JFF+ INDEPENDENT CINEMA, a special streaming program organized by the Japan Foundation, is shining the spotlight on independent theaters, so-called “mini-theaters” that have nurtured the diversity of Japanese cinema culture. The free program aimed at overseas audiences is streaming Japanese films selected by managers of mini-theaters.

Noriko Yamasaki manages the Osaka theater Ciné nouveau. She recommended two films for us: "hottamaru・days" (2015) from director Nao Yoshigai and "In the Distance" (2022) by director Saki Kato. Both works weave in fresh sensibilities and showcase the innovations in Japanese cinema today.

For this interview, we visited Ciné nouveau and spoke with manager Noriko Yamasaki about the history of her movie theater and about Japanese film today.

Text: Rie Tsukinaga Photo: Masahiro Nishimura Editing: The Japan Foundation

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The Kansai region, which is located in the midwest of Japan’s main island of Honshu, is home to several unique theaters–some of which just opened in recent years–creating a distinctive “mini-theater” culture. Osaka is the most prominent city in the Kansai area and is also known for its vibrant culinary culture. Sadly, its Theatre Umeda shuttered in September 2022, but the city is still full of theaters like Cinem@rt Shinsaibashi, The Seventh Art Theater, Planet Plus One, and others. A huge movement began in the early 2000s when a string of young directors from Osaka University of Arts came into the limelight–among them Kazuyoshi Kumakiri, Nobuhiro Yamashita, Go Shibata, and Yuya Ishii.

One of the hubs supporting Osaka’s film culture at that time was Ciné nouveau, located in the Kujo district of Nishi Ward. It’s a neighborhood known for its warmth and deeply-ingrained blue-collar ethos. The theater is located on a quiet residential street past a long shopping arcade. Since it opened in 1997, it’s been delighting cinema buffs with a varied selection of works, from arthouse films to the latest releases from young Japanese directors.

Yamazaki Ciné nouveau was created by completely renovating an empty building that had also once been a theater. The structure itself was built around 50 years ago. When they originally set out to rebuild the old theater, the plan was to keep the theater itself and create residential units above it to sell as condos. Today we’re the only theater in this area, but Kujo was once a thriving commercial area–so successful that people called it “the Shinsaibashi of western Osaka”. So apparently there were a lot of theaters and playhouses at that time. I started living in this area about ten years ago. It’s more laid back than central Osaka, but the shopping streets are still bustling and there are tons of delicious mom-and-pop eateries to choose from. We’re definitely not short on fantastic food around here.

Yukichi Matsumoto, head of the Ishinha theater company that was once the heart of Osaka’s performing arts scene, was responsible for the interior and exterior design of Ciné nouveau. It’s so unique that it’s impossible to forget once you visit.

Yamazaki： Ishinha was a theater company that would pop up out of nothing on a vacant lot every time they gave a performance. The performers themselves would bring the stage, seats–everything–from their own quarters to put on the show, and then when it was over, take it all down to bare land again. (Yukichi Matsumoto passed in 2016, and the company was dissolved the following year.) Matsumoto was the one who renovated Ciné nouveau from the ground up to be an “underwater theater.” The rose sculptures on the entryway are made to stand out in the residential neighborhood. When the lights go down and a film starts, the interior makes you feel exactly like you’re underwater. It was his goal to create an otherworldly space.

Yamazaki： Matsumoto first got involved with this theater after he and Satoshi Kageyama built the Sennen Theater together in Kyoto in 1987. Kageyama had been screening movies since he was a university student, and had even independently distributed films that hadn’t yet been shown in Japan–like those from Polish film director Jerzy Skolimowski. There were several other cinephiles–like Hajime Tai from Cinema 5 and Masao Mogi from Cinematheque Takasaki–who created their own theaters after getting their start in independent screening projects. Kageyama met documentary filmmaker Shinsuke Ogawa in the 1980s and was so taken by his personality and projects that he became heavily involved in films Ogawa Productions in Kansai.

The Sennen Theater was conceived as a pop-up theater for showing director Shinsuke Ogawa’s "Magino Village: A Tale" (1987), its seats, roof, and everything else built out of mud and straw. After about a month or so of screenings, it was completely dismantled. It was a fascinating theater, though not necessarily an ideal environment for watching films. The group wanted to try again, so when they set out to build Ciné nouveau, they asked Matsumoto to do the remodeling.

The Sennen pop-up theater experiment eventually led to the construction of Ciné nouveau ten years later. Its predecessor was a film information monthly called "Eiga Shimbun", which Kageyama began publishing in 1984 (printing stopped in 1999).

Yamazaki： At the time, documentary and foreign films had few exposure opportunities in Japan. The "Eiga Shimbun" was started as a way to spread the word on the street from Osaka about film festivals featuring these genres. As Kageyama put out film information and director interviews in the magazine month after month, he began to dream of creating a place where people could come and watch those films. In 1996, he reached out to his readers about building a movie theater. Kageyama set out to raise money for the project in 100,000-yen increments, and was immediately able to collect funds from people who wanted to build a theater where they could watch the films they wanted to see. Apparently plans moved along quickly after that.

When Ciné nouveau first opened, it showed a string of Japanese and foreign films that had few screening opportunities anywhere else. It also became known for its massive special screenings of Japanese films.

Yamazaki： Ciné nouveau worked with the Sanbyakunin Theater in Tokyo (which closed in 2006) to bring audiences groundbreaking special showings. In 1999, the theater borrowed some 20-odd films created by the Sanbyakunin Theater (including new print editions) and used them to host Kansai’s first full-scale Mikio Naruse Retrospective. Ciné nouveau was a complete newcomer back then, surrounded by major film companies and well-established promoters. It must have been difficult to select the films, but Kageyama probably leveraged his connections from the "Eiga Shimbun" as well as his experience showing films to put together engaging programming.

It was a few years later that Noriko Yamasaki began working at Ciné nouveau as a part-time staff member.

Yamazaki： I studied oil painting at an art college, but I loved film–so I first decided to take a part-time job at a theater run by Yoshimoto Kogyo in Osaka’s famed Umeda entertainment district. The theater was a bit unusual in that it hosted new comedies and "rakugo" performances during the day, and turned into a mini-theater showing films in the evenings. It was amazing to see how completely the atmosphere of that one venue changed depending on the event. Unfortunately, the theater ended up closing after about a year and a half, so I rededicated myself to my school studies for a time. But I found that I was still drawn to working in theaters after I graduated. It just so happened that my father knew Satoshi Kageyama, so I got a job at Ciné nouveau.

Since Noriko Yamasaki became manager in 2008, she’s been the one primarily responsible for selecting the screening lineup at Ciné nouveau.

Yamazaki： Kageyama also runs the Takarazuka Cine Pipia and is in charge of putting together the programming there. I’m basically in charge of the lineup here at Ciné nouveau. That said, there are still a lot of films we screen that he decides on–like the special feature on Nagisa Oshima or the upcoming show on female actor Kiwako Taichi. There are things I’m passionate about doing too, and those I decide on myself. But if it’s a genre I’m not too familiar with I consult with my staff. The selection process is a fluid one.

Many Ciné nouveau patrons have been coming to watch films at the theater regularly since the theater first opened.

Yamazaki： Our club membership fluctuates between around seven and eight hundred moviegoers. The group is overwhelmingly men in their 40s and 50s–or even older. A certain number of them will watch anything we screen here. Some have decided that they’ll always watch five films on a certain day of the week, or will come every afternoon to watch the first film of the day. We’re tremendously grateful to those loyal customers.

It’s been nearly two decades that you’ve worked at Ciné nouveau. Your perspective on how you work must have changed somewhat over the years.

Yamazaki： When I was younger, I just liked working here. So much so that I’d blast through without ever taking a day off. But as I’ve gotten older, some doubts have started to creep in. Things got particularly challenging when we had to shut down completely during the pandemic. At the same time, you probably remember that some theaters started facing harassment issues. That’s also when the problems with film industry working conditions came to light. Friends my age who worked in theaters often talked about how we couldn’t go on this way.

If we think of Kageyama and his group as the first generation of people to create a nationwide mini-theater culture, that makes those of us who started working under them and now manage the mini-theaters its second generation. I have no idea yet whether a third generation will emerge, but I do know that we can’t have working conditions that make young people want nothing to do with the industry. And if we want to improve things, we have to start by personally changing the way we work. It’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.

The changes brought by the pandemic have been huge then–not just for you personally, but for theaters in general.

Yamazaki： When the Japanese government announced its first emergency declaration in 2020 (April 7–May 25), we, like everyone else, shut down for nearly two months. Our revenue immediately plummeted to zero. I reached out to Yurika Yoshida at the Kyoto Minami Kaikan and Mirai Hayashi at the Motomachi Eigakan in Kobe to talk with them about how we were going to make it through. That’s when we came up with the idea to create and sell "Save Our Local Cinemas" T-shirts to support Kansai-area theaters. The project generated a tremendous response–far more than I had expected. We had a bunch of directors offer messages of support, along with words of encouragement from our members. Tons of people bought the T-shirts. It really hit home how much people appreciated what we had been doing over the years, and gave me the courage to do whatever it took to revitalize our theater.

On the heels of the Save Our Local Cinemas movement, a group of directors including Koji Fukada and Ryusuke Hamaguchi launched the Mini-Theater Aid.

Yamazaki： Crowdfunding for the Mini-Theater Aid began just as the sale period for the Save Our Local Cinemas T-shirts came to a close. Those of us in Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe were delighted to see that aid activities coming from their local theaters had led to the launch of additional nationwide activities by these big-name directors. I’m sure the people involved in the project faced tremendous challenges, and we were so grateful to them for setting up a system that got money into the hands of mini-theaters all over Japan. I’m sure that we aren’t the only theater that wouldn’t have survived the pandemic without funds from Save Our Local Cinemas T-shirt sales or the Mini-Theater Aid.

People gradually started making their way back to the theaters in 2021, when "Drive My Car" and "Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy" by director Ryusuke Hamaguchi started showing. "Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy" in particular made headlines as it was shown primarily in mini-theaters around the country.

Yamazaki： "Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy" was hugely popular at Ciné nouveau. We ran it for over six months. "Drive My Car" was also a massive hit when it was shown at the Takarazuka Cine Pipia, making Ryusuke Hamaguchi a kind of savior for mini-theaters.

The biggest hits on record prior to that were in the early 2000s–"Devils on the Doorstep" (2000) directed by Jiang Wen and "Hotel Rwanda" (2004) by Terry George, along with films like "The Mourning Forest" (2007) by Naomi Kawase. We didn’t really have the opportunity to screen any films with that kind of response after 2010. "Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy" brought that level of enthusiasm back to the theaters for a first time in a long time.

It sounds like the changes brought by the pandemic also had the effect of putting theaters back on a positive track.

Yamazaki： During the pandemic, it wasn’t easy for people to travel outside of their prefectures to visit mini-theaters, which really energized the exchanges among nationwide mini-theaters online. It all started when Seijun Kawamoto, manager at Cinema Onomichi, reached out. Toshiyuki Kajiwara at Cinema Jack & Betty and Mutsuko Shio at Cinémathèque Takasaki were among the mini-theater managers who came together from around the country for casual conversations online. In the past, we’d say hi to each other once a year or so at community gatherings, but now we meet for drinks on Zoom once a month to talk about all kinds of things. If the pandemic hadn’t hit, the mini-theaters probably would have never formed these close relationships with each other.

Based on what you told us about the Save Our Local Cinemas project, it sounds like the theaters in the Kansai area have always been a tight-knit group.

Yamazaki： The theaters in Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe pretty much feel like neighbors to us. We’re particularly close with Motomachi Eigakan in Kobe, which is close enough that we can get there on a single train line. We’re always consulting with one another about what to show. If a work is filmed in Osaka and we plan to show it, I’ll ask them if they want to screen it in Kobe, too. And we sometimes show films that the Motomachi Eigakan is involved in making or distributing.

Four Kansai-area theaters–Ciné nouveau, the Motomachi Eigakan, the Kyoto Minami Kaikan, and Demachiza–have been getting together since 2019 to put on a special feature called the Showcase for Next-generation Films, where we select independent films from promising young directors and screen them at all four venues.

Yamazaki： The event focuses on independent films that the theater managers are confident in recommending to audiences. The film I’m recommending today, "hottamaru・days" by Nao Yoshigai, was first screened at the Showcase for Next-generation Films, and later as part of the regular lineup. "Hottamaru・days" and other films by Nao Yoshigai tend to be short or mid-length films, so it’s a bit difficult to show them as regular features–but we decided to do it because we figured that introducing avant-garde films like these as part of a special feature had the best chance of getting them in front of audiences.

If you look at Japanese films these days, you find an increasing number of people starting to break away completely from traditional cinematic formats and create films in original styles. Yoshigai is the epitome of these new filmmakers, and she’s also an accomplished choreographer and dancer–so her pieces defiantly cross the lines between film and art genres.

Saki Kato and Haruka Toyoshima, who worked on "In the Distance", were originally dramatists—so they make their own kinds of films without worrying about how films are typically done. Haruka Komori and Natsumi Seo of "Double Layered Town / Making a Song to Replace Our Positions"—a film that will be streamed during this same period—are also among my favorite filmmakers. I’ve been so impressed lately by the way these filmmakers are starting to do things that are completely different than what was done in the past. I’d love it if everyone could take advantage of this event and see these fresh new Japanese films.

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JFF+ INDEPENDENT CINEMA

https://jff.jpf.go.jp/watch/independent-cinema/

Organizer: The Japan Foundation (JF)
In cooperation with: Japan Community Cinema Center
Period: December 15, 2022–June 15, 2023 (6 months)
Streaming areas: Worldwide, excluding Japan (some films not streamed in certain areas)
Fee: Free (user registration is required to watch)
Languages: English, Spanish (some films have Japanese subtitles)

Films recommended by Ciné nouveau (Osaka)
"hottamaru・days" (2021) directed by Nao Yoshigai [Streaming: December 15, 2022–March 15, 2023]
"In the Distance" (2022) directed by Saki Kato [Streaming: March 15–June 15, 2023]