"JFF+ INDEPENDENT CINEMA," a special streaming project organized by the Japan Foundation, focuses on "artisanal theaters" that have long supported Japan's film culture, and will stream Japanese films recommended by artisanal theater managers free of charge to overseas audiences.

Noriko Yamazaki, general manager of the movie theater "Cine Nouveau" in Osaka City, Osaka Prefecture, recommended two films: "Hottamarubiyori" (2021) directed by Nao Yoshigai and "Away" (2022) directed by Saki Kato. Both films are woven with a new sensibility that shows new directions for future Japanese films.

This time, we visited Cine Nouveau, where Manager Yamazaki Noriko works, and spoke to her about the history of the cinema and the current state of Japanese films.

Interview and text: Tsukinaga Rie Photography: Nishimura Masahiro Editing: The Japan Foundation

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In the Kansai region, a unique mini-theater culture has developed, with many unique cinemas gathering, including new ones that have opened in recent years. In particular, in Osaka City, known as the food capital and a major city representing the Kansai region, although "Theatre Umeda" sadly closed in September 2022, there are still many cinemas such as "Cine Libre Umeda", "Cinemart Shinsaibashi", "The Seventh Art Theater", and "Planet Plus One". In the early 2000s, young directors from Osaka University of Arts, such as Kazuyoshi Kumakiri, Norihiro Yamashita, Tsuyoshi Shibata, and Yuya Ishii, came into the spotlight one after another, creating a major movement.

One of the hubs that supports Osaka's film culture is Cine Nouveau, located in Kujo, Nishi-ku, Osaka, a warm neighborhood filled with the atmosphere of a traditional downtown area. Located in a quiet residential area past a long shopping street, Cine Nouveau has been presenting a wide variety of films, from arthouse movies to films by young Japanese directors, to Kansai movie fans since its opening in 1997.

Yamazaki: Cine Nouveau opened after extensively renovating the site of a vacant former movie theater. The building was constructed about 50 years ago. When it was decided to rebuild the original movie theater, the theater was left intact and a residential apartment building was designed above it. Ours is the only movie theater left in the area now, but Kujo was once a thriving commercial district so much that it was called the Shinsaibashi of the West, and apparently there were many movie theaters and playhouses. I've been living in the area for about 10 years now, and although it's quieter than central Osaka, the shopping district is lively and there are many delicious privately owned restaurants. In short, it's a town where you'll never be short of food.

The unforgettable, unique exterior and interior design was created by Matsumoto Yukichi of the Osaka-based theatre company Ishinha.

Yamazaki: Ishinha was a theater company that built everything from accommodation for the members to the stage and audience seats from scratch on an empty lot every time they performed, and then removed everything they had built and returned the lot to its original state after the performance (after Matsumoto Yukichi passed away in 2016, the theater company disbanded in 2017). Matsumoto renovated Cine Nouveau from the ground up, based on the concept of an "underwater cinema." The rose sculpture at the entrance is designed to stand out even in a residential area. The interior was designed to create an extraordinary space, where when the lights go down and the movie starts, you feel as if you are diving underwater.

Yamazaki: Matsumoto started working on this cinema when he and Cine Nouveau president Kageyama Osamu built a cinema called "Millennium Theater" in Kyoto in 1987. Kageyama had been screening films since his student days, and apparently he was an independent distributor of Polish films by Jerzy Skolimowski and others that had not been released in Japan. There are many other people who started out screening films independently before setting up their own cinemas, such as Tai from Cinema 5 and Mogi from Cinematheque Takasaki. Kageyama met documentary filmmaker Ogawa Shinsuke in the 1980s, fell in love with his personality and work, and was involved in screening many of Ogawa Productions' films in the Kansai region.

The Millennium Theater was conceived as a theater exclusively for screening Ogawa's "The 1000-Year Sundial: The Story of Makino Village" (1987), and the seats and roof were all made from earth and straw, and it was demolished after about a month of screenings. Although it was a very interesting theater, it was apparently not the best environment for watching movies, so we asked Matsumoto to renovate it as a second attempt when we created Cine Nouveau.

Cine Nouveau was founded ten years after the attempt of the limited-time movie theater, the Millennium Theater. Its predecessor was the monthly film information paper "Movie Newspaper" that Kageyama had been publishing since 1984 (it ceased publication in 1999).

Yamazaki: "Eiga Shinbun" was created as a grassroots medium from Osaka to disseminate information on documentary films and overseas film festivals, which were rarely introduced in Japan at the time. As the magazine introduced various films every month and featured interviews with directors, the group wanted to create a place where people could watch these films, and in 1996 they called on their readers to set up a movie theater. They asked for investments of 100,000 yen a pop, hoping to create a theater that would show the films they wanted to see, and investors quickly gathered, and things progressed smoothly from there.

From the beginning, Cine Nouveau has screened a variety of films, both foreign and Japanese, that are rarely screened elsewhere. It also attracted attention with its large-scale special screenings of Japanese films.

Yamazaki: It seems that they held some pretty groundbreaking special screenings in collaboration with the Sanbyakunin Theater in Tokyo (closed in 2006). In 1999, they borrowed over 20 films, including new prints made at the Sanbyakunin Theater, and held the first full-scale Naruse Mikio Retrospective in the Kansai region. At the time, there were a lot of major film companies and old promoters around, and we were complete newcomers. It must have been difficult to choose the films, but I think that Kageyama-san's network of contacts he had cultivated through the Eiga Shimbun and his experience in screening activities were put to good use in programming.

A few years after Cine Nouveau opened, Yamazaki began working as a part-time staff member.

Yamazaki: I studied oil painting at a vocational school, but I also loved movies, so I started out working part-time at a movie theater run by Yoshimoto Kogyo in Umeda, a famous downtown area. It was a bit of an unusual movie theater; it hosted comedy shows and rakugo performances during the day, and turned into a mini-theater showing movies in the evening. It was interesting to see how the atmosphere changed completely depending on the event, even though it was in the same location. The theater ended up closing after about a year and a half, so I focused on my studies for a while, but after graduating I realized I wanted to work in a movie theater after all, and I started working at Cine Nouveau through an introduction from Kageyama-san, who happened to be an acquaintance of my father.

Since becoming manager in 2008, Yamazaki has been primarily responsible for selecting the films to be screened at Cine Nouveau.

Yamazaki: In addition to this place, Kageyama also runs a movie theater called "Takarazuka Cine Pipia," and he is in charge of programming there, while I am generally in charge of programming for Cine Nouveau. That being said, there are still many projects that Kageyama has decided he "really wants to do," such as a special feature on director Nagisa Oshima and an upcoming special feature on actress Kiwako Taichi. I also unilaterally decide on things that I "absolutely want to do," but when screening a film in a genre I'm not very familiar with, I consult with other staff members, and I choose films flexibly each time.

Many of the people who visit the cinema are regulars who have been there since the cinema first opened.

Yamazaki: Currently, the number of members of the cinema fluctuates between 700 and 800. In terms of the faces of those who come to the cinema, the overwhelming majority are men in their 40s and 50s or older. There are a certain number of people who say they will watch any movie we screen, and there are also people who have decided that they will definitely watch five movies on a certain day of the week, or people who come to see the first movie every afternoon. We are really grateful for the presence of our regulars.

Nearly 20 years have passed since Yamazaki started working at Cine Nouveau, and his attitude toward work has gradually changed.

Yamazaki: When I was younger, I just loved this job and kept working hard without taking any days off, but as I got older, I gradually started to feel confused. Especially when movie theaters were closed all at once due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and around the same time, various issues about harassment at some movie theaters and working conditions in the film industry came to light. That was the opportunity for me to often talk with friends of my generation who work at movie theaters about how "the current way of working isn't good."

If Kageyama and his friends are the first generation that created the mini-theater culture across the country, then we who started working under them and became managers are, so to speak, the second generation of mini-theaters. We don't know at this point whether the next generation will come along, but at the very least, we must not work in a way that makes young people think, "I don't want to be like that." I've been thinking a lot recently that in order to improve the working environment, we first need to change the way we work.

The changes that have come about as a result of the coronavirus pandemic have been major not only for Yamazaki personally, but also for movie theaters.

Yamazaki: When the first state of emergency was declared by the Japanese government in 2020 (April 7th to May 25th), our theater was closed for nearly two months, and our income suddenly dropped to zero. We discussed with Mr. Yoshida of Kyoto Minami Kaikan and Mr. Hayashi of Motomachi Cinema in Kobe what we could do to overcome this crisis, and came up with the idea of ​​making and selling T-shirts called "Save our local cinemas" to support movie theaters in the Kansai region. This project received an unexpectedly large response. We received messages of support from various directors and encouraging words from customers. Many people even bought T-shirts. We felt that our efforts were recognized, and we felt a surge of energy to absolutely revive the theater.

Following on from the "Save our local cinemas" movement, the "Mini Theater Aid Fund" was launched, initiated by film directors Koji Fukada and Ryusuke Hamaguchi.

Yamazaki: The crowdfunding campaign for the Mini Theater Aid Fund started just after the sales period for the "Save our local cinemas" T-shirts ended. For people in the Keihanshin area (the collective name for the three cities of Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe), it felt like the support activities that started with calls from local cinemas had led to directors launching another nationwide initiative, and I was very happy about that. I'm sure the people involved in the project had a lot of hardships, but I was really grateful that they created a system that distributed cash to mini theaters across the country. I'm sure we weren't the only theater that would have been unable to survive the closure without the sales of the "Save our local cinemas" T-shirts and the donations from Mini Theater Aid.

In 2021, when movie theaters began to gradually return to their usual locations, Hamaguchi's "Drive My Car" and "Chance and Imagination" were released in succession. "Chance and Imagination" in particular attracted attention for being released mainly in mini-theaters across the country.

Yamazaki: "Chance and Imagination" was very popular at our theater, and ran for more than six months. "Drive My Car," which was shown at Takarazuka Cine Pipia, was also a huge hit, and Hamaguchi-san is truly a savior for mini-theaters.

Prior to that, some of the big hits we had at our theater included Jiang Wen's "The Devil Has Come!" (2000), Terry George's "Hotel Rwanda" (2004), and Naomi Kawase's "The Mourning Forest" (2007), all of which were shown in the 2000s. Since 2010, we haven't had many opportunities to screen films that have had that kind of impact, but with "Chance and Imagination," I was able to feel the excitement of the theater for the first time in a long time.

He also said that the changes that have occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic have also led movie theaters in a positive direction.

Yamazaki: Because COVID-19 made it difficult to travel to other prefectures, mini-theaters across the country started to actively exchange ideas online. It all started with an appeal by Seijun Kawamoto, manager of Cinema Onomichi. Managers of movie theaters in various regions, such as Kajiwara from Cinema Jack & Betty and Shio from Cinematheque Takasaki, gathered together and started to talk casually online. Previously, we only met once a year at a community meeting to say hello, but now we meet once a month for drinks on Zoom and share all kinds of stories. If it weren't for the spread of COVID-19, these connections between mini-theaters would not have been created.

As the "Save our local cinemas" project was born, it appears that the ties between movie theaters in the Kansai region are already strong.

Yamazaki: Cinemas in the Keihanshin area feel like they're in our neighborhood. We have a particularly strong connection with Motomachi Cinema in Kobe, which is just a single train ride away, and we're always discussing what to show there. If there's a movie that's been shot in Osaka, we'll ask, "We're planning to show it at our cinema, but why don't we show it in Kobe, too?" We also sometimes show movies that Motomachi Cinema was involved in producing and distributing at our cinema.

Starting in 2019, four Kansai cinemas - Cine Nouveau, Motomachi Cinema, Kyoto Minami Kaikan, and Demachiza - have joined forces to host a special screening called the Next Generation Film Showcase, which selects independent films by promising young directors and screens them at the four venues.

Yamazaki: This is a special screening that introduces movies that movie theater managers can confidently recommend, focusing on independent works. The film we recommended this time, "Hottamarubiyori" by Yoshigai Nao, was first screened at the Next Generation Film Showcase and then at a regular cinema. As most of Yoshigai's works, including "Hottamarubiyori," are short and medium-length films, it is quite difficult to screen them at a regular cinema, but we thought that if we were to screen it in a special screening that introduces avant-garde films like this, it would be able to reach the audience well, and that's what led to the decision to screen it.

When I watch Japanese films these days, I get the feeling that there are more and more people who are starting to make films in a freer style that is completely different from the traditional film forms of the past. Yoshikai is one such new filmmaker, an artist who works as a choreographer and dancer, and creates works that boldly cross the boundaries between the film and art genres.

Kato Saki and Toyoshima Haruka, the creators of "Away," are originally from the theater world, so they are free to make films without being confined to the framework of "what a film is." I also love Komori Haruka and Seo Natsumi, the creators of "Double Town/A Song of the Exchange Area," which is also available online. I've recently been strongly attracted to the activities of people who have started making films that are completely different from what we've done before. I hope that many people will see these new Japanese films through this distribution service.

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"JFF+ INDEPENDENT CINEMA"

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

Organized by: The Japan Foundation (JF)
Cooperation: Community Cinema Center
Implementation period: December 15, 2022 to June 15, 2023 (6 months)
Distribution area: Worldwide except Japan (some titles are not available in certain regions)
Viewing fee: Free (user registration required to watch)
Subtitles: English, Spanish (some films have Japanese subtitles)

Cine Nouveau (Osaka City, Osaka Prefecture) Recommended Works "Hottamarubiyori" (2021) directed by Nao Yoshigai [Distribution period: December 15, 2022 - March 15, 2023]
"Away" (2022) directed by Saki Kato [Streaming period: March 15th - June 15th, 2023]