by Chris MaGee
First there was news that “Funky Forest” and “Taste of Tea” director Katsuhito Ishii was releasing his own line of t-shirts and now Nippon Cinema has word that he’s branching out even further with an HD DVD which will “express video art as a form of interior decoration.”
Going on sale in Japan and through Ishii’s Nice Rainbow website “U-Bee Scenery” consists of three one shot films (an island in a bay, waves breaking against the shore and a tree heavy with cherry blossoms) that, according to Ishii, are “not something to be watched. Like a table or a chair, it is to be treated as a piece of furniture, to be there in the living room on a day off reading a book, in the bar lounge at a party where people gather, or in a hotel room welcoming the guest.”
Ishii seems to have worked on this project during the production of his latest film “Yama no Anata” enlisting cinematographer Hiroshi Machida and composer Toshio Nakagawa who both worked with Ishii on “Yama” to help bring this DVD to fruition.
At first it looks and sounds a tad New-Agey, but for me it really bring to mind French composer Erik Satie’s “furniture music”, music that was “meant to be in the background rather than listened to,” and in some ways Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami’s “Five Dedicated to Ozu”, one shot short films created as a tribute to Yasujiro Ozu’s famous “pillow shots”. Who knows, maybe Toshiaki Toyoda can take this idea and run with it…
Going on sale in Japan and through Ishii’s Nice Rainbow website “U-Bee Scenery” consists of three one shot films (an island in a bay, waves breaking against the shore and a tree heavy with cherry blossoms) that, according to Ishii, are “not something to be watched. Like a table or a chair, it is to be treated as a piece of furniture, to be there in the living room on a day off reading a book, in the bar lounge at a party where people gather, or in a hotel room welcoming the guest.”
Ishii seems to have worked on this project during the production of his latest film “Yama no Anata” enlisting cinematographer Hiroshi Machida and composer Toshio Nakagawa who both worked with Ishii on “Yama” to help bring this DVD to fruition.
At first it looks and sounds a tad New-Agey, but for me it really bring to mind French composer Erik Satie’s “furniture music”, music that was “meant to be in the background rather than listened to,” and in some ways Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami’s “Five Dedicated to Ozu”, one shot short films created as a tribute to Yasujiro Ozu’s famous “pillow shots”. Who knows, maybe Toshiaki Toyoda can take this idea and run with it…
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