Eleven directors from 11 countries each contribute an 11-minute short reflecting on the events of 11 September 2001: A village teacher in Iran tries to explain to her young students what’s happened; city kids in Burkina Faso think they’ve spotted Osama bin Laden; a deaf Frenchwoman in Manhattan writes a Dear John letter to a man who left that morning for work at the World Trade Center; a Chilean remembers Allende; events recall other deaths; a mother endures more than her son’s death. The tones vary, as do the locales. Most stories are about others coming to terms with the events of the day, but at least one confronts the viewer with tragedy and death.
Tag: JAPAN
Japanese soldier Tôsuke Kosugi deserts his position and travels to a small town on the Sea of Japan to start over in this melodrama from director Masahiro Shinoda. When a young maid falls for him, he talks her into sleeping with an older man for money. The woman is told by a geisha that she gave up her virginity cheaply. The resort town begins to feel the influence of the modern world as the sabre-rattling that preceded World War II begins to change their lives forever.
Set in the bull-fighting Patani Malay community of Southern Thailand. An ungracious loser in the arena kills his rival, whose brother Mamat then vows to get even. His wife Minah fails to stop this cycle of vengeance, which will also affect the younger generation.
After wandering into a cemetery, a young man named Shusei is led by the mysterious Madame Enjoji to a secluded mansion. There, he is introduced to Aido, an ethereal woman who seems to be the living embodiment of his most surreal erotic fantasies. Caught between the real world and a haunting dreamscape, Shusei becomes obsessed with Aido.
After his parent’s divorce, Kazuo Saito moves with his mother from Onomichi and must leave his girlfriend behind. At his new school, Kazuo is surprised to reunite with his childhood friend Kazumi. Obayashi’s self-remake of Tenkôsei.
Set in a cave imagined as an air-raid shelter, images of the surrounding trees are painted over directly on the film. Vivid colors intermixed with the sound of wartime radio communications and bombing create a harmonious composition of documentary and animation.
One of the most sublime color films ever made, Ballad of Orin follows the hardscrabble life of a wandering outcast goze (blind female musician) in early 20th-century Japan. Cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa and director Masahiro Shinoda interviewed surviving goza of the time to capture “a sense of the ideal beauty that these blind women had inwardly visualized.
Two drifters, Jun and Katsuhiro, dream of escaping Japan for Africa but end up stranded in a bleak fishing town in Hokkaido. There, they drift between odd jobs, drinking, and fleeting connections, including with a disillusioned woman, Fujiko. Their dream of Africa becomes less a destination than a symbol of escape from stagnation, as the film reflects on friendship, longing, and the quiet despair of lives lived on the margins.