Kore

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Koreeda Hirokazu

• Films of Dialectics

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Films of Various Dailectics

• As a child I comprehended
• little of what I saw, but I
• remember thinking that people
• forget everything about other people when they
  die. I now understand how critical memories are
  to our identity, to a sense of self.
• Koreeda Hirokazu

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Television Films (Documentaries)

• Documentary
• However (1991)
• About the suicide of an elite bureaucrat who
  have for many years negotiated as a government
  representative with mercury pollution victims
  (Minamata disease) for compensation.
• Shikashi

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Television Films (Documentaries)

• Lessons from a Calf (1991) - about a primary
  school in which an experimental education is
  carried out. No textbooks are used. The film
  follows pupils raising a cow, named Laura, over
  three years.

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Television Films (Documentaries)

• I Wanted to Become a Japanese (1992) - A Korean
  resident in Japan was arrested for the forgery of
  a passport. Nobody knew that he was Korean until
  his arrest. Why did he fake a Japanese passport?
• August without Him (1994) - about the first
  Japanese to publicly acknowledge that he
  contracted AIDS through heterosexual intercourse.
  
• The documentary is shot by home-video recorder
  and focus on the interaction between the subject
  and the filmmaker.

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Television Films (Documentaries)

• Without Memory (1996) - A father loses his
  short-term memory as a result of failure in
  medical treatment. The documentary exposes the
  inefficiency of Japans health care system and
  its bureaucratic callousness, while raising more
  philosophical issue of memory and loss.
• The Japanese Constitution - The Clause 9, the
  Renounce of War and Forgetting (2002) - about the
  controversial Clause 9 of the Japanese
  Constitution and the loss of war-time memory.

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Feature Films

• Maboroshi (1995) - a young woman is deeply
  troubled by the memory of two losses. When she
  was a child, her grandmother disappeared on her
  and was never found again. Her husband
  mysteriously commits suicide, though nobody
  finds any motive for it as he lived very happily
  with her and his new born baby.

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Feature Films

• She remarries and lives in a remote village with
  her own son, her husband, her step-daughter and
  her father-in-law, but the memories of her
  grandmother and late husband keep haunting her.

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Feature Films

• After Life (1998) - as people die and make their
  journey to the other world, they stop a half-way
  station and select one memory to take with them
  to heaven. The memory is filmed with the help of
  a counselor so that the departed will have a
  permanent record of their former lives.

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Feature Films

• Distance (2001) - on the third anniversary of the
  mass murder by a cult religious sect, four people
  who lost their loved ones travel to the place
  where the tragedy took place.

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Feature Films

• While reflecting on the relationships with the
  departed, the four people encounter a former
  member of the sect. Unexpected turn of events
  lead to the resolution of the past regrets.

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Feature Films

• Nobody Knows (2003) - abandoned by their mother,
  four kids employ their wit and a set of their
  rules to survive in a tiny Tokyo apartment, till
  the harsh reality of the outside world tells a
  toll.

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Feature Films

• Hana (2006) - a young, gentle samurai comes to
  Edo from the province to take revenge against his
  fathers killer, though he is so inept that he
  cannot carry out his mission.

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Feature Films

• Still Walking is a family drama about the
  grown-up children visiting their elderly parents
  in a summer day. One of the purpose of the rare
  family reunion is to commemorate the death of the
  eldest son taken place fifteen years ago.

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Themes

• Disappearance (death) and memory in Maboroshi
  Memories of the departed haunts the heroine
  keeping memories ? coping and overcoming memories
  
• Deaths and remembering in After Life Memories of
  former lives losing memory ? preserving memory
• Death and recollection in Distance Memories of
  the beloved keeping their memories ? coming
  terms with and overcoming their death

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Motifs and Themes

• Disappearance and lack of memory in Nobody Knows
  Memories of a disappeared mother attachment to
  her ? learning to live without her
• Death and revenge in Hana Memories of a murdered
  father keeping his memories alive ? finding a
  new meaning in life
• Death and disappearing memories in Still Walking
  fading memories of the dead in busy daily life
  coping with grief and the regret of not griefing
  enough.

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Visual Styles

• Documentary ? Aestheticism
• Shot entirely natural light ? Extremely lyrical
  and magical effects of light and shadow, deep
  colours (Maboroshi, Distance)

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Visual Styles

• Documentary ? Aestheticism
• 500 interviews to non-actors about their
  favourite memory to take with them to heaven
  mainly shot by hand-held camera in natural light
  ? Lyrical, fantastic and nostalgic visual
  effects in cinematography

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Visual Styles

• Documentary ? Aestheticism
• Capturing the reality of large and anonymous
  cities ? Beauty of modern / post-modern
  cityscape
• Osaka in Maboroshi, Tokyo in Nobody Knows

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Visual Styles

• The hand-held camera capture the reality of Osaka
  in deep colours (Maborosh) and Tokyo in slightly
  over-exposed colours (Nobody Knows) ? sense of
  unreality (otherworldliness)

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Visual Styles

• The camera capturing realities of a contemporary
  family in Still Walking ? nostalgic and
  otherworldly atmosphere and mood are created by
  photography and editing.

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Dialectics

• Koreedas films - oscillate between truth and
  fantasy, documentary and fiction, now and past,
  reality and invention in both their themes and
  visual styles.

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Conclusion

• Is Kore-eda a director of social problem films?
  Neo-social conscience film?
• TV documentary and feature film
• Not much so in his feature films
• Consistent theme - memory
• What is memory, how accurate is memory, how can
  memory be kept alive

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Conclusion

• Changing film styles
• Clear influence from TV documentary making
• For Kore-eda, a film style is not his skin but a
  changeable shirt. He freely changes shirts
  according to the aim of his films, whose
  productions are carefully based on
  market-research. Shikata Inuhiko
• Great eyes to details
• His own unique style yet to be emerged