Naomi Kawase

Naomi Kawase was born in 1969 in Nara, the oldest city in Japan, which was once the capital. Therefore, representative of millennial traditions with which Kawase grew up and which she never abjured, before on the contrary they helped shape her vision of her world, “living in a traditional city makes us truly understand the notion of home” , she assures. This does not mean that she was spared painful family circumstances, since her parents’ marital breakdown would lead her to grow up with her great-aunt in a rural setting.

It was an intense relationship in which, with the passing of the years, her senile decline weighed heavily. These and other personal experiences would end up being integrated into the filmography of the future director, who has always drawn from her experience, speaks clearly about what she knows. In the house of what we can call her adoptive mother, she learned a certain spirituality of respect for her ancestors, and also a unique communion with nature. This led her to often imagine what life would have been like for her ancestors, when she would see the family altars in her home, and she likes to imagine a parallel world inhabited by those who have gone before us.

In her youth, Naomi was attracted to photography, and in fact studied this subject at the specialized school in Osaka, learning from the prestigious Shunji Dodo. So that she would take her first professional steps in the photographic field. Years later, the particular vision of the world that can be achieved with a camera would form part of the plot of the film Hacia la luz (2017), with the character of the professional photographer who is going blind, and where the film dedication was also integrated. which would ultimately be Kawase’s main occupation, along with other autobiographical elements, such as the absence of his father. She also the director would launch herself to write novels, and in fact hers two first feature films of hers, Suzaku and HotaruThey are adaptations.

Kawase’s first film works were short, and as has already been announced, based on previous personal baggage. In fact, the first one, shot in 1988, has the significant title I focus on what interests me , and it explored the medium from static photos taken by herself, the way in which they could come to life just like that, by work and cinema art. According to the director, her photographic origins perfectly explain “the particular grammar that my films convey.” Later works drank in the family past, and somehow had a documentary nature. And it is that even the most clearly fictional works have a veristic style, even when magical elements are suggested, which are always integrated into everyday life.

Suzaku , from 1997, was the film that marked a turning point in Kawase’s life. Camera d’Or in Cannes, the Festival turned her into a kind of protégé, her films would come to compete or be part of other sections quite frequently. Her freshness and poetry were undeniable, and at the same time they did not imply an experimental break in secrecy only suitable for unconditional fans. French patrons ensured that a few minority films, but without large budget requirements, could be shot continuously. Kawase would even launch into producing, in a program called NARAtiva, an allusion to the narratives that talented young filmmakers had to make, and that they had to take place in Nara, the director’s hometown.

In her works, Kasawi achieves a kind of spiritual connection with other filmmakers she admires, Victor Erice , Andrei Tarkovsky and the Dardenne brothers , while feeling proud as a member of a family of compatriot filmmakers who were older than her, but who moved in comparable coordinates, she mentions Hirokazu Koreeda , Nobuhiro Suwa , and Shinji Aoyama.

Family stories, in the countryside, in which the joy of love and the pain of mourning are shared, or in which youthful love passion comes into play, would form part of the plots of Shara (2003), El bosque del luto (2007 ), Hanezu (2011) and Still Waters (2014). And in the surprising documentary Genpin (2010), he made a commitment to life and motherhood by talking about natural births, which Dr. Tadashi Yoshimura was in favor of.

Kawase’s films were not typical narrations, since the details of nature always gained importance, which were added to the troubles of human beings, with singular shots, and an intelligent use of sound, with a style that undoubtedly demanded patience. to the viewer; but he who knew how to have it received its reward. And it is that the director compares her films to creatures that she gives birth to one by one, carefully.

In any case, her proverbial parsimony has refined her and her latest works, in addition to being very well put together, captivate by the multiplicity of feelings and emotions that she is capable of capturing. In A Pastry Shop in Tokyo (2015), he perfectly integrates the culinary element that is common in his films, but here it serves to look at the story of sweets, dorayakis, old age and intergenerational relationships with delicacy and wisdom of who knows what he’s talking about. It’s the same thing that happens in Towards the light(2017), a film that aspires precisely to lead the characters and the viewer to a hope that must be insinuated precisely with the motif of light, in a world where forms and memories blur in the blind photographer and in the mother with dementia, and which could also be manipulated and changed in the audio descriptions for the blind of the films.