Feature The Chicago Japan Film

FILM

FEATURE

New directors in a new year

The Chicago Japan Film Collective brings emerging indie directors to local audiences.

By NINA LI COOMES

Every January, young Japanese people celebrate Seijin-no-hi, or Coming of Age Day, to commemorate their passage from childhood into adulthood. With this, and both the calendar and Lunar New Year in mind, cofounders Yuki Solomon and Hiroshi Kono of the Chicago Japan Film Collective decided to put on a free, virtual New Year’s Screening featuring two young Japanese fi lmmakers.

“We picked out two fi lms—one was directed by director Seira Maeda who is 25 years old and showing the freshness of the new voices from Japan, and the other is a little older, director Daisuke Ono, who started making fi lms fi ve or six years ago,” Kono says. Each fi lm was made within the context and constraint of the COVID-19 pandemic, though neither deals with the pandemic directly.

“We saw that these days there are many challenges—not only the pandemic, but also the lifestyle of people is changing and within that limitation what you can do. I saw that these fi lms maximized their potential within those limitations and saw that those young fi lmmakers are somewhat better at it than the people who have done this for a long time,” Solomon says.

The fi rst of the features is Back to That Day, directed by Maeda (94 minutes, in Japanese with subtitles) and follows a 30-year-old playwright (Reina Matsui) struggling to understand the place of art in her life when she receives the staggering news of her younger sister’s (Miwako Kakei) abrupt death. Pensive and poignant, the fi lm moves slowly through the haze of sudden grief, seeking ultimate redemption in the heroine’s decision to restage a play. Though the pace and focus can wobble from time to time, crisp cinematography and subtle performances from its lead actors propel this drama for the entirety of its runtime. Threaded throughout is the anomie and anxiety of youth in Japan, particularly from the lens of the late 20s and early 30s woman, surely a refl ection of Maeda’s own experience as a creative woman in Japanese society.

Tsujiura Renbo (111 minutes, in Japanese with subtitles) also follows a young female artist (Saori), this time a singer-songwriter named Emi. Emi meets Shinta, played by director Ono, who becomes her manager. Together they navigate the unglamorous tedium of a musician trying desperately to succeed, while also balancing a tenuous sometimes-romance. Most compelling about Ono’s characters are their fi erce devotion, Emi to her art and Shinta to Emi, layered with their sheer spiky realness—in one memorable scene, Emi refuses to play nice with a radio DJ and instead slams her guitar into his head. Granular and unfl inching, Ono turns an exacting lens onto the prosaic

Tsujiura Renbo CHICAGO JAPAN FILM COLLECTIVE

reality of trying to live as a young artist in Japan. A distinct sense of bleak humor o ers much-needed room to breathe. Still, there are times the fi lm struggles with the disjointedness of its plot. The story too neatly mirror’s Emi’s own stop-start trajectory, risking shaking o its audience in the pursuit of depicting disorientation.

In many ways, the experiences exhibited here are universal ones—loss of a loved one, the fi ght to hold on to a younger self’s uninhibited dream. CJFC’s New Year’s Screening asks an American audience to consider the frailty and necessity of art in a mire of human di culty and loneliness. Taken together, the two fi lms paint a portrait of a thoughtful younger generation of Japanese artists, seeking to carve out a space for themselves in an inhospitable and insensitive world.

The CJFC New Year’s Screening concluded on February 13, but keep an eye on cjfc.us for future programming at the Chicago Japan Film Collective. v

@nlcoomes

THE CHEVALIER

Feb 19, 7:30PM

North Shore Center, Skokie

Feb 20, 8PM

Symphony Center, Chicago

Known as “The Chevalier de Saint-Georges,” 18th-century Black composer Joseph Bologne was a virtuoso violinist, a friend of Mozart’s, the fi nest fencer in Europe, general of Europe’s fi rst Black regiment, and a crusader for the abolishment of slavery. Weaving together Bologne’s own music with semi-staged dialogue, “The Chevalier” offers a thoughtful meditation on equality.

Dame Jane Glover conducts the Music of the Baroque Orchestra and violin soloist Brendon Elliott in this “concert theater” work written and directed by Bill Barclay.

Music of the Baroque appreciates the support of the Zell Family Foundation in presenting “The Chevalier.”

ORCHESTRA baroque.org/chevalier | 312.551.1414