PFF OSHIMA PRIZE

Screenings Honor Inaugural Oshima Prizewinner

Venue: Marunouchi Hall, Tokyo
March 20 (Fri): 13:30 Screening starts
Official website: pff.jp/en/news/2020/02/oshima-prize2020.html
Theater website: www.marunouchi-hc.jp/hc-marubiru/pdf/access/map_e.pdf
Tariff:  General:￥2,500
Advance tickets: ¥2,000 https://pff.jp/41st/tickets.html
Talk event: Details below

Title: 第1回 PFF 大島渚賞 (Dai 1 Kai PFF Oshima Nagisa Sho)

Here’s an intriguing double-header that you won’t want to miss: the digitally remastered Cruel Story of Youth (1960) by Nagisa Oshima and Cenote (2019) by Kaori Oda will be screening with English subs, one time only, enhanced by a (Japanese-only) talk session featuring Oda, actress Koyama Akiko, wife of Oshima Nagisa, acclaimed musician Ryuichi Sakamoto and auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

The pairing of films was engineered by Japan’s Pia Film Festival (PFF), which has discovered and nurtured many of today’s leading directors since its first edition in 1977. In 2019, PFF established a new cinema award in honor of legendary filmmaker Nagisa Oshima (In the Realm of the Senses, Death by Hanging, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, Taboo), a frequent guest and juror at the festival in the years before his death in 2013.

Starting this year, the Oshima Prize is to be presented annually to next-generation filmmakers who, “following in the footsteps of Oshima, continue to take on challenges on an international scale, after making their commercial debuts.” A jury presided over by Ryuichi Sakamoto, with Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, Tokyo Sonata, To the Ends of the Earth) and PFF Festival Director Keiko Araki selected Kaori Oda as the inaugural recipient.

CENOTE（TS'ONOT  セノーテ）: 75min, 2019, ©Oda Kaori
Mayan + Spanish with Japanese + English subtitles
Director: Kaori Oda （小田 香）

Oda studied under Hungarian auteur Béla Tarr in Sarajevo, and “has created a unique cinematic language and made powerful work,” according to the prize announcement. Both of Oda’s feature films, Aragane (2015) and Cenote (2019), have played at many international festivals. (If you miss/ed them, they’ll be heading to a Tokyo theater in June.)

Cenote focuses beautifully on the natural sinkholes resulting from cave collapses (cenotes) in the northern part of Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. In ancient Mayan civilizations, these pockets of water were used for ritual sacrifice, and were said to connect the real world with the afterlife. Oda explores the past and present of the people still using these sacred sources today, creating spectacularly immersive scenes that evoke distant memories.

The director shot this Japan-Mexico coproduction herself using Super-8 film. As she swims, she captures intriguing shapes and shadows, and superimposes images that comingle collective memories.

Cruel Story of Youth (Seishun Zankoku Monogatari, 1960) was Nagisa Oshima’s second feature, and earned him the Blue Ribbon Award for Best Newcomer. Because the young filmmaker made extensive use of hand-held cameras and location shooting (even capturing its protagonists’ first date against the backdrop of a noisy protest opposing the US-Japan Security pact), the film is considered a progenitor of the emerging Japanese New Wave.

CRUEL STORY OF YOUTH（青春残酷物語）: 96min, 1960/2014
©1960/2014 Shochiku Co., Ltd.
Japanese with English subtitles
Director: Nagisa Oshima (大島渚)

In the film, a young girl (Miyuki Kuwano) who’s bored and takes rides from older men on a lark, is rescued by a student (Yusuke Kawazu) when one of them crosses the line. Soon, they’ve begun a relationship and realized that they can make easy cash by extorting payments from men who pick up the girl, and then make passes at her. Eventually, of course, they pick up the wrong guy.

■Time Table:
13:00　Door Open *Admission by ticket number
13:30　Screening “Cenote”
14:50　Talk event　(only in Japanese)
Guest Speakers: Kaori Oda, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Moderator: Keiko Araki
15:50　Screening “Cruel Story of Youth” (Digitally Remastered DCP)

Marunouchi Hall, Tokyo

PFF OSHIMA PRIZE  第1回 PFF 大島渚賞
Venue: Marunouchi Hall, Tokyo
Date: March 20 (Fri): 13:30 Screening starts
Official website: pff.jp/en/news/2020/02/oshima-prize2020.html
Theater website: www.marunouchi-hc.jp/hc-marubiru/pdf/access/map_e.pdf
Tariff: General:￥2,500
Advance tickets: ¥2,000 https://pff.jp/41st/tickets.html