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
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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