Children, fate, and a governor’s novel

These are the themes of this year’s Japanese Film Festival that will run from July 18-20 at Cinema 4 of Ayala Center.

You may wish to find time, along with family and friends, to watch three films (rated R-13) to be presented, free admission, by the Consular Office of Japan in Cebu and the Japan Foundation Manila in cooperation with the Japanese Association Cebu, Inc., the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Inc, and Ayala Center Cebu.

Kanaria and Children

Kanaria (Canary), the first movie to be shown at 7pm on July 18 and then again on the 20th is “one of several independent fiction films that take as their subject the aftermath of the religious cult Aum Supreme Truth’s deadly sarin gas attacks on the general populace of Japan in 1994-1995.”

This film considers the perspective of those in the cult, thus questioning the clear line between victim and victimizer drawn by the mass media. But uniquely it does that through the eyes of children, a gaze director and scriptwriter Shiota Akihiko had taken up in earlier films.

Kanaria presents Iwase Koichi who has just escaped from a juvenile detention center. The 12-year-old boy had been placed there because the religious cult his mother Michiko had joined, called Nirvana, along with Koichi and his younger sister Asako, had committed murderous attacks on the general public. His grandfather had taken custody of Asako, but had left Koichi in detention, giving up on him as too brainwashed by the cult to live in normal society. As he flees, he runs in front of a car on a country road, causing it to crash. Yuki, a girl just his age, is in that car and the crash saves her from the driver, who had handcuffed her with the intention of molesting her. Yuki had run away from home after her mother died and was left in the custody of her abusive father. Deciding to pay Koichi back for saving her, she gets some money and clothes from a friend and joins him on his trip to Tokyo to get his sister back.

This film depicts the communities young people can make as an alternative to a corrupt adult world.

Unmei ja nai Hito (A Stranger of Mine) and Fate?

The title, which is better translated as A Person Who Is Not My Fated Partner asks, in a story full of coincidences, whether any of these chance encounters experienced by two strangers can be considered fate, romantic or not.

This second film scheduled for 9:30pm July 18 and 7pm July 19 revolves around Maki (Kirishima Reika), an introverted woman who just decided to leave her fiancee when she found out about his infidelity and Miyata (Nakamura Yasuhi), a timid office worker, who is finding it hard to get his life back on track after being dumped by his fiancée. These two characters destinies become entwined when Kanda (Yamanaka So) — an unlucky detective and childhood friend of Miayata’s — makes them share a table in a restaurant.

A Stranger of Mine was ranked as the 5th best film at the 79th Kinema Junpo best ten list for 2005, and is the feature debut of Uchida Kenji, one of the rare Japanese directors who studied abroad, at San Francisco State University. He won several awards at the Pia Film Festival for his short film Weekend Blues (2001), which helped him get a PFF Scholarship to make this movie, which in turn earned several prizes at the Cannes Film Festival.

Kurutta Kajitsu (Juvenile Jungle) and A Governor’s Novel

This 3rd film, to be shown at 9pm July 19 and at 930 July 20, is about a bunch of young men who live the good life (none have jobs, but they have money) in post-war Japan. The film focuses on two brothers and their mutual affection for a very beautiful young lady named Eri.

Kurutta Kajitsu, directed by Nakahira Ko, is a story about two brothers competing for the affection of one woman. The brothers are part of a group of teenagers who congregate around their wealthy American friend. Things take a turn for the worse when each brother realizes that the object of his affection is not as innocent as she seems.

What makes this film unique is not that it was lifted from a novel but that the novel was made by Ishihara Shintaro who is known in Japan not only as a novelist and a politician but the present Governor of Tokyo metropolitan government!

* * *

Thank you to Consul Shigekazu Sakunaga and Sakura Ozaki-san of the Japan Information & Cultural Center Embassy of Japan for the information about this year’s Japanese Film Festival.

* * *

E-mail:[email protected]