Dir. Yutaka Tsuchiya, Cast: Yuka Kuramochi, Makiko Watanabe, Kanji Furutachi, Takahashi. Japan/2012/HD/82min.
One time only special sneak preview!
8/12 (sun), 23:00~ Uno Port Out door Trailer Theater
【Director’s Statement】
“System vs. Man”, “Program vs. Life” – I made this film to open dialogue on these new perspectives. The 3 central themes of the film are “Surveillance in a Marketing-orientated Society”, “Characterization of Identity” and “Biotechnology”.
In recent years, surveillance in a marketing-orientated society has grown more and more pronounced. Our daily lives and consumption habits are controlled and manipulated by surveillance cameras, point cards, cell phones, and internet IP addresses. I believe we are handled as coded data in a system we can’t escape rather than human beings of flesh and blood.
As if to symbolize this, more and more people are “characterizing” their identities. In other words, adopting a second “self” by extracting their ideal elements from a vast database and assembling these elements to create what they consider to be a “unique” version of themselves that they feel deserves to be loved or liked.
In a world where the line between online avatars and humans of flesh and blood grows ever thinner, what can we do to escape this system? How can we overcome a predetermined format?
I believe biotechnology offers us a hint. I see a glimmer of hope in the point of view as life as a program expressed by biotechnology.
Thanks to the study of human genomes (the DNA which stores all human genetic information), biotechnology has unveiled the human blueprint. By realizing that we are a program that can be modified, shouldn’t we be able to capture new identities? And, through doing so, shouldn’t we be able to overcome this seemingly inescapable system and acquire a confidence that, in fact, WE can control ourselves?
This film asks the above questions to its audience.
【Synopsis】
This film is a metafiction about a 16 yr old girl who shook Japan when she attempted to poison her own mother with thallium in 2005. She is known fittingly as the “Thallium Girl”. The story is a dialogue between this girl and the director who is featured only as a voice.
This girl, who shows an unusual interest in science, observes and dissects various creatures and uploads images of these as a video diary on YouTube. She is excessively bullied at her high school and even sees herself as a specimen in her experiments.
The girl’s mother is obsessed with anti-aging remedies. She grows emotionally unstable as she tries to prevent the inevitable process of growing old. Her daughter sees her mother as another of her specimens for experiment and begins to poison her.
Through the internet, the young girl learns about the latest technology surrounding genetic engineering as well as ‘bio art’ (art utilizing biotechnology) and goes searching for the answers to the difference between the cosmetic surgery her mother undergoes and genetic manipulation as well as the difference between fish for consumption and fish for ornamental purposes.
Interviews of various people and short documentaries are featured in parallel to the girl’s video diary. The biologist who invented a transparent frog with visible organs, talks about his next goal of engineering a frog that glows. A representative from a religious group demonstrates their outlook on human beings as programs. An artist who has modified their body by implanting silicon and metal in their head and face declares they can control themselves by implanting an IC chip with GPS in the palm of their hand.
The director cannot comprehend these things himself but the girl who sees the world as a cage believes there is hope in changing human format. Consequently, she stops feeding her mother poison in order to overcome the world that surrounds her and begins a new experiment with herself as the subject. She sets out on a journey to find a new identity.
【Profile】
[Director, Screenwriter, Editor]
Yutaka Tsuchiya
Born in 1966, Tsuchiya began producing video art from around 1990.
At the same time, he became involved in media activism which experimented with social change utilizing independent media.
From 1998, Tsuchiya headed VIDEO ACT, a project to support the expansion of independent media.
In 1999, his unique feature length film, The New God, was awarded the FIPRESCI Special Mention prize at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. This film also achieved long running status in the theatres. In 2003 his first feature film length fiction PEEP “TV” SHOW took the FIPRESCI Prize at the Rotterdam International Film Festival and the New Discovery Award, Feature Film Mention at the Montreal International Festival of New Cinema, screening in theatres overseas and attracting international attention.
［Filmography / Directed］
THE NEW GOD (1999 / 99min.)
*Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival / FIPRESCI Special Mention
Invited to :
Berlin Int´l Film Festival, Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival, Hong Kong Int´l Film Festival, Vienna Int´l Film Festival,
Jeonju Int´l Film Festival, Singapore International Film Festival etc…
http://www.st.rim.or.jp/~yt_w-tv/kamisama.html
PEEP “TV” SHOW (2003 / 98min.)
*International Film Festival Rotterdam / FIPRESCI Prize
*Montreal International Festival of New Cinema / New Discovery Award, Feature Film Mention
*Hawaii International Film Festival / NETPAC, SPECIAL MENTION AWARD
Invited to :
Munich Film Festival, Hong Kong Int´l Film Festival, Vienna Int´l Film Festival, Roma Film Festival,
Chicago Underground Film Festival, Oslo Int´l Film Festival, Copenhagen Int´l Documentary Film Festival,
Brisbane Int´l Film Festival, Bangkok Int´l Film Festival, Jeonju Int´l Film Festival, Flanders Int´l Film Festival,
Bratislava Int´l Film Festival, Balcelona Asian Film Festival, SPLIT Film Festival, New York Video Festival,
Semarang Int´l Film Festival, Cuenca Int´l Film Festival, Int´l Film Festival of Bilbao, Cinemanila Int´l Film Festival,
Hyderabad Int´l Film Festival etc…
http://www1.cts.ne.jp/~w-tv/peeptvshow.html
[Main Cast]
Yuka Kuramochi
Makiko Watanabe
*”Mogari no Mori”’(Directed by Naomi Kawase)
*” Love Exposure” (Directed by Sion Sono)
*” Heavens Story” (Directed by Takahisa Zeze)
Kanji Furutachi
*My Back Pages(Directed by Nobuhiro Yamashita)
Takahashi
【Contact】
W-TV OFFICE / Yutaka TSUCHIYA
e-mail : yt_w-tv@st.rim.or.jp