Film Archive

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A Million

A Million
Arata Mori
Camera Lucida – Out of Competition 2021
Documentary Film
Japan,
Germany
2021
65 minutes
Japanese
Subtitles: 
English

The account of a journey through an imaginary city, filmed along China’s new trade routes. Like the fictionalized Marco Polo from Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities”, the traveller in this film talks of worlds that resemble familiar places but follow their own, sometimes seemingly incredible rules. The observations condense into a meditation about the nature of cities and the transformation of the concept of globalization.

The foreign visitor’s voice sounds muffled, as if it were coming out of the cave whose interior views open the film. Time and again, the eye returns there – but the fluorescent rock faces soon turn into the sparkle of distant galaxies, the narrow confines of the cave indistinguishable from the vastness of space. It is a symbol of the decoupling of sign and meaning, of “real” and “false”, of sensual impressions and their positive geographical allocation that pervades the film: Daft Punk perform in front of a Chinese shopping mall; the Eiffel Tower stands first in a housing estate, then, folded up to a fraction of its size, in view of Big Ben and Tower Bridge.
Felix Mende

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Arata Mori
Cinematographer
Arata Mori
Editor
Arata Mori
Producer
Arata Mori
Co-Producer
Andreas Hartmann, Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese
Sound
Philippe Ciompi
Score
Yu Miyashita
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Anxious Body

Fuan na karada
Yoriko Mizushiri
International Competition Short Film 2021
Animated Film
France,
Japan
2021
6 minutes
English
Subtitles: 
None

Tszzzzidd – skin and adhesive tape separate slowly, almost lasciviously. From a sober physical point of view, forces between molecular bonds are being overcome. Yoriko Mizushiri composes brief, highly sensual variations on pain and pleasure based on this phenomenon. Restrained, calm and scalpel-sharp, she creates two-dimensional drawn animations in subdued colours, accompanied by cool electronic sounds that explode in one’s head only to scatter into the anxious but curious body.

André Eckardt

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Yoriko Mizushiri
Producer
Emmanuel-Alain Raynal, Pierre Baussaron, Nobuaki Doi / New Deer
World Sales
Luce Grosjean
Soul-Things 2022
Filmstill Bird in the Peninsula
Bird in the Peninsula
Atsushi Wada
A bird with a swan’s neck nestling in hands, a gently wooded peninsula of longing: Atsushi Wada’s dream and shame logic of a sexual awakening.
Filmstill Bird in the Peninsula

Bird in the Peninsula

Hantō no tori
Atsushi Wada
Soul-Things 2022
Animated Film
France,
Japan
2022
16 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

A boy, a girl, a bird with a swan’s neck nestling in hands, a gently wooded peninsula of longing: Atsushi Wada’s almost speechless animation, mapped out in uniform and unicoloured chains of motifs and events, follows the dream and shame logic of a sexual awakening. There’s a sadness about the rounded and infantile figures, perhaps that of a first “little death”.

Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Atsushi Wada
Editor
Atsushi Wada
Producer
Emmanuel-Alain Raynal, Pierre Baussaron, Nobuaki Doi
Sound Design
Masumi Takino
Score
Mio Adachi
Animation
Atsushi Wada, Chikako Iwasaki, Margot Barbé, Marilou Soller, Josselin Facon
Soul-Things 2022
Filmstill Maze King
Maze King
Hakhyun Kim
The mocking transvestite, the raging dog, the prophetic clown and the little girl, all united inside the desperate protagonist. A crisis full of poetic dignity.
Filmstill Maze King

Maze King

Maze King
Hakhyun Kim
Soul-Things 2022
Animated Film
Japan
2013
8 minutes
Japanese
Subtitles: 
English

The mocking transvestite, the raging dog, the prophetic clown and the little girl are united inside the desperate protagonist. The longing to break free rises forcefully – like a pistol pressed against his chest. In humorous metaphors, Hakhyun Kim takes a crisis of disorientation to extremes, while his extraordinary stylistics lend it poetic dignity.

Malte Stein

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Hakhyun Kim
Script
Hakhyun Kim
Editor
Hakhyun Kim
Animation
Hakhyun Kim
German Competition 2022
Filmstill Miyama, Kyoto Prefecture
Miyama, Kyoto Prefecture
Rainer Komers
Over three decades, Uwe Walter from Gelsenkirchen has become part of the Japanese village community of Miyama. This moves him at last to say goodbye to the past.
Filmstill Miyama, Kyoto Prefecture

Miyama, Kyoto Prefecture

Miyama, Kyoto Prefecture
Rainer Komers
German Competition 2022
Documentary Film
Germany,
Japan
2022
97 minutes
German,
Japanese
Subtitles: 
English

There’s probably no other citizen of Gelsenkirchen who has ever mastered Nō singing and playing the Shakuhachi flute as authentically as Uwe Walter. He has lived in the mountain village of Miyama north of Kyoto for three decades and emulates the local residents, whether they earn their living on the fields, breeding cattle or hunting. People tend their gardens, repair fences to keep away the macaques and grow their own rice. Uwe has become perfectly Japanese, at one with his environment.

However well-suited his Ruhr area wit makes him as a figure of identification, the camera keeps a respectful distance, more reserved than Uwe himself. Only at one point does it come touchingly close: When he is forced to say goodbye to an essential part of his past in the interest of the village community. But the real subject of this film is not the German with his greyish blonde curls but rather that very community, portrayed by Rainer Komers in bittersweet polyphony. It emerges in the children’s games, the adults’ pursuits and the old people’s tales, in the summer downpours of the rainy season, the white moon over the nocturnal village and the blood-red leaves of autumn.
Christoph Terhechte

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Rainer Komers
Script
Gregor Bartsch
Cinematographer
Rainer Komers
Editor
Gregor Bartsch
Producer
Rainer Komers
Sound
Uwe Walter, Yuki Morimoto, Michel Klöfkorn, Oscar Stiebitz
Score
Uwe Walter, Yuki Morimoto
World Sales
Joachim Kühn
Broadcaster
Doris Hepp
Key Collaborator
Hiroko Inoue
Nominated for: VER.DI Prize for Solidarity, Humanity and Fairness
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Nude at Heart

Nude at Heart
Yoichiro Okutani
Editing Makes the Film 2021
Documentary Film
Japan,
France
2021
109 minutes
Japanese
Subtitles: 
French, English

A background study of a dying amusement culture, filmed in slovenly dressing rooms in front of badly polished make-up mirrors. – That’s how far editor Mary Stephen follows director Yoichiro Okutani’s montage interpretation of his own footage about the Japanese strippers called Odoriko. But Stephen’s editor’s cut begins fully dressed: a tastefully lit stage overture in costume, starting from which she rearranges or rather sheds the material, reintegrating image and sound sequences originally discarded by Okutani, for example the titular statement of an Odoriko explaining her choice of profession: “It was about being nude at heart.”

Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Yoichiro Okutani
Script
Yoichiro Okutani
Cinematographer
Yoichiro Okutani
Editor
Mary Stephen
Producer
Asako Fujioka, Eric Nyari, Annie Ohayon-Dekel
Score
Haruyuki Suzuki
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Odoriko

Odoriko
Yoichiro Okutani
Editing Makes the Film 2021
Documentary Film
Japan,
USA,
France
2020
114 minutes
Japanese
Subtitles: 
English

A background study of a dying amusement culture, filmed in slovenly dressing rooms in front of badly polished make-up mirrors. – Director Yoichiro Okutani follows the Odoriko, the Japanese strippers, through their daily routine between dressing and undressing, between pragmatic approaches to life and eroticism made fit for the stage. Okutani’s cut begins naked: A nude woman descends a staircase, filmed not to advantage but with the brutal ordinariness of routine. One production year and five minutes lie between this – Okutani’s – director’s cut and Mary Stephen’s editor’s cut “Nude at Heart”. But how much more?

Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Yoichiro Okutani
Script
Yoichiro Okutani
Cinematographer
Yoichiro Okutani
Editor
Yoichiro Okutani, Keiko Okawa
Producer
Asako Fujioka, Eric Nyari, Yoichiro Okutani, Annie Ohayon-Dekel
Sound
Young-chang Hwang
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Open One’s Mouth

Kuchi wo hiraku
Akane Murata
International Competition Short Film 2021
Animated Film
Japan
2021
4 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

Paper and colour pigments lead a life of their own. The material awakens and begins to talk, opening its mouth. The colours speak to each other, their substances add up to form a multi-layered tale about the strains of dialogue and interaction. The texture of the hand-painted individual frames is closely interwoven with a sonic tapestry of human sounds and minimalist electronic resonances.

Christoph Terhechte

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Akane Murata
Producer
Kei Oyama
Sound
Naoaki Nishimura
Filmstill Sewing Love

Sewing Love

Sewing Love
Xu Yuan
International Competition Animated Film 2023
Animated Film
Japan
2023
8 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

The two main characters of this film seem made for each other. They literally fit together, merge into each other, melt into a colourful, psychedelic, swirling whole. They function together, until one of them disconnects. The madness of this riot of colours turns into a dark nightmare when the one left behind re-absorbs the other by force. Against her will, the renegade must now be sewn to her partner. The once flourishing relationship degenerates into an irritating visual and audio chaos of aggressively twitching drawings and shattered sounds. Impaled on a gnarly tree, the couple’s bodies decay. As they are dying away, darkness turns into light and fresh blossoms open on the pale bones.

Franka Sachse

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Xu Yuan
Producer
Tomokazu Nomura
Sound Design
Nanami Sato
Animation
Xu Yuan
Nominated for: Gedanken Aufschluss Prize, mephisto 97.6 Audience Award