Women Cinemakers meets
Tokio OOHARA Lives and works in Tokyo (for now) I grew up in Kanagawa Prefecture next to Tokyo. There was a factory, poultry farm, forest and greenery place. I was a nervous girl who likes reading books and climbs trees. I was interested in the stage arts and entered the design department of Tokyo Zokei University. In photography class, I learned the pleasures of cutting away the world from my own perspective. The seminar chose the visual environment design. The reason for choosing is that by designing the monuments and the space I thought that it might be possible to give a clue to notice and create new relationships to those who lived independently of the objects and space. It was attractive to me. On the weekend, the work of the wedding bridal video cameraman I was doing at part-time job was also attractive to me. Face, facial expression of brides and parents and attendees. I decided to photograph the expression of a brilliant bride a lot more beautifully than male cameraman, because of myself as a woman. From a long time ago, I liked taking women more than men. At the same time, I was obsessed with the charm of what I perform on the stage. I liked watching movies since I was a child. And the encounter with the most impressive movie was during the spring vacation of the third grader in the university. Before traveling to France for the first time, I saw many French movies to know that country. Among them, there was a movie by my most beloved director Jacques Rivette. I also felt the charm as a movie, but the most attractive thing is that women are freely present in the movies. At this time, I had not started film making yet, so I thought that I would like to play like them too. After graduation, I began to advance the way I played. In that process, I was concerned that many Japanese actresses in the movies are acting in a man's perspective, compared to the stage actress. In 2001, I wrote a script when I direct my first film with my associate. When the movie was completed, I realized that I wanted to depict the sensitive woman's heart and sorrow. After creating the first middle film and short film, there was a blank for seven years, and we made the first feature film "NAGOSHI ~ Summer purification". With that movie, I got an opportunity to screen in many places in Japan and I got encounters. The grace of that, I took two more short films. Meanwhile, there was a big earthquake and tsunami in the Tohoku region of Japan, nuclear accident at Fukushima occurred. Every day, the miserable picture of the earthquake that appears on the TV took away the power to live from me. I spent several months with my own helplessness and despair. At such time, by chance, I decided to create a short film at organic rice field. That is "Saotome ~ A young woman rice planter ~". I often visited a rice field to prepare for taking this short film. Touching soil, fellowship with birds and insects gave me the power to live. All that I felt during this time is included in this short movie. Looking back at the movie I made, I think that every movie depicts the living sorrow of a woman. I wanted to make a movie that will help liberate from what women were tying themselves. Now, my will and encounter make me a movie. The theme of the next movie is "Honor killing". With that theme I would like to describe three women in Japan. "Honor killing" is violence and homicide to the women done by people who live in not only the religion and the race but also within a narrow world. Relatives' men will kill them, otherwise they can’t live there. I think that this is unfortunate for men as well. Men in women's unhappy society are not happy. There may not be murder in Japan. However, women are socially killed by rumors. I think that it will be deterrent for many people to know. I am always seeking encounter!
An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com
Saotome is a stimulating short film by Tokyo
based filmmaker Tokio Oohara: offering an emotionally charged allegory of human condition in our unstable, everchanging contemporary age, her film is marked out with