seance ( film )
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portland dream - pop concern seance school just released their second full - length earlier this month and rosey is proud to premiere the video for the single “24hr vampire film. ”
that' s interesting, that element is certainly the core of the english film as well. did you see the bryan forbes film ?
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and i can imagine him being in the film helps finding distribution or financing .
charisma is different from séance, where séance is structured around a strong narrative, charisma is really an allegorical film. what' s the story behind this film ?
a mix of crime drama and psychic mysticism, the film plays like a thriller without many thrills .
kurosawa' s film is creepy - - the atmosphere is bathed in dread - - but rarely frightening .
created in conjunction with the film “the forbidden room‟ produced by phi films and buffalo gal pictures in co - production with the national film board of canada, with financial participation from telefilm canada and manitoba film and music, sodec, and produced in association with phi centre, george pompidou national public cultural establishment, and kidam .
i, and i think that goes for a lot of people in the west, got to know you through your film cure, which was very much a genre film. do you see yourself as a genre filmmaker ?
winner of
best dramatic feature
at the eureka springs digital film festival. finalist in horror fest uk .
set in france in the years immediately preceding the onset of world war ii, the film stars natalie portman and lily - rose depp as laura and kate barlow, a pair of american sisters who are barnstorming through europe with a supernatural seance act in which kate is the one contacting the spirits while laura serves as the emcee and manager. after a performance in paris, they are summoned to the estate of wealthy film producer andre korben (emmanuel salinger) to perform a private seance in which something does happen. andre is so taken with the results that he decides to make a movie inspired by it that not only star the sisters but will hopefully capture the image of an actual spirit on film. a screen test is shot and it turns out that while kate is the one with the supernatural abilities, it is laura who proves to be a natural in front of the camera .
the work is dedicated to the analysis of first nine issues of seance film magazine with the attempt of revealing discursive belonging of magazine' s authors to the petersburg - leningrad' s discourse. conceptualization of st. petersburg in lenfilm studio production has been examined with the help of a sociological theory of cultural regionalism. a long history of moscow' s and st. petersburg' s discursive opposition has been reconstructed in order to demonstrate the heredity and the meaning of reproducing cultural memory for st. petersburg regional identity. the research is aimed at revealing reasons for conceptualization and its concrete forms in seance, for the latter methods of content - analysis has been used .
at the time, i didn' t even know about the film. someone eventually told me about it, and i' ve now recently been able to see it, but i had no idea such a film existed at the time .
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“a film should be an immersive experience, and you should be totally locked in to what’s going on. ” 51: 03
after a loudmouth college punk singer accuses an amateur medium of being a fake, four college students break into the city morgue and video themselves holding a seance. when the kids summon a demon by mistake, they have to find a way to drive the demon out of their friend before it destroys them all .
how do you see the chances of your latest film pulse, which will be coming out in february 2001. this is a big studio project. do you think this will be the last chance you get to make this kind of film as a studio project ?
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during your early career, you were a student under shigehiko hasumi, former president of the university of tokyo, and one of japan' s leading film scholars. he is regarded in japan as one the greatest film theorists in the world, but save from a few appearances in film comment magazine, his teachings are largely unknown to the rest of the world. can you talk about your experiences with him ?
which genre my film ultimately belongs in is up to the audience to decide when the film is finished, but certainly as a starting point i always start my next project considering which genre i would like to work in. so in that sense i am a genre director .
when his revisionist serial killer film cure burst onto the scene in 1998, kiyoshi kurosawa was quickly seen as the new hope for fans of fantastic cinema worldwide. as a result of that film' s success he is mainly known internationally as a horror film director. on his home ground, the director has above all established himself as the creator of thought - provoking films that walk the fine line between art and entertainment. the following is a composite of two interviews with the director, held in early 2000 and early 2001, both at the international film festival rotterdam .
on july 18, 2012, it was announced that abc family would develop the film into a television series by i. marlene king, who wrote the film and adapted pretty little liars. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] however, the project did not move past the development stage .
the reason i take this approach to filmmaking is, although film needs a fictional story element, it also is a medium that allows you to record the reality around you. you' re filming real forests and real people. i think that film for me is a medium point between a fictional story and reality. you start with the genre, which is fiction, and gradually move towards reality. somewhere in between you find film .
moving on to barren illusion, you worked with a student crew from the film school of tokyo on the film. they also contributed to the premise of the story, it being a love story. but also what struck me was that you were working with these very young actors. the only older character in the film is the doctor, who disappears at a certain moment and after that the characters seem to only be getting younger .
an anthology horror film following 3 stories including demons, cannibals, psychopaths and demigods all intertwined, taking place in the final 31 days of earth .
while our main purpose is thinking film, practice is not alien to us. as a production company, séance was involved in several films; anton’s right here, a documentary by lyubov arkus co - produced with ctb company, was officially selected for venice film festival and won national and international awards .
i didn' t think of what educational effect a particular shot or a cut would have on my students at all. i did whatever i wanted. the only consideration was to convey to my students that you can make a film any way you want to. what i wanted to communicate to them was: as long as we keep the film to around 90 to 100 minutes, as long as you follow that rule anything else goes, any freedom in making it. that' s what defines a film. if the film were 15 minutes long or 10 hours long it wouldn' t be here in the rotterdam film festival. i wanted them to know that' s the only rule you have to follow. everything else is up to you .
there also appears to be a very strong theme concerning individuality in the film, which is interesting because that same theme is currently also very much present in american films. i also saw it in kinji fukasaku' s film crest of betrayal here at the festival, which is only a few years old .
even though it' s playing here at the rotterdam film festival, séance was originally made for television. was it only released on television in japan ?
the ballad of narayama
is a japanese film of great beauty and elegant artifice, telling a story of startling cruelty. what a space it opens…
yes, it was made specifically for television. usually when you make this kind of tv drama, it' s shown on tv and subsequently released on video and then it' s over. but this time it was really different from normal. i made it as a film. i was actually hoping for film festivals to ask me to come show this film and thankfully that was what happened. but this is not the normal situation for a tv drama .
seance doesn' t work as well as pulse, another one of kiyoshi kurosawa' s movies, because there' s no real foundation for the slow - burn atmosphere. pulse featured a plot about isolation, so the film felt appropriately lonely and claustrophobic. seance feels like it' s being slow for the hell of it. still, i love kurosawa' s style. it' s distinctive, beautiful, wildly evocative and allows an audience to use their imaginations. the plot of this movie did seem a little more coherent than pulse at times, and i loved the characters. jun fubuki gives a great, psychologically charged performance as a psychic woman who' s sick of living in the spotlight of her successful husband, a performance that ultimately carries the plot of the entire movie. this one will try your patience, but be good to it - it has a lot to give .
tim stevens first discovered his love for cinema at a young age watching classic gothic horror films like the cabinet of dr. calegari and nosferatu. it was a discovery that film could be art and take audiences to places they never imagined. tim continued his love of film by attending film school at the university of north texas. having graduated, tim currently writes, directs, and produces short films that express his love of horror, fantasy, and avant - garde .
“24hr vampire film” works as a fantastic opener, the forward post - punk bass line and place - setting melodies grounding washburn’s menacing lyrics, with lines like “mary magdalene’s a ghost now / jesus is lost at sea / tow your car out of the ocean / maybe he’s in the front seat. ” the final refrain of “it takes a lot of blood for a man to live, ” might lead to more questions than answers, but that is likely just how seance school prefer it and the point refreshingly sets the theme for what follows .
the magazine extends to the internet where we run a website, updated on daily basis. the printed version often overlaps with the blog (all the texts published on paper end up online sooner or later); however, the majority of material that appears on seance. ru is created specifically for the website: reviews, interviews, essays, videos and other entries of whatever format .
slow, plodding, bland drama with a couple coffee spillers thrown it. uneven with plot holes (beating a ghost with a stick ?), the film comes to an unexpected halt (i think they ran out of film and decided to go with what they had). don' t expect much and you wont be disappointed .
does that go for music as well? because i thought the music in charisma was almost the opposite of the rest of the film. it was upbeat and almost happy .
in this trio’s inimitable ethos and aesthetic – which takes the language and spirit of early sound cinema and runs it through a filter of their invention, bound up in history, melodrama, and bromance - infused neuroses – seances has been co - created by the nfb as a web - based and installation - based film experience. in both iterations the audience has an opportunity to influence the film they are about to see, but it will be the only instance of that particular film that will ever exist. there is only that moment to watch .
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the story flashes back to 1970 when the girls had two goals: saving enough money to buy a tree house and avoiding the wormer brothers. one night, they sneak out to the cemetery to perform a seance. a cracked tombstone convinces them they have resurrected the spirit of a young boy identified only as dear johnny, who died in 1945 at the age of twelve. intrigued, they search for information at the library but find nothing .
seances presents a new way of experiencing film narrative, framed through the lens of loss. in a technical feat of data - driven cinematic storytelling, films are dynamically assembled in never - to - be - repeated configurations. each exists only in the moment, with no pausing, scrubbing or sharing permitted, offering the audience one chance to see this film before it disappears .
the film was released on october 20, 1995 and was critically panned. the plot was considered overly familiar, sit - com like, and too similar to stand by me. based on reviews collected by rotten tomatoes, the film received a 24% approval rating by critics, with an average score of 4. 7 / 10, based on seventeen reviews. [ 4 ]
i don' t think there' s any mystery to that. i think that was also the case in the past in the u. s. , say in the 1940s / 50s, where people churned out many more films. the other factor is that budgets in japan are so low that in order to survive as a filmmaker, you have to work on several films a year. with such a low budget, the director' s fee is also low. there are times when i wish i had more time where i could work on and create a good film, but on the other hand, i think when you very quickly churn out a screenplay and film it over the course of a few weeks and just complete the film very quickly, it may be a little slip - shot in technique, but i think you are able to retain a primitive strength of that uninhibited creative impulsive. it' s directly translated into the film without a lot of rewrites that may make a film more polished, but i think sometimes, in the course of polishing a film, the basic idea, a strong idea, can lose some of its power .
when ring and all these horror films became such a hit in japan and the horror boom started, i took the chance of making this film. i' m not sure of course if it' s going to be a success. if it' s not, it might mean the end for this type of film, because i think audiences are getting a little bit tired of them .
a bit of a lost classic that slipped between the cracks despite the oscar nomination for lead actress kim stanley, this story of kidnapping and madness in the savage household starts off with a first hour so expertly paced, nuanced and beautifully photographed that you begin to think the 8. 4 score it has on imdb isn' t a stretch at all. the way forbes handles the exposition, withhelding information from the audience long enough to keep them guessing, releasing them in an ambiguous fashion to maintain an aura of mystery, all the while not forgetting those little casual moments that don' t advance the plot but allow the material to breathe and the characters to emerge thridimensional and human instead of drab caricatures drawn as plot devices, is a masterclass in storytelling that one would expect from a master of bergman' s calibre. the second half steadily accelerates, building up tension between the kidnappers and between them and the police, with some absolutely riveting pieces of suspense such as the cat and mouse game in the subway or the mother of the kidnapped girl making a sudden appearance at the house her daughter is being held to participate in a seance where the medium foreshadows her daughter' s fate while she remains unaware, right down to the brilliant conclusion around a seance table where stage actor patrick magee has a cameo (mr. alexander from a clockwork orange), seance is a terrific piece of film - making that will particularly appeal to horror fans. kim stanley deserved that oscar and so did richard attenborough (who would go on to sweep the oscars with gandhi), both of whom give electrifying performances as husband and wife .
yes, the actors in japan understand the situation. so even if they also appear in higher budget films, if they like the script they' ll appear in the film for very little money .
the end leaves even more up in the air as the second - to - last song “if you die (in sf) ” moves away from some of the more fully fleshed uptempo material for a spacey country tune of sorts. lastly, the 57 - minute (!) instrumental closer not only alerts the listener to the fact that seance school have ventured into prog - conceptual territory, but that their follow - up could split off into another hundred different directions at any given moment .
here are plot pieces that i remember: group of kids (girls and boys) standing in a circle holding hands. they' re in a building, likely a church or cathedral. one boy is speaking; they' re performing some kind of ritual or seance. a girl stands in the middle of the circle, blindfolded. loud noise / earth shaking occurs and a giant bell, like from a cathedral, drops on top of the girl standing in the middle. she disappears .
in my films i don' t like to use sound to elaborate the story. the story is the story and sound operates on a slightly different plane. as i mentioned, film to me is somewhere in between reality and fiction and i think of sound as defining the world that i' ve created in that film. sound is what defines the place that is neither story nor reality, but in between .
did education play a part in the style you chose for the film and how you shot? because you use some very classic camera effects, like the dissolve of the boy who sits in the window sill .
i think that kind of disappearing, in a non - visual medium it won' t work. you can' t do it in a novel, it' s almost impossible to do on stage. so those kinds of very simple techniques that belong only to film, even though we now have a lot of computer graphics, i like to treasure and value those expressions that can only be accomplished in the film medium .
some part of me is pleased that my film is being remade in the u. s. , but i think, frankly, as long as it' s being remade in the hollywood system, i have a sense of anxiety and dread that it will be very difficult for the film to be fused with the same sensibilities that i made my original film with. i think that, in general, it' s impossible for the sensibilities that these japanese films have to be remade inside the hollywood system. i find this sad, and i don' t care to participate in such ventures. however, i understand that there are many americans who bring to films a lot of intelligence and thoughtfulness. if there were a way, outside of hollywood, to remake my film in the english language for that kind of audience, then that would be wonderful .
i' m not sure what i' d do given the same circumstances and that' s what makes séance a good film. like life - to be trite - there are no easy answers; only' what ifs' and' should haves.' the film isn' t only about the scares, though there are some really classy ones, but about the complexity of an outcast' s social problems. while it can be argued that the film is bleak, i feel that it is accurately portraying the outsider' s plight in a different and smart manner. (i have purposely avoided the fascinating doppelganger metaphor, to leave you something to ponder. )
late one night, jon (corey feldman) throws a party for his college buddies and his sexy sweetheart silvia (mikki padilla). looking to liven things up, jon tells the tale of a child ghost, michael miller, who died a long time ago while desecrating a church. intriqued, jon' s friends coerce him to hold a seance and raise the blasphemous boy from the dead. little did they know it would work, and michael miller would rise from the grave, mad as hell... and out for revenge !
( smiles) i' ll tell mister yakusho that. certainly that dirty long coat in blade runner is a very memorable film costume. over the years i' ve asked my costume department to recreate that kind of a look .
i believe i made that film in 1999, but the script i had written almost ten years prior to that, back in 1989. it was an original story that i devised that related to a theme that i was very interested in at the time, which is the environment. so, although the narrative is important, the critical question in the film is whether a single tree will be chopped down, i. e. will we protect the forest or not .
i think there weren' t a lot of differences. i didn' t have a big budget and the shooting only took two weeks, so it' s the same as with a low budget film. i shot on film, so that' s the same too. the only thing was that i couldn' t use shocking scenes. it has to be more quiet. there aren' t a lot of people dying, because that' s not allowed .
i haven' t made them recently, but i used to make a lot of yakuza films. these are shot on film and they have a very limited theatrical release, but in fact they are intended to recoup their cost on video .
film screenwriter jake armitage and his wife jo armitage live in london with six of jo' s eight children, with the two eldest boys at boarding school. the children are spread over jo' s three... see full summary »
at first, laura thinks the idea is absurd—she isn’t the one with the powers, after all—but before long, she takes to her new career in ways that propel her into stardom and its usual trappings while at the same time separating her from her beloved sister. as for kate, she goes off with andre to an institute for the paranormal that he believes will help him recreate the earlier seance and film a genuine spirit with the aid of a collection of bizarre machinery straight out of a ken russell movie. andre plunges so much money into pursuing this obsession that his entire company teeters on the edge of bankruptcy. while all of this is going of, of course, the winds of war are beginning to blow, bad news under any circumstances but especially bad for andre, who has a secret regarding his heritage that threatens everything .
some of your early films where made with the nikkatsu studio, japan' s oldest film studio, and you had a much publicized falling out with them. can you discuss what they wanted with your work and why you didn' t think you could compromise ?
i' m very familiar with that famous shot at the end of nosferatu. there' s no direct relationship between barren illusion and nosferatu, but that kind of very simple, fundamental film technique i think can still have a very powerful effect if you use it intelligently .
cait carvalho is an experimental artist based in brooklyn. she tinkers in analog forms of media making, as well as the latest digital techniques. she has created hand - painted + and animated films, as well as surreal fiction and non - fiction pieces. by day, cait is working on her mfa in the ima program at hunter college. at night, she’s managing screenings at anthology film archives. during the summer, she’s hanging out upstate teaching film / video at the new york state summer school of the art' s media arts program .
well, i won' t go into all the details, but there was a time where there was an aspect of a branch of japanese filmmaking called the nikkatsu romance porn genre, and i made one of them right about the time it collapsed, right at the end of the 1980s. i was still young at the time, and i wanted to sink my teeth in this opportunity to make a film (vertigo college (shigarami gakuen) ), and wanted to have a lot of freedom in what i made. i thought that i had fulfilled the porn aspect of the film, but according to them, what i didn' t fulfill was the romance aspect of the film. i didn' t have a love story story - line, which i completely ignored. instead, i choose to portray a university that was best with various factions who were in - fighting amongst themselves. the studio decided that my film didn' t qualify as romance porno and decided that they weren' t going to release it. i said, in that case, let me buy it and release it myself. that was the end of that .
in japan even if you make a strictly entertainment film without any exploration of theme at all, a low budget is around us $ 200. 000 or 300, 000 and a high is maybe 2 or 3 million. like i said, it' s completely removed from hollywood levels .
the appearance of someone like yakusho - san helps to get a little bit more money, but he' s not exactly like a hollywood star. just that he' s in the film is no guarantee that it' ll be a hit or that there will be a large audience .
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yes it' s true, my film feature very passive characters, but i think that' s a very japanese way to be. that' s a very average way to be in japan, and i' m not portraying someone special when i' m showing that kind of character .
the film' s opening is slowly and deliberately paced, as we see myra and bill exchange increasingly strained and sinister dialogue while making rather mysterious and methodical preparations around their house. strong character scenes between the submissive husband and the increasingly unbalanced wife play effectively alongside the suspenseful kidnap and ransom sequences. this approach is seen at its best in the film' s central twelve minute section, in which bill' s frantic collection of the ransom at piccadilly circus underground station is intercut with a sedate policeman' s interview with myra back home. the scene effectively juxtaposes big city anonymity with suburban familiarity .
harun mehmedinovic took up photography as a hobby during his road trips across america. years later, his project bloodhoney * became one of the most successful kickstarter photography campaigns of all time. he is a regular contributor to bbc earth, and has contributed photographs to vogue italia, national geographic, and blindfold magazine. mehmedinovic' s work has been featured by wired magazine, la times, npr, la weekly, vice, washington post andthe boston globe, and they have also been a subject of a tedx talk. mehmedinovic is the author of two books, seance and persona, and his astrophotography timelapse videos have been used at various events, most notably by the rolling stones on their zip code tour in 2015 .
the film returns to 1991, and chrissy goes into labor and gives birth to a girl. later, in their old tree house, it is revealed by roberta that crazy pete had died the previous year. they then discuss how happy they are in life and make another pact to visit more often .
during holiday break, girls in an empty dorm building hold a seance to contact the ghost of a little girl that haunts their room. unfortunately, they also bring back a murderer who lived in the building, too. for the most part you can forget any comments about this movie being creepy. (reviews from someone involved in the production ?) it has a few lackluster moments, and it tries, but ultimately fails. mostly because scenes that are supposed to be set in the dark seem to have as much ambient light as your average daytime soap opera. and the slow fade effects of the ghosts are more cheesy than spooky. the actors playing the students all are very good, with a. j. lamas a notable standout. kandis erickson is also a more than capable lead. bridget shergalis is a good silent ghost. unfortunately the ghostly whistling maintenance man killer is about as scary as a carton of oatmeal. (i. e. not at all scary. maybe partly due to the overstrong lighting and sometimes laughable fade effects .) this film could have been so much more if only better choices had been made in respect to lighting and special effects .
loft is completed, but it hasn' t been released in japan yet. i think they are exploring the possibility of an early release next year, and it may be possible that it finds its way into a film festival abroad in 2006. i can' t tell you much about the story at this time, but what i ended up making is kind of a strange love story with many horror elements. that' s the film i wanted to make, but that' s a bit of a hard sell in the japanese market. apparently, i should have made a less unambiguous love story or a more ambiguous horror. we' re struggling a bit to find the appropriate release .
it' s actually more like three films a year. i' m just a very fast filmmaker. i usually take about two to four weeks to shoot a feature. also, there' s not a lot of money for filmmaking in japan, so if you only make one film a year, it' s very difficult to stay alive .
yes, it certainly is a detective story, but it' s also a sort of american - style indiana jones / two - teams - vying - for - a - treasure film. that' s how i started it. but instead of a box of treasure i decided to make the treasure a tree that' s in a forest. then you start to imagine
what value does the tree have
and
what is the condition of the forest it' s growing in ?
. then you start to realise that you' re not making an indiana jones movie at all, but you' re making a much more complex film. that' s the process of my filmmaking .
to put dear johnny' s soul to rest, the girls go to the cemetery to perform another seance. johnny' s tombstone suddenly rises surrounded by bright light. a figure appears from behind, but it is only the groundskeeper who explains that the stone was damaged and is being replaced. the groundskeeper explains he was the one who cracked the tombstone. realizing they never resurrected dear johnny, they agree to stop the seances. while leaving, they notice crazy pete, and samantha follows him back to dear johnny' s grave. realizing that he is dear johnny' s father, she comforts him, while he advises her not to dwell on things. some time after, the tree house is finally bought, and samantha narrates ,
the tree house was supposed to bring us more independence. but what the summer actually brought was independence from each other .
next, séance organises film - related events —festivals, special screenings, lectures, conferences etc. —in saint petersburg and other russian cities. we have run several retrospectives, starting with the highly successful stanley kubrick festival attended by jan harlan; the latest one was the retrospective of roy andersson who presented his latest film pigeon sat on a branch reflecting on existence in person. our most important project in 2015 so far was the first balabanov conference —an academic forum on aleksei balabanov accompanied by a series of screenings, a contemporary art exhibition, and even a guided tour. the conference’s events were held in saint petersburg and moscow; they involved a large number of notable critics, theorists, artists and filmmakers from russia and abroad and received a huge feedback .
the film was co - written and directed by rebecca zlutowski and the opening scenes are intriguing as we are introduced to the two sisters and their bond and observe kate’s otherworldly abilities and laura’s tentative first steps into the french film industry at a time when it was beginning to change to catch up with what was going on in the states. before long, however, the narrative devolves into a series of subplots that, with one exception, do not work on their own, and which never pull together into a satisfying whole. laura’s adventures, which include a romantic entanglement or two, are profoundly uninteresting and never address her feelings about her separation from kate. the war element doesn’t really come off either and just appears to have been tossed in at random to lend the story more dramatic heft. (we even get a moment where everyone at a garden party stops to sing an inspirational rendition of “la marseillaise. ”) the most interesting stuff involves kate and andre and all the strange gadgets employed to hopefully put a ghost on film but it winds up getting the short shrift to make room for the more conventionally melodramatic moments .
home vision has recently released two of your films in the united states, séance (korei) and charisma (karisuma), and i' d like to talk a little bit about séance. séance on a wet afternoon was originally adapted into a film in 1964 in the u. k. what was your interest in working with the subject matter? what' s the evolution of séance ?
the yakuza films were more or less around us $ 300, 000 to 400, 000 a piece. charisma had twice that, about us $ 800, 000. barren illusion was very low, about us $ 200, 000. my latest film pulse took a lot of money - well compared to hollywood movies it' s nothing, but still it' s twice the budget of cure .
it was filmed largely in the country walk subdivision off coffee bluff road in savannah, georgia, although called shelby, indiana in the movie, using the gaslight addition and old town cemetery, highlighting the downtown area. additional filming was done in statesboro, georgia in locations including the bulloch county court house (also featured in the film 1969 and the building now housing the averitt center for the arts .
one of the big differences between american filmmakers and japanese filmmakers is the quantity of work, while being able to maintain a high level of quality. why is it that so many japanese filmmakers are so prolific - you yourself make two or three films a year - while in the u. s. we' re lucky if the good filmmakers can make a good film once every two or three years ?
fundamentally, the use of metaphor and allegory in horror is nothing new; an exhaustive number of critiques and analyses have been written at length about this. in kurosawa' s case, by weaving the violent horror threads with social commentary, the audience gets a thrilling and chilling ride that leaves us pondering the larger implications of his stories. kurosawa' s 2000 made - for - tv film séance is a prime example of this .
it' s true that whenever i make a film, i' m interested in the thematic issues, but basically, as we know, if you' re going to make a film that going to be commercially released, there a time limit, somewhere between 100 and 120 minutes that defines the form of expression called films. in order to tell the story within that set time frame, i really do like to rely on the strength of genre. i think if you just make movies set to convey a certain theme, they have a tendency to get a little too long. the truth is that it had a ten year gestation period from writing the script to shooting the movie, so i had a lot of time for all kinds of confusion and doubt to fester. charisma is an extreme case where genre and theme are put together in a hodge - podge fashion .
i took some of his film classes in college and was really affected by them. what he taught me was how to watch films, how to perceive them, not how to make them. how to make them is very much self - taught. the core of what he taught me is that films aren' t just about entertainment, but films are so vital and exciting that they are worth spending your whole life exploring and examining .
and that' s it. no explanation of what it is or why it has occurred. but this moment is something that is rooted in good background research on paranormal phenomena: purportedly, room temperature drops dramatically where there is a paranormal event. i didn' t know this while watching the film, but i found the visual striking. it seemed to be an elegant touch of there literally being something mysterious' in the air.'
i didn' t come to a clear conclusion myself in the film, but i' m certainly happy to have you take that interpretation. it' s not far from my own. i would like to say that accepting life as it is, is not a weak or a pressured or a pessimistic thing. i think it' s quite the opposite. it' s a strong, aggressive, positive stance that can sometimes include elements of violence .
now and then is a 1995 american coming - of - age film directed by lesli linka glatter and starring christina ricci, rosie o' donnell, thora birch, melanie griffith, gaby hoffmann, demi moore, ashleigh aston moore (no relation to demi), and rita wilson. the supporting cast features hank azaria, janeane garofalo, cloris leachman, and bonnie hunt, among many others. the plot follows four women who recount a pivotal summer they shared together as adolescents in 1970 .
it' s hard to feel detached while watching this film. on the one hand, the fact that junko represents such a helpless minority who is not only marginalized but basically is mocked by society makes us immediately sympathize with her. in an allegorical sense, it is about any people who have ever been maligned by society and denied any chance to clear their name and prove themselves. they live behind the stamp of stereotype and any efforts made to improve, merely exacerbates the situation and the existing stigma .
one of the major themes of my films is individual life in the metropolis called tokyo. i' m not sure how this plays out in the u. s. , but what we have in tokyo is individual human beings living completely cut off from traditional, regional communities that had supported them in the past. the theme is that of a human being, isolated amidst a huge aggregation of people and information systems, but the individual remains entirely entirely alone within this metropolis. cure is the film that most clearly illustrates this theme .
it was a very precious and special time for me. it was my first exposure to the international film community, but it was a time that i realized how completely different japanese and american movie making systems are. in a way, part of the result of being exposed to sundance was that some part of me thought ,
well, maybe if the americans like it, i can make charisma in the united states .
but actually, being at sundance made me resolve that i must make this film in japan. my understanding of american cinema is that the protagonist must be taking actions towards a clearly defined goal. in my screenplay, there are many moments where my protagonist has no goal. he is just existing. many of the americans there kept bothering me, kept saying ,
what' s going on with this character now? what' s his intent? what' s his motive ?
and i would have to say ,
he doesn' t have any intent. he' s just being .
they found that very strange and odd .
certainly mainstream audiences want the slasher killer. that' s what they and the people who produce these films want, because it will make them jump. when a preview audience sees a horror movie, there are people that actually count how many times an audience does physically jump, and that is an indication of how effective a film is. that moment of adrenaline is actually being quantified to show how scary a film is, but your films are much more complex than that. for example, in america, when we have a theme of evil technology, the technology itself has to be given human qualities. a computer is given the ability to learn to think and kill on its own, or some monstrosity that we' ve created to benefit us will somehow turn on us. in your films, you use technology as a tool which human use for evil needs or the dependence of technology is a symptom of a much larger problem, like in pulse, where the internet is a piece of technology that is isolating us from one another. can you comment on this difference ?
that' s a theme that' s in a lot of your films, where your main character is like a blank slate where he has no ultimate goal, and he can become an analogy for change or whatever theme you want to comment on, and by the end of the film, how' s he' s changed is the ultimate comment of how an individual' s actions affect the whole of society. because the character is a blank slate, we can see the evolution of why the character becomes who they become. it' s a very effective technique .
finally, i want to draw attention to what is turning out to be a defining kiyoshi kurosawa film trait - perhaps, this is what my friend was implying with his answer to my initial' respected director' question? kurosawa repeatedly focuses great attention on the unique and subtle (understated ?) moments in his films. he rarely forces a moment and confidently allows his situations to unfold at their own pace, using his precisely placed edits to reveal information. (ironically, i feel that this is in direct contrast to his favorite directors' films .) here' s an example :
it makes me very happy to hear someone from the united states say that they find my film very scary, but, at the same time, it feels a little strange because the ghost in pulse does almost nothing. it' s basically an inactive ghost. to me, i find a ghost who does nothing terrifying, but my understanding of many american scary films such as alien or films about pathological killers is that what considered scary in the states is something that attacks us. the ghost in pulse doesn' t really do that. for me, that seems a natural object of fear .
david hall produces / writes / directs films, music videos, and live visuals for bands. through his former company handshake inc. , hall worked with today is the day, wolves in the throne room, brutal truth, portal, agoraphobic nosebleed, melvins, misery index, dragged into sunlight, pig destroyer and many other underground / extreme metal bands. he is currently in post production on his first feature film “the church of the red candle, ” a dark, psychiatric love story featuring an original soundtrack by luc lemay, and is currently in production on “god of thunder: the billy anderson story” about legendary engineer / producer billy anderson .
the weinstein brothers have had a remake of pulse in the works for some time now. there was even a point where there were some rumors you may direct the film, but wes craven came aboard, and you stepped aside. now, the project looks like its back on with a new director and a young, hip cast. you had mentioned earlier during your trip to sundance that you thought your storytelling was incompatible with american moviemaking, but we' ve had some recent success, at least box - office wise, with american remakes of ringu and the grudge, and even hideo nakata directed the sequel to the american ring. do you think the situation has changed ?
i don' t know if i feel influence from that particular experience now, but at the time i was certainly considered kind of a dangerous character within the studio system, kind of a persona - non - grata that couldn' t be relied upon to deliver what they wanted. at the same time there were young people and critics who supported my idiosyncratic approach to filmmaking who really appreciated my work. at this point it' s hard to say whether it was a good experience or bad experience, but the way i like to think of my self is that i somehow bridge the distance between a creative filmmaker and a craftsperson who can deliver a commercial film. i like to think of myself as somewhere in between those two.
seance ( 降霊 kôrei ) is a 2001 japanese horror/thriller television film directed by kiyoshi kurosawa , starring koji yakusho , jun fubuki and tsuyoshi kusanagi . it is based on the novel seance on a wet afternoon by mark mcshane , which was also the basis for the 1964 film of the same title . 
seance (降霊 kôrei) is a 2001 japanese horror/thriller television film directed by kiyoshi kurosawa, starring koji yakusho, jun fubuki and tsuyoshi kusanagi. it is based on the novel seance on a wet afternoon by mark mcshane, which was also the basis for the 1964 film of the same title.
seance (降霊 kôrei) is a 2001 japanese horror/thriller television film directed by kiyoshi kurosawa, starring koji yakusho, jun fubuki and tsuyoshi kusanagi. it is based on the novel seance on a wet afternoon by mark mcshane, which was also the basis for the 1964 film of the same title.