HD Video , 121 minutes.
Synopsis:
This is a poetic and animated meditation based on the impressions that left on me my two trips in Japan, in 2003 and in 2018. In both cases, I brought back images and sounds and also captures of my performances, most notably one with the dancer-choreographer Teita Iwabushi, that constitutes one of the threads i of the film. There is no story as such, but a formal construction, with both sounds and images, based on a stylistic and technical multidisciplinary approach that connects dance, calligraphy, and scratching on film. The continuity is made of a series of line of tension : scratched on film animation / live sound recorded in pubic places; listening to a language you don’t understand/ the immanent emotional power of the spoken word; contemporary life / remembrance of traditions; the fluidity of the passing time / the remembrance of the past disasters (like the atomic bomb in Nagasaki and the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima) where the Japanese society had a glance on the specter of annihilation and could demonstrate its resilence. The completion of the film actually coincide with the tenth aniversary of Fukushima.
In a certain way, the film tries to answer a fictional question : what is to be seen of Japan when Mount Fuji is invisible, lost in the clouds? Evocation of a paradoxal invisibility.
Credits:
direction, production, shooting, animation, editing : Pierre Hébert
dance : Teita Iwabuchi
music:
John Barrett , composition for piano and vibraphone (while time chimes otherwise)
Malcolm Goldstein, violin improvisation
John Heward, drums improvisation
Yuichi Matsumoto, programmed toy instruments
Various unknown musics recorded in public places in Japan
Étienne Noreau-Hébert, sound recording in Shinjuku, February 2020.
Claude Beaugrand, extra sound editing.
Luc Boudrias, sound mixing
Yuka Sato, translation in Japanese.
Screenings and festivals : World premiere during a complete Places and monuments retrospective, Cinémathèque québécoise, Montreal, May 11 2021; Annecy International Animation Festival, Contrechamp features competition, June 15 2021; Hambis Municipal Museum of engraving , in Nicosia, Cyprus, 20th anniversary of the Countryside Animation Festival, June 2021; Ottawa International Animation Festival, features competiton, September 2021; Rotterdam International Film Festival, section Harbour, limited web diffusion because of the pandemic, January 2022; Journées international du film sur l’art, Paris, Louvre Museum, January 2022.
Texts and reviews:
Text by Pierre Hébert about the sources of the film, published on the online cinema magazine, Hors-champ.
Review byLouis-Jean Descazes, published in 24 images.
Review by Nicolas Thys, in his daily coverage of the Annecy Festival, 24 images.
Review by Allan Hunter in Screen Daily, June 14 2021.
Interview by Karine Boulanger published by Vidéographe.
Trailers
one minute trailer.
2:24 min. trailer
Gallery of drawings of the Yakushima Island forest.
