The inaugural event for the Cinema at Sea – Okinawa Pan-Pacific International Film Festival will take place from November 23rd to November 29th in cinemas across Okinawa.
40 films from across the Pan-Pacific region are expected to be screened. This covers places such as Australia, Canada, the Philippines, Malaysia and more. As well as being a place to watch films, it is hoped that it will serve as a place for networking. Okinawa is a fitting place for this since it has a rich history of being multicultural due to major events and movements of people throughout its history.
This is a new addition festival to the circuit and it comes from Huang Yin-Yu, a Taiwanese director based in Okinawa, Japan. He is best known for a mixture of documentaries and dramatic features, many of which have been screened at the Osaka Asian Film Festival. Titles include Green Jail and Green Grass, Pale Fire (both 2021), and After Spring, the Tamaki Family (2016).
The line-up for the festival reflects this cultural diversity and the director’s background as it is heavy on a mixture of films from Taiwan and Japan amidst a few titles from further afield. Overall, it kind of captures lives lived across the Pacific.
The Japanese highlights of the festival follow:
OPENING FILM
オキナワより愛をこめて 「Okinawa yori Ai o Komete」
Release Date: 2023
Duration: 101 mins.
Director: Hiroshi Sunairi
Writer: N/A
Starring: Mao Ishikawa
Hiroshi Sunairi is originally from Hiroshima but he is now based in New York. He has two documentaries at the festival, both of which are dedicated to the photographer Mao Ishikawa.
Synopsis: Mao Ishikawa is a photographer who comes from Okinawa. She spent her early 20s working as a barmaid in establishments specifically catering to African-American GIs stationed there during the Vietnam war and took photographs of them and her fellow bar workers and the children from various relationships to show the bonds, intimacy, love, racism, and politics of people living with Japan’s wartime past and America’s imperialism. These photographs formed the basis of her books like “Red Flower – The Women of Okinawa.” She guides the filmmakers around former bars, her home, and her photographs as she recounts her relationships with those she was close to. During this journey, we see how Okinawa has changed.
COMPETITION
水いらずの星 「Mizuirazu no Hoshi」
Release Date: November 24th, 2023
Duration: 164 mins.
Director: Michio Koshikawa
Writer: Michio Koshikawa (Screenplay), Masataka Matsuda (Original Story),
Starring: Masahiro Umeda, Tomomi Kono, Ryoko Takizawa,
Michio Koshikawa, director of After the Sunset (2019) and producer of Sketches of Kaitan City (2010), Sakura Ando films Torso (2009), Asleep (2015) and Our Homeland (2012), has adapted a work by playwright/director Masataka Matsuda. It is said to have an experimental theatrical presentation.
Synopsis: A woman sits alone at a portside hostess bar beneath a colossal bridge in Sakaide-shi, Kagawa Prefecture. This is where she sells her body to make ends meet. Her life has dwindled away just like Japan’s shipbuilding industry. What led her to this point is abandoning her husband in Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture, when she ran away with another man six years earlier. On this rainy night, she encounters her husband again. The two fall back into each other’s arms and try to bridge the gap of time lost and, as they lie together, space and time become blurred.
DIRECTOR IN FOCUS – CHRISTOPHER MAKOTO YOGI
American director Christopher Makoto Yogi, a native of Hawai’i, will have a number of his films getting Asian and Japanese premieres at the festival. These include the shorts Makoto: or, Honesty (6 mins. documentary), Obake (13 mins.), and the features August at Akiko’s (Dir: Christopher Makoto Yogi, 75 mins. 2018), which is all about an aimless musician meeting an older woman who takes him under her wing and the two form a cool relationship as he listens to her and learns from her. and I Was a Simple Man (100 mins.), the tale of an elderly man confronting the history of his life – and all of the ghosts that dredges up – in what is described as “a time-shfting, multifaceted story of a fractured family coping with the impending loss of their patriarch.” Set in Hawai’i, it covers pre-World War II and the present time.
PACIFIC ISLANDS SHOWCASE
Release Date: 2023
Duration: 53 mins.
Director: Kaori Oda
Writer: N/A
Starring: N/A
Osaka-born Kaori Oda emerged with self-documentaries in Japan before moving to Sarajevo for three years and completing a PhD in filmmaking under the guidance of Hungarian director Béla Tarr at his film.factory programme. Her feature films include ARAGANE (2015) Toward A Common Tenderness (2017), and Cenote (2019)
Synopsis: Kaori Oda uses 16mm film to capture the “Gama” caves of Okinawa. They provided shelter to locals during the war and now they are a place to visit to see that history. Mitsuo Matsunaga, a collector and peace guide, shares the stories and memories of the cave and those who sheltered there.
Uyafaafuji’s Refusal: An Ode to the Yanbaru
Release Date: 2021
Duration: 10 mins.
Director: Sho Yamagushiku
Writer: N/A
Starring: N/A
Canadian-based director Sho Yamagushiku’s family roots stretch back to Okinawa and Alaska, and he explores Pacific island life in his films.
Synopsis: Uyafaafuji means ancestors in Okinawan language and director Sho Yamagushiku explores their influence in our daily lives in his short which contains a melange of communicative styles and many mysterious images to engage in a dialogue with our uyafaafuji.
Outdoor Screening
One Second Ahead, One Second Behind
1秒先の彼 「Ichibyou Saki no Kare」
Duration: 119 mins.
Director: Nobuhiro Yamashita
Writer: Kankuro Kudo (Screenplay), Chen Yu-hsun (Original Film)
Starring: Masaki Okada, Kaya Kiyohara, Rion Fukumuro, Yuki Katayama, Kiyo Matsumoto, Aki Hano, YosiYosi Arakawa, Shima Ise,
This is a remake of Taiwanese film called My Missing Valentine (2020). It comes from Nobuhiro Yamashita (The Drudgery Train), a journeyman director at this point.
Synopsis: Hajime works at a post office in Kyoto and is faster than others. He has always been this way. In contrast, a street musician named Reika is slower than others. Her voice makes Hajime fall in love. The two arrange to go to a fireworks display for a date but when Hajime wakes up, he has lost a day. Reika can explain more about the missing day.
Special Screening
オキナワ フィラデルフィア 「Okinawa Firaderufia」
Release Date: 2023
Duration: 56 mins.
Director: Hiroshi Sunairi
Writer: N/A
Starring: Mao Ishikawa
Synopsis: In the late 80s, Mao Ishikawa travelled from Okinawa to Philadelphia at the age of 33 to document the life of her friend, Myron Carr, a former US marine she had met in Okinawa in the 1970s. The photographs she took of her friend and the area he lived in formed the basis of her photo book, “Life in Philly.” This documentary revisits this journey and revives memories of Myron and Mao through the recollections of people she documented and met.
あなたの微笑み 「Anata no Hohoemi」
Release Date: November 12th, 2022
Duration: 103 mins.
Director: Lim Kah-wai
Writer: Lim Kah-wai (Script),
Starring: Hirobumi Watanabe, Hikaru Hirayama, Shogen, Hironobu Tanaka, Yoshihiko Yatabe,
Director Lim Kah-Wai (Come and Go) casts fellow filmmaker Hirobumi Watanabe (And the Mud Ship Sails Away) as the lead in this road movie about a struggling indie filmmaker.
Synopsis: It seems like Hirobumi Watanabe is playing a version of himself, a more unlikeable one whose FOOLISH PIGGIES film label is struggling despite him being an award-winning talent. No major film companies want to work with him until an old friend, a producer from Okinawa, approaches him about making a film. Watanabe sets off on a journey to visit mini-theatres across Japan in search of a theatre that will show his film, and is guided by a mysterious girl he meets along the way.
MABUI Special Award” Screening
This award celebrates film professionals from the Pacific Rim region who have made significant contributions to the history of cinema. The first award goes to Go Takamine, an Okinawan native since he hails from Ishigaki Island. After studying filmmaking in Kyoto, he has gone on to make works that have championed the language, culture, history and people of Okinawa, from ancient Ryukyu customs to modern American influences.
My first encounter with his name was probably the drama Country Girl from the early 2010s and Queer Fish Lane, which Japan Cuts screened. The festival will screen three of his films and host an exhibition of the films’ artwork.
夢幻琉球つるヘンリー 「Mugen Ryukyu Tsuru Henri」
Release Date: August 21st, 1999
Duration: 85 mins.
Director: Go Takamine
Writer: Go Takamine, Masaru Nakazato (Script),
Starring: Misako Shimabukuro, Henry Shimabukuro, Susumi Taira, Katsuma Miyagi,
Synopsis: A road movie featuring Tsuru Shimabukuro, a folk singer and ‘guerilla’ radio broadcaster, and her karate-fighting son, both of whom move into the home of a scriptwriter after finding a script of his and deciding to make it into a film following his disappearance to Taiwan. Expect strange people and surreal experiences along the way.
Release Date: 1973
Duration: 15 mins.
Director: Go Takamine
Writer: N/A
Starring: N/A
Synopsis: A film using family photos to create a chain of memories, all set against the historical backdrop of Okinawa’s reversion to Japan in 1972, Colour and rhythm are manipulated to influence emotions.
パラダイスビュー 「Paradaisu Byu-」
Release Date: April 13th, 1985
Duration: 117 mins.
Director: Go Takamine
Writer: Go Takamine (Script),
Starring: Jun Togawa, Haruomi Hosono, Kaoru Kobayashi, Shinzoku Ogimi, Tomi Taira, Yoko Taniyama, Lily,
Synopsis: The film takes place just as Okinawa is about to be given back to Japanese control by the Americans. It follows a man who has quit his job at a U.S. military base and an ethnographer (played by Haruomi Hosono of Yellow Magic Orchestra) who attempts to marry a village woman in the traditional Ryukyu customs.