SUKITA MASAYOSHI: THE SHOOT MUST GO ON

The Japanese film festival is on again and this year one of the highlights is the documentary The Shoot Must Go On about the eighty year old Japanese photographer Sukita Masayoshi. Born in Nogata, a small mining town in Fukuoka prefecture on the island of Kyushu, Sukita moved to Osaka and became a photographer before moving to Tokyo. He was however to be drawn to London by his love of music and the emerging glam scene created by musicians like Marc Bolan – here of course he discovered the great inspiration of his life, David Bowie. There are the photos from 1972 of David at the Rainbow theatre and then later on, in Berlin and later on, on tour in New York. There are also the photographs of David Bowie and Iggy Pop in Japan in 1977. There are lots of photos on the Hankyu train line between Osaka and Kyoto as well as photographs taken in and around the city of Kyoto that Bowie came to love. There are also photographs from the set for the Jim Jarmusch film Mystery Train and interviews with YMO whose album cover for Solid State Survivor was created on mahjong table at Sukita's studio. This game was big at the time so, in bright red uniforms designed by Takahashi Yukihiro, they sat down at the mahjong table but as there were only three of them Sukita brought in a human mannequin to be the fourth player.

Out of all his photographs, including the photographs of Bolan, Bowie and Iggy Pop not to mention a procession of various Japanese rock stars, it is a photo Sukita took of his mother sitting outside the family home in Nogata before going to participate in the local summer festival of which he is most proud. She is wearing a sedge hat and yukata, the profile is from the side and you can’t see her face. But this is the one photograph that he says brings together the best elements of his photography in a single image.

At age eighty Sukita is thinking of retiring. He might go back to Kyushu and live. In a 2016 shoot at the Royal Albert Hall he took photos of Iggy Pop's final tour for Post Pop Depression. Iggy stayed after the show for photos with the fans and he was praised in the media for turning the Albert Hall into an intimate club for the night. Sukita observed that in the early days photographing Bowie it was amazing how close the fans could get to him. There were shots of him performing in his underwear with the fans literally at his feet. By the eighties there were cameras with cranes going backwards and forwards in front of the stage and a huge distance had opened up between the performers and their audience. For Sukita who liked to photograph the interaction between the artist and their audience this was a cause for regret.

'MANBIKI KAZOKU' AT THE MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, 2018

The Japanese film 'Shoplifting' by director Hirokazu Kore-Eda, a Melbourne Film Festival, quickly sold out this year. The queue to see the film stretched from the front of the Kino cinema to the steps and then up to the level on Collins Street above. The film had already won a number of important awards and was a 'must see' for fans of Japanese cinema. The poverty that the film explored was perhaps a novelty for many young cinema goers who see Japan as a first world economy. Those who have seen the films of the post-war period know that, for an older generation of film goers in Japan, it would bring back memories from not a not so distant past when the country was devastated by war.

In 'Shoplifting a young boy is shown teaching his young 'sister', a new addition to the household rescued from an abusive household, how to steal food from the local shop. Towards the end of the film the shopkeeper, who is forced to close, gives the boy some snacks and tells him not to teach her to steal. He has known all along how the young boy and his 'father' come to his shop in order to steal food but he has turned a blind eye. When the family is discovered by the authorities, they are living in an apartment that belonged to an old woman who died. To avoid discovery they bury her in the house. The body is subsequently discovered as is the body of the husband of the young woman who plays the role of the 'mother'. There is a media storm and the 'mother' takes responsibility and goes to prison. The film looks at how these people living below the poverty line in a big city like Tokyo survive. It looks at how they have to break the law in order to survive. The way these individuals form a 'family' unit in order to survive is reminiscent of the anime 'Tokyo Godfathers' by Satoshi Kon. This is another grim look at the Japanese under-class who largely remain invisible in everyday Japanese discourse despite their obvious visibility. This film puts them front and centre in a  film designed to prick the social conscience of a nation in which failure isn't an option and hasn't been since the twelfth century.

Another island nation built on a fault line that explores similar social dilemmas in film is New Zealand. In the film 'Boy by director Taika Waititi there is a similar family group experiencing poverty. While the grandmother is attending a funeral her son comes home from prison having formed a gang with a couple of mates. He proceeds to dig up a paddock where he has buried treasure. As more and more holes are dug his son dreams of joining the gang. He begins to steal marijuana from a crop next door for his father. This leads to a visit from a rival gang and a few heads are busted. When the grandmother finally comes home the children busily cover the holes in the walls of the house with their art work. The father finally visits his dead  wife in the cemetery is rescued living under a nearby bridge after he falls into the water. 

Both families in these two island nations are fringe dwellers but they all have their dreams and in their own way look out for each other. Whether state intervention or institutionalisation is the answer is doubtful. The young people and the adults who care for them form relationships that are caring despite the blatant disregard for the law. In both cases there is an absence of 'adult' figures apart from the grandmothers. The problem is that their 'children' have failed to become independent and self supporting. As a result the next generation experiences a debilitating poverty from which it is hard to imagine that they can escape.

RYUICHI SAKAMOTO: CODA: MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

There was a queue at the cinema which quickly made its way back up the stair case to the street outside. Sakamoto may not be a household name in Australia but he is not unknown. After the tickets were scanned, a process ticket holders were allowed inside for the sold out screening. There was the usual as people found each other and then their seats and then the rustling of chip packets. Why cinemas advertise popcorn is beyond me - its not just the working of multiple surreptitious jaws that is offensive it is also the smell. Horrible. 

The documentary started with footage after  the tsunami in Fukushima and Sakamoto's discovery of the now famous piano the 'tsunami piano'. The tsunami was now way back in 2011 and precedes Sakamoto's discovery of a stage three throat cancer that stopped him playing and composing music while he underwent treatment. A call from Director Alesandro J. Inarritu soon had him back at work composing the soundtrack for The Revenant  as he admired his films so much.

The documentary ,looks at a career that started in the 1970s with electronic band Yellow Magic Orchestra. There is great footage from a live performance in America and an interview where he explains why he likes computers and synthesisers. Essentially he argues they can play the music a lot faster than the human hand and rather than sending decades learning to play that fast you can program a machine and focus on ideas instead. Very pragmatic! 

A lot of time is spent looking at footage from the Russian film maker Andrei Tarkovsky and listening to sounds and music from his film Solaris. Sakamoto even had a copy of his collection of polaroids Instant Light. Sakamoto credits Tarkovsky with being a musician given the way he uses the sound of footsteps and water in his films. He is a composer. And post The Revenant soundtrack Sakamoto turned to Tarkovsky for inspiration especially in his use of Bach Chorales. Sakamoto finds a lot of melancholy in these which is not surprising given the wars and political instability not to mention the plague that racked Europe at the time.

Sakamoto's concerns about his own world emerged in the early 1990s when evidence of climate change first appeared. Sakamoto has subsequently appeared at demonstrations against nuclear power in Tokyo after the Fukushima earthquake and the subsequent tsunami. Recordings on the 'tsunami piano' have been used in the compositions for his latest CD.  He talks about the piano being a product of the Industrial Revolution in the way tat the case and the strings are made. When a piano is in tune it sounds natural to us he say but all of the components and the materials from which they are made have been forced into a particular shape to make those sounds. It is only natural that they will attempt to return to their natural shape. And the tsunami in Fukushima only helped speed up that return in the case of the 'tsunami piano'.

Along the way the documentary looks at the success Sakamoto achieved writing the scores for Merry Christmas Mt Lawrence, The Sheltering Sky and The Last Emperor. Unsure of his future post cancer, Sakamoto wants to leave work behind that has significance. He has traveled to Kenya to the site of the oldest human remains ever found in a search for the origins of the rhythms and sounds that have shaped music. he has also traveled to the North Pole to see the effects of climate change and taken sound recordings of pre-Industrial Revolution snow melting. The purest sounds you can imagine he says... 

In the documentary there is a scene where Sakamoto with his plays for tsunami survivors. His music has a global appeal but the history of the atom bomb in Japan, his politic activism and his concern for the environment give his work a strong local focus.