Shunji Iwai

The World Bordered on Reality

Iwai Shunji• Iwai Shunji (1963 - ) - the f

ilm director who have enthusiastic supporters among the young audience.

• Born in Sendai and studied at Yokohama National University

• His filmmaking career began in 1988 directing music videos and TV dramas.

Iwai’s Films• Fireworks, Should We See It from the Side or the Bottom?(1993) One summer day a group of sixth-grade boys have an argument about whether fireworks are round or flat when viewed from different angles and embark on a journey for the answer during the annual firework festival. TV film

Iwai’s Films• Meanwhile, one of their

classmates, Nazuna, is troubled by her parents' separation and decides to choose one of the boys to run away with.

• Film revolves around a group of children, their adolescence, conflicts with adults and themselves, and their growing up

Iwai’s Films

• Love Letter (1995) - Watanabe Hiroko’s fiancé Fujii Itsuki died two years earlier in a mountain climbing accident. While looking through his high school yearbook, Hiroko in a fit of grief decides to write a letter to him using his old school address.

Iwai’s Films

• Surprisingly she receives a reply, not from her dead husband, but from a woman also named Fujii Itsuki who had known Hiroko's husband in school. A relationship develops between the two women as they continue to exchange letters and share memories of the dead Itsuki.

Iwai’s Films

• Iwai’s impressive first film; commercial and critical success. Inspired by Krzysztof Kieslowski’s La Double vie de Veronique (1991), the actor, Nakayama Miho, plays two roles, Watanabe Hiroko and (female) Fujii Itsuki.

• Itsuki’s teenage past revealed through the exchange of letters

Iwai’s Films

• Picnic (1996) Believing that the world will end that very day, three mental hospital patients Coco, Tsumuji, and Satoru set out upon a journey to seek a picnic spot from which they can watch the armagedon the best.

Iwai’s Films

• Swallowtail Butterfly (1996) - future allegory about the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society in Tokyo. “A long, long time ago, when Yen was the strongest currency around, immigrants dubbed the city ‘Yen Town’ in hopes to find their dreams come true.”

Iwai’s Films

• ‘Yen Town’ is a Tokyo slum of immigrants from Asian countries. Glico, a prostitute-turned pop star takes an orphaned girl into her care, giving her name Ageha (butterfly) whose image is tattooed on her chest.

Iwai’s Films

• Feihong, another immigrant from Shanghai, owns Yen Town Club and manages Glico’s career. The life in Yen Town is intractably connected to the Japanese gangster ring.

Iwai’s Films

• Blade Runner inspired retro-fit ‘SF’ film. Futuristic LA slum and Tokyo slum.

• Retro-fit - future design is inspired by the design of the past

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxOAKrG-4ZI

• Teenage girl, Ageha, comes to be in touch with the adult world and grows up in the fantastic SF world

Iwai’s Films

• April Story (1998) - Nireno Uzuki, a shy, quiet girl who comes from Hokkaido to attend a university in Tokyo. Her life is exactly like those of other students - attending classes, joining a (fly-fishing) club, lonely dinner, going movies.

Iwai’s Films

• She, however, had another important reason to come to Tokyo to attend otherwise nondescript university. That is to find the student from the same high school, whom she secretly admires.

Iwai’s Films

• The tradition of shojo manga ( 少女漫画 ) and authors like Yoshimoto Banana

• Exploring the details of the daily experience of a girl who is trying to deal with a new life.

Iwai’s Films

• All about Lily Chou Chou (2001) - about the innocent and then frayed friendship between two teenage boys. In junior high school Shusuke is the best student and Yuichi is a quiet, ordinary student who is crazy about the music of Lily Chou Chou.

Iwai’s Films

• During the trip to Okinawa, Shusuke has a near-death experience which changes his character. In high school, Shusuke is a school bully and cause misery for his classmates. Yuichi is now bullied by Shusuke’s gang and …

Iwai’s Films

• forced to do dirty work including overlooking a girl who is coerced to prostitute (enjo kosai) by Shusuke. Yuichi finds the only solace in listening to the music of Lily Chou Chou.

Iwai’s Films

• Narrative and characters are created by the collaboration and interaction with members of the public on the website called Lilyholic through BBS (Bulletin Board System).

• The film was shot by digital video camera. • Lives of teenage school children - friendship, de

linquency, bullying, school girl prostitution (enjo Kosai)

Iwai’s Films

• Hana and Alice (2004) - Hana and Alice are best friends from their childhood. Waiting for a train Alice notices a boy and both of them have an immediate crush on him. One day they secretly follow the boy home and Hana witness he walks right into the wall and passes out.

Iwai’s Films

• When he wakes up, she lies and convinces him that he is now suffering amnesia and she is his girlfriend. When Hana begins to go out with the boy and Alice has to cover for lies, the complication arises as both of the girls love the same boy.

Iwai’s Films

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeoS6fo5NpA&feature=related

• Hana and Alice began its life as four short films on the Nestle Japan website for the promotion of Kit Kat.

• Shot by HD digital video camera

Motifs: - teenagers, school children, young adults

(especially girls) - their inner and outer world.

Themes: Tension, strain, conflict in growing up; Alienation from the world in which young boys and girls grow up; loneliness and strained friendship

Iwai Shunji as an Auteur

• Real psychological issue of the healing of grief and coping with the painful past are told in ‘fantastic’ narrative and elegantly nostalgic images in Love Letter.

Iwai Shunji as an Auteur

• Real social issue of immigration and crime are represented by employing ‘SF’ narrative format and MTV-style fast-cutting, jerky photography with hand-held camera and retrogressive visuals in Swallowtail Butterfly.

Iwai Shunji as an Auteur

• Real issue of an adolescent girl trying to find a meaning of life in a new urban environment. Dream-like visuals in which the urban space does not look hostile but merciful. April Story

Iwai Shunji as an Auteur

• Real issues in adolescence and fairy-tale like dreamy visual style

• School violence and adolescent crime and lyrical digital photography in All about Lily Chou Chou

Iwai Shunji as an Auteur

• Real issues of adolescent friendship between two girls are told in a fantastic narrative and lyrical HD digital images in Hana and Alice.

Iwai Shunji as an Auteur

• Iwai as a visual artist and his films are image centred - the image is the film

• In collaboration with the cinematographer, Noboru Shinoda, Iwai produced the hippest and the most evocative images.

Iwai Shunji as an Auteur

• Slick (digital) visual styles; lyrical and atmospheric

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcBUYv46XFA

• Hand-held camera, fast camera movement and jagged editing evocative of music videos.

• New kind of lyricism for contemporary tastes.