M A S T E R C L A S S

ΟΣΤΗΡΙΚΤΗΣ ΜΕΤΑΚΙΝΗΣΗΣ M A S T E R C L A S S 49o ΦΕΣΤΙΒΑΛ ΚΙΝΗΜΑΤΟΓΡΑΦΟΥ ΘΕΣΣΑΛΟΝΙΚΗΣ 49th THESSALONIKI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL T A K E S H I 14-23.11.2008 www.filmfestival.gr ΕΠΙΣΗΜΟΣ ΧΟΡΗΓΟΣ ΧΟΡΗΓΟΣ ΕΠΙΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΑΣ ΜΕΓΑΣ ΧΟΡΗΓΟΣ ΥΠΟΥΡΓΕΙΟ ΜΑΚΕΔΟΝΙΑΣ ΘΡΑΚΗΣ ΥΠΟΥΡΓΕΙΟ ΑΝΑΠΤΥΞΗΣ ΧΟΡΗΓΟΣ ΒΡΑΒΕΙΩΝ ΚΟΙΝΟΥ YΠΟΣΤΗΡΙΚΤΗΣ ΑΕΡΟΜΕΤΑΦΟΡΩΝ K I T A N O Υ.Π.Α. ΥΠΟΣΤΗΡΙΚΤΗΣ BUSINESS ΥΠΟΣΤΗΡΙΚΤΗΣ ΙΑΤΡΙΚΗΣ ΠΕΡΙΘΑΛΨΗΣ ΧΟΡΗΓΟΙ ΕΠΙΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΑΣ 49o ΦΕΣΤΙΒΑΛ ΚΙΝΗΜΑΤΟΓΡΑΦΟΥ ΘΕΣΣΑΛΟΝΙΚΗΣ 49th THESSALONIKI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 14-23.11.2008 www.filmfestival.gr

M A S T E R C L A S S E S 4 9 t h T H E S S A L O N I K I I N T E R N A T I O N A L F I L M F E S T I V A L Δέσποινα Μουζάκη-Διευθύντρια Φεστιβάλ Κινηματογράφου Θεσσαλονίκης Καλημέρα σας. Ένας πολυτάλαντος ενορχηστρωτής του κινηματογραφικού σύμπαντος, ένας auteur, ένας από τους κορυφαίους δημιουργούς του παγκόσμιου σινεμά, ο Takeshi Kitano, είναι αναμφίβολα μια προσωπικότητα στο σύγχρονο κινηματογραφικό τοπίο. Στην καινούργια του ταινία «Ο Αχιλλέας και η Χελώνα», ως συνήθως υπογράφει το σενάριο, τη σκηνοθεσία, το μοντάζ και κρατά έναν από τους βασικούς ρόλους. Επιβεβαιώνει και με αυτήν πως ο δημιουργός των «Πυροτεχνημάτων», του Sonatine και του Violent Cop διανύει μια από τις πιο ώριμες και γόνιμες περιόδους της πλούσιας καριέρας του, μιας καριέρας που δεν υπάκουσε ποτέ σε οτιδήποτε άλλο πέρα από το δικό του προσωπικό όραμα το όραμα ενός σκηνοθέτη που δεν δίστασε να εφεύρει από την αρχή το σινεμά αλλά και την ίδια την περσόνα του, και αυτό περισσότερο από μία φορά. Αυτό, όμως που παραμένει πάντα σταθερό στην πορεία του Takeshi Kitano είναι η ιδιαίτερη ματιά του και το σπάνιο ταλέντο του να εναλλάσσει και να συνδέει τα πιο παράταιρα στοιχεία, την ποίηση και τη βία, τη φαντασία και τον πραγματισμό, το χιούμορ και το δράμα σε ένα αποτέλεσμα απλά μοναδικό. Κυρίες και κύριοι, ο λόγος στον Takeshi Kitano. Είμαστε πολύ χαρούμενοι και περήφανοι που τη συζήτηση θα συντονίσει ο, ένας πολύ σημαντικός κριτικός κινηματογράφου, αυθεντία στο ασιατικό σινεμά. Ευχαριστώ πολύ. Good morning, everybody. Welcome. This is built as a masterclass and so we re going to talk. We re not going to have it cluttered up with clips although we do have one visual surprise for you, which we ll introduce about halfway through. But basically we re here to talk and to learn from Mr. Kitano. There s one other person I d like to introduce you to before we start. It s Mr. Naoyuki Usui, who s a long-serving office member of the Kitano staff and has heroically translated situations like this many times before. So, we can trust him. He s going to be fine. I don t know if it s appropriate, I don t want to embarrass anybody but we do have a number of people from office Kitano here in the audience and I m not going to single them all out one by one because it would take too long, but I would like to acknowledge the long-standing manager of office Kitano, Mr. Masayuki Mori. Also, of course, the producer of all the films. Now, let s get started. We are in Greece and I can t help noticing that your new film, Achilles and the Turtle has a kind of a Greek reference in the title. I know you get dozens or even hundreds or invitations every day to go to festivals and to speak and to discuss your work and stuff like this and mostly you say No, I m sorry, I m too busy, I can t go. And this is your first time in Greece. I know that. So, the first question has to be: why are you here? Why did you decide to say yes to this invitation and does this have some connection to the Greek title in your film? Well, for me, great mathematicians like Pythagoras or Archimedes, whom I learned because I majored engineering in the university, represent Greece. I had to learn and study a lot of mathematics and physics. Also, Greece is known for its great tradition and its great philosophers like Socrates and Plato and Aristotle and when I compare the history of Japan at that time, we were just learning to use the stone as a tool and do some farming. So, we were not yet historical people. It was the prehistorical period for the Japanese. And to visit a country like Greece, which has a long tradition and is apparently the root of the western civilization or democracy, if you like, is something interesting for me. So, I ve always been interested in visiting such a historic country and to be invited by such countries is a great honor. I really enjoy this trip. You can have a chance to see more of Greece other than Thessaloniki and the rain. Very unlikely; we are leaving tomorrow. It s a start, anyway. Since people have just seen it, let s start talking a little bit about your new film

4 9 ο Φ Ε Σ Τ Ι Β Α Λ Κ Ι Ν Η Μ Α Τ Ο Γ Ρ Α Φ Ο Υ Θ Ε Σ Σ Α Λ Ο Ν Ι Κ Η Σ M A S T E R C L A S S E S because there are, of course, a thousand things to talk about, but we have to start somewhere. Let s start with that. You ve said that this is the third part of a trilogy that you sometimes called your artistic suicide trilogy. Can we clarify this? There is this situation where the films that get really popular tend to be the ones with gun action, like Sonatine, or sword fighting dramas like Zatoichi and I felt that I cannot really go on repeating myself by making another Sonatine or another Zatoichi in my career. Although I will always go back to that kind of movie, I felt that I need to do a totally different type of movie every once in a while and I asked my producer to be patient with me for three films where I ll be totally selfish and self-indulgent and make just whatever I want to make; maybe Tony was right when he defined that trilogy as artistic suicide, because I d be dead as an artist with these three films and I ll be revived as a new filmmaker with the next one. I thought I was quoting you about the artistic suicide. It wasn t me. Even while I was making those films I knew, I was pretty sure, that they would not make a lot of money. So, that must be really tough for producers to tolerate. Probably, they ll be thinking of me as a bastard. I m sure they didn t have such bad thoughts. Now, the film is about a painter, Machisu, and when he grows up and becomes middle-aged, you play him. And that suggests some certain autobiographical element of the film. Also, Machisu s paintings in the film have been painted by you, because you have been a painter as well as a filmmaker, writer, comedian and all the other things you do for quite many years now. However, the story itself doesn t seem to be very autobiographical. In fact, this is a story of artistic failure and I think that actually your story is a story of artistic success. Why did you feel the need to deal with failure? It s going to be a long story if you bear with me. Actually, as you said, I ve been painting as a hobby for many years and quite a lot of paintings have been piling up in my storage room and most of them I give to my friends and acquaintances and some of them I throw away, but I always felt that something could be done with those paintings. I thought to myself: why not make a film including all these paintings? And I came to that thought because there have been a lot of movies about the lives of famous painters, like Modigliani or Van Gogh or impressionist painters; but all these movies include the replica of the paintings and none of the movies, I think, has the budget to pay for the real painting, to pay millions of dollars to show the original painting. But if I include my own paintings in my movie, the paintings will at least be real. Although I knew well that as a painter I m technically bad, they are nothing more than amateur paintings, if I set the character as an unsuccessful painter who is doomed to fail, my inclusion of such bad paintings will be justified. So the idea sort of enhances itself. One other thing about failure is that although this one deals with artistic failure, the two other movies of my trilogy, Takeshi s and Glory to the Filmmaker! also portray the turmoil and conflict and failure and that kind of stuff with the conscious intention of the portrayal of these elements in those movies. And by portraying the failed artist, I wanted to somehow show my conclusion to the whole inner debate about how artists should be in that if you can make a living and live as an artist, that fact itself is really sufficient for you. And whether you have success or critical acclaim is really secondary to that whole thing. And that s one of the topics I wanted to deal with. Another thing is that art can be a really scary and dangerous thing in that it really involves the artists and those people who are around the artist, causing sometimes or leading to very disastrous results. And looking back, when I was involved in television and the movies, I was really involving

M A S T E R C L A S S E S 4 9 t h T H E S S A L O N I K I I N T E R N A T I O N A L F I L M F E S T I V A L other people to support me and help me. I m still working with some today and others drifted away at some point. There is always some guilty feeling about not really hanging around forever with these people, so I wanted to portray that kind of aspect too; this dangerous aspect, the very dark aspect of involving others in the creation of art. One thing the producer must be happy about is that if you use your own paintings, at least this was free and cheaper and it keeps the budget down. No comment. I ll take that as a yes. Some people are not really good at jokes and after watching Achilles and the Tortoise, some Japanese rich people called Office Kitano and they wanted to pay money to buy my paintings. They didn t take the joke. You should take the money. Now, when I first met you, many years ago, you had made two or three films and you were, I remember, quite surprised that people in the west were taking you seriously as a filmmaker and you said that this was not really the situation in Japan. So, you were very pleased to meet people in western countries who were serious critics and took the films seriously and wanted to analyze the films and praise the films for the cinematic qualities. So, I m wondering how that history of being taken seriously as a filmmaker outside Japan before you were inside Japan, connects with all of this. Value is a serious, tricky area to discuss and sometimes a prophet has no honor in his own land, as they say, and sometimes it s easier for foreigners to see the quality of the work than it is for your audience at home. This is why I am so thankful about Tony and other British and European people. They invited me here in the very early phase of my career. It was around the time I had just finished Sonatine -and now Sonatine is highly revered among the film circles, but at the time it was a total flop in Japan. In the Japanese release, it didn t play more than two weeks because it was so bad in terms of the box office. So, I was beginning to think that maybe I didn t have talent as a filmmaker. That s when some film festivals started sending invitations and I started going to those festivals accepting all these invitations. Then, I kind of learned that there is a flow in there, which was a surprise, and because of the kind of trauma of Sonatine, I went into the totally desperate way of making my first artistic suicide film, called Getting Any? and I literally killed myself as a filmmaker once there. Then I had a motorbike accident right after the completion of Getting Any? and it was a very disastrous period for me. But the screening of my films in Britain kept growing during all these years and every time I visited festivals during those years, it gave me the motivation of making movies. These people at least waited for my next movie. Why not try another one? Then came Hana-bi, Fireworks, which won the Golden Lion, and it was interesting for me to see that because the moment I received this very prestigious award in the Venice Film Festival, the perception of my career in Japan turned upside down. I was just a comedian who made movies as a hobby and I suddenly turned into this international film maestro in Japan. So, this was quite an ironic moment for me. But I don t know. I still continue to do TV shows as my day job and the majority of the Japanese people still think of me as this funny guy being Takeshi, so my struggle continues. You mentioned just now your motorcycle accident. You were in the hospital for quite a long time and couldn t do anything for a while, but you came back from that accident with a film called Kids Return, which you didn t act in. It was a film you did only as a director and it s about two kids, two young men, who come from the wrong side of the tracks; they face difficult choices about how they are going to live their lives and how they are going to get ahead or not, be trapped by the

4 9 ο Φ Ε Σ Τ Ι Β Α Λ Κ Ι Ν Η Μ Α Τ Ο Γ Ρ Α Φ Ο Υ Θ Ε Σ Σ Α Λ Ο Ν Ι Κ Η Σ M A S T E R C L A S S E S system or destroyed by the system. This little film is now called One Fine Day ; it s a complete film of three minutes made by Mr. Kitano, written and directed by him and also featuring him in a small way as an actor. It was made for the Cannes film festival project last year. It was Gilles Jacob, the director of the Cannes film festival who conceived a project Chacun Son Cinéma, To Each His Own Cinema it was called in English, and a number of famous directors around the world were invited to contribute with a three-minute short film to this project offering their own reflections on cinema in some way. It had to be cinema-related. So, this was Mr. Kitano s episode. As you ll see, it involves a screening of the film Kids Return. This is why I mentioned it. So, if we could just pause for a moment, for three minutes in fact, to watch One Fine Day. (screening) If you look very closely in Achilles and the Tortoise, you ll notice that one of Machisu s paintings is in fact of that cinema and that country road stretching into the distance alongside it. So, it makes me wonder if that particular image has some personal meaning for you; are they childhood memories? Actually, my brother-in-law, the husband of my sister, lived in this countryside. I once visited his hometown, which is a very small village in the mountains, and they have a cinema just like this one in the middle of nowhere and the cinema is not open throughout the year. It s only for limited releases for farmers and mountain people. This was the inspiration that produced this footage. In this movie, the short film, the countryside person who is a farmer is not a cinema lover; he only watches movies once in a while. These cinemas in the country are bound to disappear in today s age and for this particular film, it fits perfectly in this situation for me. This particular cinema in the film probably deserves to disappear since it doesn t offer its customers much of an experience in terms of film-viewing pleasure. I couldn t help noticing that you appeared yourself as the projectionist. Do you hate projectionists? Is there some expression of hatred behind this? Well, when I was proposed this project from the Cannes Festival, I heard that 30 or something directors are going to make the three-minute movies and I kind of noticed that one project would kind of [thematically] overlap from one director to another. I expected that maybe the projection trouble would be depicted by more than two filmmakers or that when the lights go out, the film would start and there would be a pickpocket running around the theatre stealing something. Probably somebody would do that. And then I thought that maybe somebody coming to the theatre and watching although being blind, that would be done by somebody. So, all these subjects I decided not to choose, but used my own movie in a way that would be not everybody s cup of tea. That s what I thought. That s how I came to this idea, but initially I wanted to do a three-minute movie about senators secretly congregating in the parliament or something. It would appear to be an unofficial kind of gathering and they would basically undermine the public and basically say a lot of bad things about the general public. But that would be secretly shot with a TV crew and aired around the country. So, when the whole discussion stops, the lights are on and the TV crew is there. That was the punch line. So, I had this initial idea for the three-minute movie. But I thought it would be too troublesome to have so many people. It would be complicated, with too many production details, and it would be more than three minutes. So, I switched my idea to the one I had and as you see, the last line of the film really coincides with the feeling of this short movie and it has a really neat gag of this farmer watching the line and the kid goes We haven t started yet and this farmer thinks I have seen quite a lot of footage but the

M A S T E R C L A S S E S 4 9 t h T H E S S A L O N I K I I N T E R N A T I O N A L F I L M F E S T I V A L film hasn t started yet. So, he keeps sitting. So, that kind of neat little gag was my intention. That s how the whole thing evolved into what you ve seen. If you had done the senators, it would have been very political. Yes, I was going to have the Prime Minister say many inappropriate things. Okay, let s move on. I wanted to ask you something about the changing film language in your movies and I m wondering if this relates to the fact that the last couple of years you ve been teaching at a film school in Tokyo. If we look back at your early films, one of the reasons they became famous is because you very rarely moved the camera. You did a lot of things with fixed shots and many people were moving in and out of frame and often things happened off screen and outside the frame, which is often quite funny. In your recent films, it s very different. You re moving the camera a lot now and you even have overhead shots and all kinds of very elaborate camera movements. First, can I just ask you if there is a reason you moved away from the formulas of those early films but secondly, does this have to do with the film teaching that you do? Yes, as you said, I started teaching at the Tokyo Art University, but I m not exactly sure if you can call it teaching or professorship because all I do with those students is take them out to drink and eat food, treating all these young kids to delicious drinking and partying. So, I don t know if you can call it teaching. But what can you really teach about film? There is really nothing there to teach as far as filmmaking is concerned. So, that s basically why I d rather hang out than act like a teacher. Plus, I started moving the camera a lot in the recent movies, you re right about that, because I just kind of got bored with the fixed long shot. So, yes, in recent movies I did start moving the camera more and I have already started getting bored with the camera movement. So, I might go back to the still fixed long shot style in my next movie. So, after doing some Andy Warhol type painting in Achilles and the Tortoise, we may see some Andy Warhol movies from you. No comment. Was that a yes or a no? It s hard to tell. Well, for my next movie, I m thinking of doing a sword-fighting piece again; but whether I will go back to the direction of the state-of-the-art modern type of action where you use a lot of wire and it looks as if the actors can do anything physically, even physically impossible things, or go to oldfashioned action, I still haven t made up my mind which direction to follow. I know that quite a few of your films have a kind of indirect autobiographical roots. Obviously, sword fighting doesn t, although actually when we talked about Zatoichi some years ago, you reminded me that in your days in vaudeville, before you started appearing on TV, you did train in some sword fighting techniques. You were not unfamiliar with that. So, even that might have some autobiographical roots. But can I just ask you more generally? When you plan a project, how conscious are you of drawing from your own experiences and finding innovative ways of talking about things that you ve been through yourself and how much are you drawing things out of the air, out of your imagination purely? It s more being around the TV industry for this long; I get to meet very interesting people outside the cinema industry and you can learn a lot just by working as an actor in gun action or sword fight-

4 9 ο Φ Ε Σ Τ Ι Β Α Λ Κ Ι Ν Η Μ Α Τ Ο Γ Ρ Α Φ Ο Υ Θ Ε Σ Σ Α Λ Ο Ν Ι Κ Η Σ M A S T E R C L A S S E S ing, by doing a TV drama or shows. So, without me noticing, I have unconsciously accumulated all these experiences and knowledge throughout the years with my TV activity, I think. And to get to know these people outside the cinema, you can learn a lot from these people. When I work on a project and write the script, I don t really consciously draw something from here or there. Maybe as I proceed with the writing, if I can think of something that can be used in that particular subject, I draw from my experience. That s how I work. Quite a few of your films, including some of your most famous ones, have dealt with gangsters and police and the police-gangster conflicts. And I think that quite a few of your fans in Europe especially, maybe not in Japan (I m sure it s different in Japan) many people assume from seeing the early films that you were some kind of gangster yourself. And I remember the first time you came to London; your distributor in London was terrified that the actors that would get off the plane would be nightmarish to look after. He thought there was going to be big trouble and he was terrified. I don t think you are in the Yakuza but you seem to know quite a lot about them. Can you clarify that? Since I started my career as a stand-up comedian, it was almost unavoidable for all these entertainers, whether they are stand-up comedians or singers or whatever, to live without Yakuza gangsters. It s impossible for the upcoming entertainer who is doing stage shows every night. And that s how I came to know these people. And one other troubling thing about the Yakuza is that, since I started making the gangster type of movie depicting the life of Yakuza, there has been increasing popularity of my movies among the real Yakuza people. And I wouldn t say I had a terrible time with all these people, all these Yakuza fans of my movies, but they wanted basically to see me too often. Even before I became a comedian, I grew up in a very rough working-class type of neighborhood and many of my friends in that neighborhood ended up joining the Yakuza and died tragically and very young. So, I have heard and witnessed all these stories ever since I was a kid and some of the stories are too inappropriate for a film. I didn t want to be shot to death by all these friends who later became Yakuza and who would come and tell me Takeshi, you stole my story! Bam! I didn t want that to happen. So, some of the stories could not be told. But I had a lot of stories from that period and from Yakuza. I m sure nobody would want you to be shot by Yakuza. So, I m glad. Please stay away from these things. I m very sorry but we have to finish because Mr. Kitano has to be in another theatre very shortly. I want to ask one final question here. At the beginning -and perhaps now still- you were very cynical about artists. There is a certain kind of cynicism and I think that in Achilles and the Tortoise you can still find a certain kind of cynicism about the status of artists and the value of art. But obviously it s a line that has two sides because on the other hand you are an artist and you do create films and you do create books and you do create paintings. You do many things that are very creative. This is probably a difficult one to answer briefly, but how do you feel today about the status of the artist? Do you think of yourself as an artist now? I feel that probably this is not only the case in Japan, but it s happening in the entire world; it is the sheer creative ability of the artist himself, who is becoming more and more irrelevant to the whole phenomena surrounding the art. I mean, how you promote and publicize your work of art through art dealers, through film critics or the press and the media is becoming more important than your creative ability and this is becoming more and more consumerism rather than creation. And I knew this Japanese artist who is not really interested in making millions of dollars with his work of art, but it is something that you cannot control. It s some kind of a boom and you cannot really control the price of your paintings or your work of art. Also, as I said, I m an amateur and I

M A S T E R C L A S S E S 4 9 t h T H E S S A L O N I K I I N T E R N A T I O N A L F I L M F E S T I V A L consciously try to not let this happen, but that s the feeling I have about the current situation of the artists. It s getting more and more commercialized, overly commercialized. It s a slightly sad note to end on but I think we do have to end. I m sorry there is not any more time. I m sorry there is no time for you to ask questions today but there have been some Q+A sessions with Takeshi at the screenings and I hope that will make up for the loss today. Thank you very much for being here today and a big thanks to Takeshi Kitano for coming to Thessaloniki today.