.

Video installation by UMMMI.