He Was Here, and You Are Here

The film was born from discovering a Super 8 film shot by her deceased father during her childhood, and unfurls through a personal archive of images and reminiscences that patch together the life of this complex and reserved individual. In its quest to deconstruct the mundane, private appeal of family memories, Doi calls the film an “anti-home movie,” yet in keeping with the diaristic quality of her previous works, My father, burned paints its portrait of memory akin to a window onto a chamber or interior space, through which ambiguous emotions resonate and resound.

This is the director's first diary film, drawn in collaboration with a diverse cast and manga artist Yumi Enomoto. It is a serious self-documentary work with a comedic touch.

A work filmed in a room at the Washington Square Hotel in New York, created with the technique of multiple exposure. Scenes of a nude couple are overlaid with images of natural phenomena, such as blooming flowers and clouds in the sky. "The scenes of the man and woman were in filmed in the hotel room where they were staying in New York. The summer sky and clouds were shot time-lapse on the roof of a building in Nakano-ku, Tokyo, where I lived at the time. I can’t remember where the cherry blossoms were filmed, but I remember I only saw the petals on the ground rather than the flowers themselves. Three motifs taken at different locations: the activities of men and women, the hot sunshine every summer, and the cherry blossoms that bloom and fall in spring. Things that are fleeting and disappearing, but at the same time, only exist at that moment."