Deep in the Valley 谷中暮色

We attended the Q&A session at the Cubix cinema complex. Right before heading to the airport I got a phone call from a German film company. In the car to the Tegel we had a brief meeting on possible world sales deal for DITV. A luck has come at the very last minute!

I had an interview by Rüdiger Suchsland, a Berlin-based film critic writing for Filmdienst. He questioned, “There seems to be a huge gap between Ozu, Mizoguchi, Kurosawa and the modern Japanese cinema nowadays. What do you think of it?” I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant. But the question surprised, or almost overwhelmed me.
Then we attended the closing ceremony for the Golden Bear. “The Milk of Sorrow” won it. Viewing the award ceremony was quite entertaining and the party afterwards was massive!

We had a quite interesting conversation with Loic Magneron, Wide Management at Park Hyatt on the world sales of our film. Nothing is certain yet, but quite hopeful. After the meeting we had a good Italian dinner with Alex and Nadia, our Press Attache team who work their butts off!

At Arsenal cinema we had the 3rd screening. The cinematheque has a very charming atmosphere for cinephilies as Film Forum, NY or Bungeiza, Tokyo. Q&A after the screening was quite intense and I enjoyed it very much. Then me, Alex, and his new girl friend went out for the biggest night event in Berlinale, Forum Party in a huge colosseum-like theater. I happened to meet Bellour Raymond and ended up talking for an hour and half. we talked Eric,  Grin, Costa, then John Ford at the end. You can have quite exciting talk on cinema in the club music, that’s an unique charm of Berlinale!

First thing in the morning I and Kevin had a meeting with Tobias, acquisition director of The Match Factory. To tell the truth he turned down “Deep in the Valley” before Berlinale, but he emailed me saying he wanted to meet me anyway for the future project. He has been working together with Jo (Apichapon Weelasetakun) and Kaurismaki lately, so he got a terrific sense of cinema.
Then we went to a lunch meeting for all the directors and casts in Forum hosted by Christoph, then went to DITV’s 2nd screening at Cinestar 8. Q&A session with Cast and Staff  was quite interesting and “deep.” Bellour Raymond, the founder and critic of French film magazine TRAFIC, came up to me after the screening and gave me great comments which was incredibly rewarding to me. As soon as Q&A ended I was almost kidnaped by Talent Campus to their talk show “Happy Returns”, conference with all the campus alumni filmmakers. I wish Kaminski, the great DoP, also should join the discussion.
After that we had a quite delicious Kantonese dinner hosted by Tony Raynes. What a fun night!

We had no screening today. Instead we enjoyed watching other films!
Among a few films I saw. “Excentricidades De Una Chica Rubia (Eccentricities of a Blonde Hair Girl)” a new film buy Manoel de Oliveira! The 100-year-old Portogese filmmaker came to Berlinale! He was standing in front of my eyes and talking lively, which was totally incredible. He read a letter that says, “oh, to me when film had color was like yesterday…” and he shot his new film on HD!(I cannot put up photos now, but I will when I’m back to Tokyo.)

We just had the press screening and the 1st public screening of DITV!
One Indian lady came up to me with tears in her eyes and praised the film. That was almost shocking to me. She turned out to be a Asian film programmer for Cannes! (details will be followed tomorrow, since I’ll do the interview with her.)

The public screening started at 21:30 at Delphi-Filmpalast. The theater was completely packed and the digital projection was superb, the best I’ve seen in my life!

The cast and staff went up to the stage to greet the Berlinale audience. And I had a Q&A session with Christoph, the Forum’s program director after the screening.

Soda, a filmmaker friend from NY with his stunning new film MENTAL, came to the screening. What a fun nite!

We have now arrived in Berlin.
Had an interview and met with filmmaker friends.
More will come later!

The Berinale 2009 has ignited today!

Christoph Terhechte, programme director of Forum section, talks about “Deep in the Valley” in his interview.

INTERVIEWER

Another theme this year seems to be the relationship between the generations and the question of preserving tradition.

CHRISTOPH

“Deep in the Valley by Funahashi Atsushi is a good example of that. The generational conflict in this film plays out in Yanaka, a neighbourhood in northeastern Tokyo where the old spirit of the city can still be felt. The filmmaker uses memories of a five-story wooden pagoda that burnt to the ground there in 1957 as a kind of hook for a cinematic engagement with the locals’ sense of tradition. What’s interesting about this film is that it is a documentary that also includes scripted elements. One of the plot lines is set in the present and tells the story of a film club looking for 8mm footage of the fire. A second plot line is based on a Japanese novel and tells the story of the pagoda’s construction. A young architect had to break with his teacher in order to build what was at the time a new kind of pagoda, which then went on to become a masterpiece of Japanese architecture. So of all people it is this young man who committed the impossible act of knocking his master off the throne that the older generation admires today as one of the great founders of tradition. This relativizes the conflict between the generations very nicely, I think.”

Here’s the full interview.

http://www.berlinale.de/en/das_festival/festivalprofil/berlinale_themen/Forum_2009.html

Also, here’s another write-up on the festival’s webstie.

Saturday, January 31, 2009

16 familiar faces at the Forum 2009

At the Forum 2009, filmgoers won’t just have the chance to discover a wealth of new names and cinematic signatures. A whole range of filmmakers who have already shown one or more films at previous editions of the Forum will also be making a welcome return.

Japanese director Soda Kazuhiro is, for example, just one of the 16 directors back with us this year; his debut Campaign was shown at the Forum in 2007. His new film Mental (Seishin) is an equally original and uncompromising filmic observation. His compatriot Funahashi Atsushi should also still be fresh in audience’s memories: his road movie Big River was shown at the Forum in 2006; his new film Deep in the Valley is a melancholy story set in Tokyo with a strong documentary leaning.