Genpin
Genpin
Japan, 2010, 35 mm/HD, 92'
directed by Naomi Kawase
screenplay Naomi Kawase
cinematography Naomi Kawase
music Pascals, Rocket Matsu
sound Kikuchi Nobuyuki
editing Kaneko Yusuke
featuring Yoshimura Tadashi
producer Naito Yuko
production Kumie Inc., T +81 742 27 2216, E noirmam@sepia.ocn.ne.jp
world sales Kumie Inc., T +81 742 27 2216, E noirmam@sepia.ocn.ne.jp
It doesn’t make sense to draw a line between Naomi Kawase’s film and life. This is true in particular for her personal non-feature-length works. Years ago, a video journal of her delivery and first days of life with her little baby boy Mitsuko, entitled Tarachime - Birth/Mother, was screened in Silvan’s film school. Well, a video journal sounds a bit too arbitrary; better if I say that she composed from her video journal recordings a film poem to her birth into a mother. I say her birth into a mother because this very emphasis holds the intensity of her film statement – indeed, she never knew her own mother. In The Mysterious Woman, Naomi Kawase returns to the subject of delivery, only this time focusing on the miracle of giving birth, the inconceivability of a woman’s ability to create life (the original title, Genpin, derives from the words of the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu referring to the immortal spirit of the valley at the source of a large river ceasessly giving birth to life and never dying out; a woman is also such a source). The director spent a year in the “House of Birth”, the clinic where Doctor Tadashi Yoshimura attended at natural childbirths over the span of forty years. Notwithstanding the palpable proximity from which the director, and at the same time camerawoman, films the pregnant women, meditation is the true essence of the film. Strongly felt and uncompromising portraits of pregnant women and extraordinary moments of babies being delivered are gently shaded with the portrait of Tadashi, who is at the centre of the births, and in this centre, is a deeply moving image of a human being’s endless solitude.
Instead of my own interpretation, better if I provide two reactions to this film. A psychologist and foremostly an artist, Martina – who among other things also performs the role of doule (midwife) – writes: “The Mysterious Woman is a very precious ritual tribute to the inner warmth of the mother earth inside women who deliver babies. To their sincere emotional states – the director doesn’t embellish them at all. And the tribute to the soul doctor who claims that life and death are inseparable. To the whisper of midwives’ heartfelt experiences. It is an ode to Mandorla’s meetings in the backyard of the house of births .” Martina’s partner Ryuzo, the dancer and choreographer who was born in the same town as Naomi Kawase and has been living in our country for a while now, says: “The delivering of babies inevitably passes through the vicinity of death. While filming the surroundings of the Yoshimura clinic, Naomi Kawase’s camera captures both phenomena. Through the film, we witness plants, trees, insects, rivers, clouds, rocks of Buddhist statues. A pregnant woman gives birth to a life that never existed before. As if these women give their own life to a newborn. Life always comes together with death. That’s what makes all lives magnificent. This film allows us to notice this simple and yet remarkable fact.“
Naomi Kawase
Born in 1969 in Nara, Japan, Kawase graduated in 1989 from the Osaka School of Photography. She became the youngest winner of the Gold Camera award (for the best new director) at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival for her first film.
Film making is an inseparable part of Kawase’s life, furthermore, the camera seems to be the principal sense organ by which she communicates with the world. Today, she is a genuine 'institution', one that we approach firmly convinced that every new film of hers is a revelation, and yet at the same time, we are a bit anxious of how deep she is going to dig this time …
Japan, 2010, 35 mm/HD, 92'
directed by Naomi Kawase
screenplay Naomi Kawase
cinematography Naomi Kawase
music Pascals, Rocket Matsu
sound Kikuchi Nobuyuki
editing Kaneko Yusuke
featuring Yoshimura Tadashi
producer Naito Yuko
production Kumie Inc., T +81 742 27 2216, E noirmam@sepia.ocn.ne.jp
world sales Kumie Inc., T +81 742 27 2216, E noirmam@sepia.ocn.ne.jp
It doesn’t make sense to draw a line between Naomi Kawase’s film and life. This is true in particular for her personal non-feature-length works. Years ago, a video journal of her delivery and first days of life with her little baby boy Mitsuko, entitled Tarachime - Birth/Mother, was screened in Silvan’s film school. Well, a video journal sounds a bit too arbitrary; better if I say that she composed from her video journal recordings a film poem to her birth into a mother. I say her birth into a mother because this very emphasis holds the intensity of her film statement – indeed, she never knew her own mother. In The Mysterious Woman, Naomi Kawase returns to the subject of delivery, only this time focusing on the miracle of giving birth, the inconceivability of a woman’s ability to create life (the original title, Genpin, derives from the words of the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu referring to the immortal spirit of the valley at the source of a large river ceasessly giving birth to life and never dying out; a woman is also such a source). The director spent a year in the “House of Birth”, the clinic where Doctor Tadashi Yoshimura attended at natural childbirths over the span of forty years. Notwithstanding the palpable proximity from which the director, and at the same time camerawoman, films the pregnant women, meditation is the true essence of the film. Strongly felt and uncompromising portraits of pregnant women and extraordinary moments of babies being delivered are gently shaded with the portrait of Tadashi, who is at the centre of the births, and in this centre, is a deeply moving image of a human being’s endless solitude.
Instead of my own interpretation, better if I provide two reactions to this film. A psychologist and foremostly an artist, Martina – who among other things also performs the role of doule (midwife) – writes: “The Mysterious Woman is a very precious ritual tribute to the inner warmth of the mother earth inside women who deliver babies. To their sincere emotional states – the director doesn’t embellish them at all. And the tribute to the soul doctor who claims that life and death are inseparable. To the whisper of midwives’ heartfelt experiences. It is an ode to Mandorla’s meetings in the backyard of the house of births .” Martina’s partner Ryuzo, the dancer and choreographer who was born in the same town as Naomi Kawase and has been living in our country for a while now, says: “The delivering of babies inevitably passes through the vicinity of death. While filming the surroundings of the Yoshimura clinic, Naomi Kawase’s camera captures both phenomena. Through the film, we witness plants, trees, insects, rivers, clouds, rocks of Buddhist statues. A pregnant woman gives birth to a life that never existed before. As if these women give their own life to a newborn. Life always comes together with death. That’s what makes all lives magnificent. This film allows us to notice this simple and yet remarkable fact.“
Naomi Kawase
Born in 1969 in Nara, Japan, Kawase graduated in 1989 from the Osaka School of Photography. She became the youngest winner of the Gold Camera award (for the best new director) at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival for her first film.
Film making is an inseparable part of Kawase’s life, furthermore, the camera seems to be the principal sense organ by which she communicates with the world. Today, she is a genuine 'institution', one that we approach firmly convinced that every new film of hers is a revelation, and yet at the same time, we are a bit anxious of how deep she is going to dig this time …
