"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.

Mutsuko Shio, general manager of Cinematheque Takasaki in Takasaki City, Gunma Prefecture, recommended two films: Yuki Maeda's " Wonderwall: The Movie" (2020) and Dai Sako's "Running Through the Night" (2022). Both are dramatic films that vividly capture the current state of Japanese society, where discontinuities are seen everywhere.

This time, we visited Cinematheque Takasaki, where General Manager Shio Mutsuko 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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Cinematheque Takasaki is located just a few minutes' walk from Takasaki Station in Gunma Prefecture. The walls of this cinema, which opened in 2004, are lined with the signatures of directors and actors who have visited the cinema. Based on the concept of being a place where a wide variety of films can be seen locally, this cinema has screened a wide variety of films, and is the hub of Takasaki's film culture and an important place supporting modern Japanese films.

The predecessor of Cinematheque Takasaki was the Takasaki Film Festival, which has been frequented by local residents and film fans from the Tokyo area since it first opened in 1987. It is well known for its ability to discern quality films regardless of their size, and many directors, including Hirokazu Koreeda (Maborosi), Shinji Aoyama (Helpless), Atsuhiko Suwa (Two/Duo), and Miwa Nishikawa (Snake Strawberry), have won the Young Directors Grand Prix at this festival for their early works and gone on to have global success.

The current general manager, Mutsuko Shio, also began her relationship with this cinema through participation in the Takasaki Film Festival. However, that encounter was apparently quite a striking one.

Shio: I applied to be a volunteer staff member at the Takasaki Film Festival in 1999, when the festival was in its 13th year. I was attending a local university at the time, and when I was working on my graduation thesis on film, a friend invited me, saying, "If that's the case, why don't you join me in applying to be a volunteer at the Takasaki Film Festival? I think it will help your graduation thesis." To tell the truth, I wasn't interested at first. My parents took me to the Takasaki Film Festival once as a child, but I hadn't even thought about it since. However, I felt bad about turning down my friend's invitation, so I reluctantly followed her to the festival office, which was a room in a rundown old apartment building, with documents and other things piled up inside. The staff members who came one after another all had strong personalities, and I immediately regretted my decision, thinking, "I can't do this place. I want to go home soon!"

The unique staff members surprised Shio, a university student at the time. Masao Mogi, who was at the center of the staff, was the leader of the Takasaki Film Festival and a charismatic figure even back then.

Shio: I was standing in a corner of the office when a carefree man dressed in all black came in. It was Mogi-san. He asked me with a big smile, "Why did you come here?", which put me at a loss for words. He must have thought that I came because I love movies. I couldn't tell him that I was just brought here by a friend to write my graduation thesis. Mogi-san didn't notice that I was scared at all, and explained that everyone at this film festival, including himself, was a volunteer. He said that being a staff member can be hard, but the more you do it the more fun it becomes.

Although Shio was reluctant to participate, he soon became captivated by the enthusiasm of the film festival staff.

Shio: I didn't have the courage to refuse, so I started attending the weekly regular meetings, but after attending several times, I realized that the people who I had initially found too intense and intimidating were actually amazing people. Until then, even though I said I liked movies, I would only occasionally go to the cinema to watch them. However, the staff at the Takasaki Film Festival were all enthusiastic cinephiles, and whenever I went to the office, film discussions would break out everywhere. No one asked for any financial reward, and the festival was based solely on passion for movies. I was surprised at first, but I gradually began to enjoy being there, and I started to watch movies desperately to keep up with the conversation.

Also, I used to think that if there was a movie I wanted to see but it wasn't showing at a cinema in Takasaki, I'd have to go to Tokyo to see it, but I was surprised to find out that such a movie was actually being shown at the Takasaki Film Festival. I was shocked to discover that there was such a cultural place in my hometown, and that there were people doing such amazing things, but I just didn't know about it. At the same time, I was intrigued as to why this film festival wasn't generally recognized. Drawn by that interest, I continued to participate, and before I knew it, I was a regular member of the staff.

Before Cinematheque Takasaki opened, in addition to the annual Takasaki Film Festival, film screenings organized by the festival staff were held about once every two months.

Shio: Originally, the festival staff were people who were involved in film screenings. The background to this was that in the late 1980s, a mini-theater boom occurred in Tokyo, and people in Takasaki were also eager to see the art films screened there. At that time, videos were not available, so people had to borrow film from distribution companies to see the films they wanted to see. Renting film costs money, so screening activities began as a way to hold screenings and attract people. In other words, screening activities began from the desire to "see" films, and gradually changed to a desire to "show" films that they thought were good to people. When they started the film festival, they didn't just want to hold a once-a-year festival, but to create a place where films could be delivered on a daily basis. Ever since I met Mogi-san, he has always said, "I want to build a movie theater someday."

Just as the Takasaki Film Festival was beginning to take root in the local community, the long-awaited movie theater finally opened. In July 2004, the NPO "Takasaki Community Cinema" was established. Mogi served as general manager, Shio as manager, and Eiko Kobayashi, also a film festival staff member, as assistant manager. They also welcomed a projectionist and reception staff, and "Cinematheque Takasaki" opened. However, from the beginning, they faced great difficulties in finding films to screen that they were satisfied with.

Shio: Mr. Mogi was basically in charge of programming, and had decided on several films he wanted to show at the opening of the theater, but they were all turned down by the distribution companies. After about half a year of hard work, the films that finally opened the theater were "Coffee Time" (2003) directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien and "Blue Butterfly" (2004) directed by Lea Pool. "Coffee Time" was actually filmed in Takasaki, and Mr. Mogi and I both starred in it. There were many twists and turns, but in the end, I'm really glad that we were able to open the theater with these two films.

For about three years after we opened, we continued to struggle to get films loaned to us. Distribution companies would often say things like, "We'll show it to you after it's shown at a nearby multiplex," or, "We'll loan it to you if you wait six months or a year after it's released in Tokyo." But we didn't want to be a second-run theater, and if there was a gap of a year, people who really wanted to see it would go to Tokyo to see it without waiting for it to be screened at our theater. We realized how difficult it was to screen the films we wanted at the times we really wanted them.

Back then, it was still the era of film, and films could only be loaned out to local areas after having been physically shown in major cities across the country. Also, since there weren't as many films released as there are today, distributors may have been hesitant to loan valuable works to unestablished cinemas. It was a time when the existence of local mini-theaters was still rare.

Despite many hardships, the cinema was finally getting on track when Mogi, the main breadwinner, fell ill and passed away in 2008. The loss of Mogi came as a great sadness and shock to everyone involved, including Shio.

Shio: To be honest, I thought that if Mr. Mogi passed away, the film festival would no longer exist. We were just following Mr. Mogi's footsteps, and I never thought that we could do the same thing as Mr. Mogi. But unlike a film festival supported by volunteer staff, a cinema is a company, so we have to somehow protect the livelihood of our employees. But even so, there's no way I could take over Mr. Mogi's business and run the cinema. So I asked a director of an NPO with experience in business management to take over the management of our company.

He said that we needed to take this opportunity to fundamentally change our management policy, and came up with various ways to turn things around. However, we always found ourselves resisting the ideas he presented. Introducing a new way of doing things might have improved management, but it just didn't fit with the beliefs that Mogi and we had about this cinema.

Meanwhile, Mogi's friends, who were worried about me, called me and asked me, "Why don't you take over?" They said, "We can't do it the way we really want to unless someone who understands our philosophy runs the movie theater." I replied, "But I don't know anything about management, and if things continue like this, the movie theater will go out of business." They said, "We're the ones who support it. If you do it, we'll all support you." At that moment, I had a clear resolve.

Thus, Shio became the representative director of the NPO Takasaki Community Cinema, and began to proactively take on new challenges.

Shio: We began to think hard about how we could run this cinema without compromising our beliefs. To achieve this, we decided to get help from the government, and we started the Takasaki Film Commission, which was entrusted to us by the city, and we also became involved in the revitalization and management of the Takasaki Denkikan cinema, which has over 100 years of history. We then switched to a strategy of running the cinema through business development.

The deep ties with the government are, of course, due to the success of the Takasaki Film Festival, but Takasaki City is also famous as a cultural city. The Takasaki Symphony Orchestra, which was founded immediately after the war, was a pioneer of regional orchestras, and Takasaki became famous as a "city with music." In 2019, the Takasaki Arts Theatre, which has a large theater, was established near the station.

Shio: People often say that there is some kind of cultural event held in Takasaki City almost every week. Indeed, there are many civic events that have been held here for decades, such as the Takasaki Film Festival, Takasaki Music Festival, Takasaki Marching Festival, and Takasaki Picture Book Festival, and the government has a well-established system for supporting them. The current mayor of Takasaki City has always said that "Cinematheque Takasaki is an asset to Takasaki," and he worked hard even when our city was in crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Although we are a private movie theater, we have a fundamental idea of ​​protecting culture through public-private cooperation under the concept of community cinema, and delivering movies as culture to the citizens. I think the mayor understands this. People from other movie theaters are surprised that there is no other city where the government is as cooperative with film culture as Takasaki City. The citizens have a solid system in place to accept the creation of movies, and the film commission is very active. In fact, Takasaki is also a city that has been the setting for many movies.

By the way, in the film "The Family Recipe" (2017) directed by Eric Khoo, Takasaki Byakue Daikannon, located about a 15-minute walk from here, appears. The Kannon is a symbolic presence that protects the lives of the people living in Takasaki. Mount Haruna and Lake Haruna are also famous in this area, and are often used as filming locations for movies.

Cinematheque Takasaki has overcome many crises, so what has been its biggest hit so far?

Shio: The first hit we made after we opened was "Kamome Diner" (2005) directed by Naoko Ogigami. It continued to hold the number one spot in moviegoing numbers for a while after that, but was recently surpassed by "Parasite" (2019) directed by Bong Joon-ho. "The Buried Wood" (2005) directed by Kohei Oguri was also a popular local film filmed in Gunma Prefecture.

In addition to running the project, Shio-san is the face of the Takasaki Film Festival and Cinematheque Takasaki, giving lectures around the country and writing numerous columns and essays. He also writes a lead column in every issue of the monthly information paper "Cinematheque Takasaki Screen News" published by the movie theater.

Shio: Since I handed Kobayashi over as manager of Cinematheque Takasaki, I have left the programming to her, but I am the one who writes this column. Since the screening format of movies changed from film to DCP, the number of movies released has increased dramatically, and the number of movies screened at our cinema has also been increasing. As the number of movies screened increases, the opportunities to carefully introduce each one are inevitably reduced, so in this column I pick one movie as this month's recommendation and try to introduce its content in detail. Incidentally, Kobayashi is a Korean movie fanatic, and whenever a Korean movie is screened, he makes a handmade free paper to distribute to customers.

It seems that the staff naturally consists of film enthusiasts, and many of the former staff members go on to work in the film industry.

Shio: Iizuka Kae, who recently made her directorial debut with "Futari no Sekai" (2020), and Ikukata Miku, who wrote the screenplay for Fuji TV's popular drama "Silent" (2022), were both former part-timers at our company. Both of them had always wanted to be filmmakers, and I think they chose us as a part-time job until they moved to Tokyo. Although they didn't work here, young directors such as Takei Yuri from "Red Comet Club" (2017) and Eda Yuka from "Girl Encounter" (2018) are also from Takasaki.

Mogi-san always said that he wanted to make this a place where local young people who want to work in the film industry can feel that they can be close to films without going to Tokyo. So when I see people who used to work here going on to be active in the film industry, I feel truly glad that I worked hard for 18 years. At the same time, I also want this cinema and film commission to function as a place where people can work in the film industry in their local area without having to go to Tokyo.

Finally, we spoke to Shio about the two films he recommended to an overseas audience as part of the "JFF+ INDEPENDENT CINEMA" project.

Shio: Both "Run Through the Night" and "Wonderwall: The Movie" are films that really capture the atmosphere of Japanese regional cities, which are different from big cities. Regional cities are places where the mountains and nature are beautiful, but it's hard to say that they're particularly "great." In that sense, I think these two films are very realistic portrayals of the feeling that "this is what the regional areas are like."

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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)

Cinematheque Takasaki (Takasaki City, Gunma Prefecture) Recommended Works Yuki Maeda "Wonderwall: The Movie" (2020) [Streaming Period: December 15, 2022 - March 15, 2023]
Sako Dai "Running at Night" (2022) [Streaming period: March 15th - June 15th, 2023]