PROGRAM
Directly managed programs F/T label
Film special: The process of creating with people
Special stream of documentaries focusing on the process of creation
We present a set of documentary works capturing the “creators” - not limited to actors and directors - involved at the frontlines of collective creation. The collaboration depicted in these films conveys the techniques, skills, ideas, thoughts, tribulations, ingenuity, and pleasures of the creative process.
This special stream comprises four films focusing on the creative side and process of stage production, which we hope will attract people interested in creation regardless of their standpoint. The films comprise “Peter Brook: The Tightrope,” a documentary distilled from an intimate two-week observation of the working methods of theatre giant Peter Brook, who died in July this year; “tHe dancing Homeless” which follows the Yuki Aoki-led dance troupe Newcomer H Sokerissa!, whose members are homeless or formerly homeless people; “Transform!” in which the wheelchair-using director explores the possibilities for artistic activities with other people from different backgrounds; and “Dancing Dreams - Teenagers perform "KONTAKTHOF" by Pina Bausch,” which captures the process of recreating Bausch’s dance piece "KONTAKTHOF," which once featured non-performers aged 65 and over, with teenagers who had no dance experience.
Program Director’s comment
This year's F/T label offers a program of works designed to make visitors feel the presence of people again; that there are real flesh-and-blood people on the other side of the screen you look at every day, behind the scenes of manufacturing and logistics, and even in buildings that are being destroyed. This year’s streamed program is a collection of documentaries that articulate the creative process with its attendant pleasures and discoveries, ingenuity and tribulations, anxiety and joy. I believe that letting talent flourish and develop through creation between people is surely something hopeful.
F/T Label Program Directors Kaku Nagashima, Chika Kawai
Featured films
©️Brook Productions / Cinemaundichi / ARTE France 2012 All Rights Reserved
Title: Peter Brook: The Tightrope (2012) (Memorial Program)
Directed by: Simon Brook
Running time: 86 minutes
Language: English/French (Japanese subtitles available)
Distributed by and courtesy of: pictures dept.
Description
“How does one make theatre real? It is so easy to fall into tragedy or comedy. What is important above all is to be on this strict razor’s edge of the tightrope…”
Peter Brook was one of the world’s most respected and revolutionary directors of contemporary theatre. To help his actors achieve extraordinary performances, he had a special exercise called “the Tightrope,” which evolved over decades of experimentation and practice, and was designed to make theatre real and new for actor and audience alike.
In this film, for the first time in forty years he agreed to raise the curtain and reveal how the Tightrope worked its dramatic alchemy on his actors.
Over an intimate and immersive two weeks, Brook’s son Simon follows actors and musicians as they explore what it means to create theatre.
Without the five hidden cameras of this unconventional documentary disturbing the truth of the moment, we get a close-up look at how Peter Brook and his troupe worked, in a film that portrays the magic behind his creative process with astonishing clarity.
“The Tightrope” is the key to Brook’s philosophy and life, silently stimulating the viewer's sensibility. This unique film exploring Brook the man takes the viewer beyond the intimate observation of a workshop to walking the tightrope into philosophical experience.
Title: tHe dancing Homeless (2019)
Directed by: Wataru Miura
Language: Japanese
Running time: 99 minutes
Distributed by and courtesy of: Tokyo Video Center
Description
We often don’t notice people living on the street. What do they think, how do they live? “Newcomer H Sokerissa!,” the subject of this documentary, is a dance group consisting solely of the homeless or people who have experience of being homeless. They appear under their own names, and their daily lives are openly depicted. Suffering domestic violence, illness, failures and setbacks, they felt alienated and became homeless. The group is led by Yuki Aoki, who believes it is precisely because they have abandoned everything that the only thing they have left, the primitive physical self, is able to produce dance full of innate human vitality. Having stripped everything from their lives, they dance to live.
What the members say in the film is thoroughly human, and somehow humorous and bright. They share the camaraderie of Sokerissa! members, people who have arrived here through bitter life experiences. The film is directed by up-and-coming documentarist, Wataru Miura. Camera in hand, he spent over a year closely following their lives. Following this continuous observation, an ending even Miura could not foresee was waiting in the wings…
This film documents the activities of Sokerissa! immediately before the coronavirus pandemic hit. Also featured are homeless people who lose their sleeping spots in the borderline forced eviction that took place before the Olympics. In today's Japan, where more and more people believe in the removal and exclusion of the homeless, Sokerissa!’s “dance to live” philosophy delivers a hard-hitting message.
ⓒ 2020 Tomoya Ishida
Title: Transform! (2020)
Directed, conceived and edited by: Tomoya Ishida
Running time: 94 minutes
Language: Japanese (Japanese subtitles/audio guide available)
Distributed by and courtesy of: TOFOO
Description
Director Tomoya Ishida, who spends his life in an electric wheelchair, began interviewing people as an exploration of the possibilities for artistic activities by people with disabilities.
Megumi Mizuki is a blind actor who works in theatre and conducts reading events, and Shizue Sazawa is a performer who also focuses on training deaf performers to express themselves in sign language. The filmmaker looks at people bridging diverse “differences” in their creative endeavors. Film production began with Ishida and two others, a cinematographer, and a sound recordist. At one point, Ishida confides to the other staff members that he tends to shrink somewhat from interpersonal relationships and that he doesn’t want to be a tyrant who lays down unilateral instructions, even in movie-making. Over a series of exchanges and dialogue, his movie-making methods transform.
A big turning point comes for Ishida's own mind and body. Choreographer and dancer Osamu Jareo expresses “disability” as a “body in a different context.” He wanted to see how Ishida moves out of his wheelchair, and in response Ishida himself appeared on stage as a performer. It became an experience of entrusting himself to the network of relationships dance represents, with its intersection of diverse movements. Bewildered and shaken, new possibilities for creative expression were opened up.
About “open screening”
As per the film’s theatrical release, the streamed version will feature Japanese subtitles and an audio guide in order to represent director Tomoya Ishida’s cinematic quest. Out of a desire to share with as many people as possible the discoveries and realizations he encountered, Ishida calls the format “open screening” rather than “barrier-free screening.” Viewers may be surprised and confused at first, but we hope that everyone who sees it will find it fascinating, and that it will pave the way for new sensations.
ⓒ Ursula Kaufmann
Title: Dancing Dreams - Teenagers perform "KONTAKTHOF" by Pina Bausch (2009)
Director: Anne Linsel
Running time: 89 minutes
Language: German (Japanese subtitles available)
Distributed by and courtesy of: FILMS Boutique
International sales: FILMS Boutique
Courtesy of: Tranformer, Inc.
Subtitle translation: Fumiko Toda
Description
Dance performance “Kontakthof” is a work with unmistakable Pina Bausch characteristics. It deals with forms of human contact, encounters between men and women, and the quest for love and tenderness with its attendant anxiety, yearning and doubt. This work deals with the theme of "emotion,” a big challenge for young people especially.
Over the course of a year or so, teenagers from more than 11 schools in Wuppertal embarked on an journey of emotional discovery. Every Saturday, 40 students aged 14 to 18 rehearsed under the direction of Bausch dancers Jo Ann Endicott and Benedicte Billet, and the strict supervision of Pina Bausch herself.
The film “Dancing Dreams - Teenagers perform "KONTAKTHOF" by Pina Bausch” by Anne Linsel and Rainer Hoffmann follows the rehearsal process up to the first day of the performance. We witness the first and as yet clumsy attempts by the young people to convert the dance performance’s themes into movement and choreography, and develop them into their own unique physical expression. In the process, they discover themselves and grow considerably. The film condenses their gentle, shy yet proactive contact into the individual experiences that many of the young people encounter on stage for the first time.
Ticket information
4 film ticket: 500 yen (including tax)
Tickets on sale: Saturday, Oct. 22
Staff credits
Stream coordinators: arts knot, Miyoto Okuyama
Organizer credits
Organizers
Toshima Mirai Cultural Foundation, Toshima City, Tokyo Festival Executive Committee [Toshima City, Toshima Mirai Cultural Foundation, Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture (Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre & Arts Council Tokyo), Tokyo Metropolitan Government]
Subsidy by
Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan in fiscal 2022
Supported by
Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan in fiscal 2022
Sponsored by
Asahi Group Japan, Ltd.
Inquiries
Tokyo Festival Executive Committee Office
050-1746-0996 (Weekdays 10:00 a.m - 6:00 p.m )