For the first four seasons of the MIRRORLIAR FILMS Shorts, a variety of creative people – directors, actors, … and so on – were asked or tasked to craft a shot film around the theme ‘change/transformation’ [変化].
This theme, however, was not only chosen to give those who accepted the invitation some kind of direction – change is a vague theme as it is everywhere and always present, we are motor of it, the subject of it or something in between, but also to underline the aim of MIRRORLIAR FILMS: to transform who gets to make films and try to inaugurate an era where anyone can make a movie.
Before we delve into our four recommendations, we want shortly highlight the shorts that we did not include in our recommendations. If one finds in these short descriptions something that piques one’s interest, then do not hesitate to give that short a watch – there is something interesting in all the shorts.
With Before / After, a corona time-travel sci-fi short, GAZEBO traces the struggle of Sae Kawakubo (Sae Kawakubo) to write her one-woman play. One could say that this short zooms in on what blocks ‘change’, on what blocks the subject to utilize the signifier to support change: a sense of anxiety. Yuki Makabe’s When You Wish Upon A Star follows a couple who are trying to flee Eastern Japan after flying objects attacked the region – first, by car then, due to circumstances, on foot. Yet, within this changed societal field, brutality has taken over communality. Asami Mizukawa uses her opportunity to make a short – About a Man – to stage that subjects, who figuratively and also quite literally live in their dark space, must seize every accidental encounter as a catalyst to finally force the bud of individual change to blossom. Takeshi Fukunaga, in Shirumashi, delivers a painterly monochrome composition to stage a simple story of the passing of a family member. With The Notes, Riko Murakami does not simply stage the ‘reclusive’ subjective position of Scott (Dirk Rebel) after the passing of his wife Sophia, but also with how the ‘accidental’ encounter with Lelia (Anna Sahara) and their bonding over music affects and changes him.
Our Recommendations
Tokyo Moratorium (2022) by Michihito Fujii
Fujii’s short opens by establishing two narrative elements: Takuya (Takuya Wakabayashi) and his girlfriend are running out of money and her subtle signal that Takuya must change his ‘depressed’ position of hanging around. That very night, Takuya meets his old filmmaking friends – one of his friends is soon leaving his Tokyo Moratorium. Maybe this re-encounter can re-ignite the spark of change.
Fujii, who surprisingly opts for a monochrome colour-palette, re-affirms his compositional skills, his thoughtfulness towards compositional lines – e.g. frames within frames – and evocative use of lighting contrasts. Yet, it is evident that the monochrome colours visualize Takuya’s colourless position, a state of imprisonment that speaks through his inability to act (and enact change). This reading is affirmed by the nostalgic burst of colour within the flashback – colourful fun of communal filmmaking lies is the past, the concrete metropolitical reality is devoid of such genuine joy; every moment of joy is but a colourless simulacrum.
Fujii, moreover, makes great use of music to breathe life into the emotional flow and to highlight the emotional relevance of certain events and certain memories for Takuya. It is through music that Fujii qualifies moments of silence and make these silences evocative of the nostalgic unsaid or the regretful unrealized. Yet, more importantly, the music emotionally qualifies the spark of change, ensuring that Tokyo Moratorium moves the spectator and leaves a lasting impression.
Bye (2022) by Murotsuyoshi
In Bye, Murotsuyoshi uses a minimalistic child-like animation style to frame a conversation between two elementary school students concerning the girl’s imminent move to her grandmother’s house. With elegance – and without voices, Murotsuyoshi brings the complex fabric of the conversation to life, touching upon the disruptive effect of having to say goodbye and the resistance of affirming one’s conflicted feelings to the other.
Yet, a surprising shift to the present – the child-like animation transforms into manzai-like live-action, beautifully subvert the spectator’s expectations. What follows is a truly refined moment of conversational exchange – a beautiful reaffirmation of Murotsuyoshi’s screenwriting skills. Bye is, in this sense, not merely a short about saying goodbye, but how such an imposed distance between subjects can fuel their desire for each other. Certain goodbye’s are not permanent, but lay the foundation for a quite different kind of hello, one of romantic affirmation.
COMPLY+-ANCE (2022) by Takumi Saitoh
Takumi Saitoh takes on the excessive measures against infection in his short film, echoing the subjective and relational effect of societally-imposed restrictions, laws and rules that force us to change the way we make ourselves present within the societal field.
With a sense for comical absurdity, Saitoh stages the ‘corrupting’ effect of rules (e.g. rule of social distance – ‘maintain a distance of two meters from others’, the rule of ventilation – ‘Let fresh air in at least twice an hour for five minutes’, rule of disinfection – hands and shared objects must be disinfected with alcohol) and recommendations on social interactions. What is supposed to be an easy-going PR-interview moment with Sairi Ito is, due to all the various measures, turned into an absurd and highly disquieting interaction. The fleeting passage of pop-art of Mao does not merely echo the dictatorial dimension of the measures, but also highlight the ‘absurd’ censorship these measures exacerbated at the level of Japan’s entertainment industry – Speech must fit the stay-home ideal and must protect the societally-imposed image of the performer.
What Takumi Saitoh succeeds in staging is not so much how fears of infection disfigure social interactions, but how the introduction of measures gives rise to such fears. The excessive nature of the measures is shown to be the main cause of the excessive fears of infection and, thus, the disruption of social interactions. Saitoh, moreove, beautifully exposes the equivocal nature of the statement – “covering our own mouths” – within the Japanese societal field.
Good Night PHOENIX (2022) by Elaiza Ikeda
Elaizi Ekida opens her short not simply with an evocative concatenation of imagery, but with a series of carefully framed shots which, at the level of their composition, emphasize their fragmentary nature (e.g. shot of the lower parts of two interacting bodies, a face whose upper head is cut off, … etc). Ekida’s rather fast-cutting does not only enhance the evocative quality of certain imagery, but re-emphasize her impressionistic intentions, her continued reliance on using image-fragments as signifiers to evoke non-verbally signalled subjective truths and not-yet worked through trauma.
To put it differently, Ekida opens up a space of equivocality that, as the images and signifiers concatenate, slowly circles around the subjective effect of loss – the changes caused by the sudden physical absence of a beloved object – and the subject’s attempt to symbolize his loss. In a highly evocative way, Elaiza Ikeda exposes the subject as a meaning-making machine and challenge loss poses for the subject to produce a signified that pacifies.
