(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The expectation I first get turns out to be thoroughly wrong. Kaori Oda is not cinefil, according to herself. I get curious about the shy Japanese filming in Bosnia. The footage is not expected from the war-torn Balkans. Camera lingers on the face of a male room. Long-drawn close-ups while the director's Japanese narrative voice is thinking about understanding and being able to give something back.
I'm fascinated. How did this closeness come about, to a population group in Eastern Europe generally surrounded by the distrust, fear and distance of others?
Contrasts. Kaori films effortlessly, with a sense of belonging as a family member. She's moving in for a week. Receives and shares care and tenderness in warm closeness that is expressed in the pictures. This is in contrast to scenes early in the film, where an elderly Japanese woman turns away from the camera. The woman is filmed at a short distance, but a distance is always present. In some scenes she laughs or smiles. At the same time, no intimacy or warmth is experienced. Kaori talks about the emptiness after her first, far too private film, and about her mother's brutal reaction. Om desorientering, about the choice of Sarajevo and the film school there. About the attraction to a place far from home and the opportunity to learn film from his mentor.
The footage from the war-torn Balkans is not as one would expect.
What this mentor is called is never said. The mythical Bela Tarr ran film.factory in Sarajevo until funding ended in 2016. Most of his films have been very inaccessible. His trademarks include long-takes and a fondness for downfall moods.
Discouraged and uninspired? Kaori Oda does not follow very closely in the footsteps of his mentor. The first groping footage of an elderly man and a party with tivoli carousel does not catch on. Nor is she completely motivated or in place. And tells straight out about both.
Her filming is without direction, without glow. The project is unclear, the scenes we are presented with are confusing. What drives her? Which method is used? Are these randomly-recorded footage from a film school student? Gradually, however, one is fascinated by Kaori's work. Her shyness stands out – and her ability to constantly be taken care of.
My patience as a spectator is about to end. Then comes the confidence.
In a small episode, she tells that as she finds inspiration to film, the camera battery is discharged. The voice goes over the black screen. For a long time, the narrator's voice that binds it all together has disappeared. Camera captures headlights that dazzle parts of the image. At times, everything seems blurry. Glimpses of miners, machines and travel equipment. The endless shooting takes us deeper and deeper into a dark mine. Then finally the narrator's voice is back. The picture becomes clearer. We get to know the people and not just the backs. The references to Tarr are obvious.
A couple of sequences later, we get to share the filmmaker's ambivalence towards the long-blurred shooting. We are abruptly out of the mine and present with the workers as they watch the footage of themselves.
So far in the film, we have followed Kaori who has painstakingly fought with himself to get involved in something to film. Now that she has found it, we as the audience are kept out. Kaori no longer shows from the mine, and I experience being pulled away as a spectator. At the same time, she talks urgently about what we are not allowed to see: The apocalyptic universe in the glowing darkness of the mine I long for has been replaced by an uninteresting break room with a flat skylight.
Turning point. My patience is running out. Then comes the trust. Kaori receives a grateful response from one of the miners and opens abruptly. A warm redemption in her is contagious. The contact with the filmmaker and her project is back. Her search for acceptance and closeness touches. What used to be just a hint not only shines through – it sparkles.
An unspoken need is verbalized. A search for acceptance that the director has carried with him ever since the long trip from Japan, now appears as the mainstay of the film. Nevertheless, it is only after the film is finished – when I read the subtitles about the use of material from other and incomplete films – that I realize the connection. This film is structured based on a need to recreate the path to redemption.
Kaori Oda's striking strength that she is exceptionally close among strangers.
Unbearable along the way? No. Demanding, yes, but also fascinating. Something indefinable. A musicality beyond Kaori's good feelings for soundscapes. A cinematic duration creates pleasure – despite unmotivated periods and bouncy, confusing themes. Is it the filmmaker's personality that carries? Her authenticity keeps much of the interest the same.
It close. Kaori receives letters and drawings from a younger family member. She walks close and films as if through binoculars or camera obscura – the same grip that started the film. Now Kaori admits that her cinematic spark is close at hand.
Her striking strength is that she is exceptionally close among strangers. Her closest, the mother, she is relentlessly distanced from. She lies close with a camera, but never gets over the cool, turned away distance her mother creates.
In the final sequence, she reveals the damage her mother causes by refusing to acknowledge her daughter. Kaori elaborates on this painful experience, which came after she appeared gay in her first film. She says herself that she has used the camera as a weapon – but I do not agree. Her camera and the contact with those she films – except her mother – is empathetic. She also goes beyond the empathic, and further into care and tenderness. The recognition she receives from others gives her enough to be able to move on.
She calls the camera an "instrument for understanding and being understood". But the one she longed to understand and accept, brutally rejected her.
She has gathered through the various film recordings – to share the path to renewed courage. It's about the shocking aftermath of revealing private secrets on film. But it is also a film about a search for closeness and acceptance that is first answered among strangers in mutual tenderness.
The film will be screened at the Dok Leipzig Film Festival.
