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November 06, 2011

Starz Denver Film Festival 2011 - Record Future

Mirai no kiroku
Kentaro Kishi - 2010
Kzone Digital presentation

If anyone should have gotten an award named after John Cassavetes, it should have been Kentaro Kishi. The film festival's award is given to an American filmmaker or actor which rules out Kishi. I'm not sure what to make of Record Future, but the fact that the film was largely improvised, and shot over the course of four years clearly follows the template of Shadows and Faces.

Kishi is better known stateside, if not by name or face, than by a resume that includes films Sukeban Boy, Marchine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police, films that may be in questionable taste but are undeniably entertaining. Record Future is closer to late Sixties-early Seventies independent film, and far from the kind of stuff that appears on the Tokyo Shock DVD label. Past, present and future intermingle in a story about a possible imagined school, and memories of a school in the past.

I was hoping to get some more clarification from one of the actor, Satoshi Kamimura, who attended the Friday night screening of the film regarding how much of the structure of the film was similar to Kishi's theater work. Sadly, the translator seemed unable to understand my question, and seemed unaware of the films Kishi has been associated with as an actor. While Kamimura discussed how the film was gradually improvised from a couple of basic ideas, how Record Future connects to Kishi's theater work remains unclear. Kishi did spend some time working with Akio Miyazawa, and the descriptions of a couple of Miyazawa's plays share thematic similarities to Record Future.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at November 6, 2011 08:19 AM