A Summer Family
North American Premiere
Screening Time
Saturday, May 29, 9:15pm
Film Trailer
Fiction / Japan & France / 2010/ 78 minutes / Black & White
Script & Director & Producer: Masaki Iwana
Produced by La Maison du Butoh Blanc
Website: www.iwanabutoh.com
Language: Japanese w/ English subtitles
“—And a miracle happened.
Yet this miracle was quite according to nature.
Man and Nature weaves a soulful symphony.
Could anything be more beautiful than sadness?”
Quietly fall into Insanity.
A mix of theatre, dance and film, A Summer Family is a story about a Japanese dancer who lives in the French countryside with two women. When his daughter and wife arrive from Tokyo to spend the summer there, something strange seems to occur.
Kamimura has been living a peculiar life in the Perche region of south Normandy for the past few years. One June, during a dance festival, his wife Akiko and his young daughter Mayu arrive from Tokyo to stay with him for the summer. In exchange, his lover Yuzuko, who has been living with him in France till then, departs for New York. Kamimura spends the summer with his family, and with the coming of autumn, Yuzuko returns once again, though before Akiko and Mayu depart for Japan. Yuzuko, Akiko, and Mayu get along surprisingly well, and the relationship of the four of them is quite calm. However, quietly disturbing undercurrents cannot be ignored. It is unnerving that Mayu, whose clever and energetic voice is always heard, never shows herself visibly. One also wonders if it is only in the imagination that Akiko’s behavior is sometimes odd…
The film contains 5 minutes of so-called “pornographic” material.
Festival Entry
Official Selection, Rotterdam Film Festival (2010)
About Masaki Iwana
Considered one of the most acclaimed Butoh performers in Japan today, Masaki Iwana is a rarity in that he still maintains the original Butoh spirit, having begun his dance career outside the “Butoh genealogy” in 1975. By 1982, he had presented 150 experimental performances in which he stood straight, completely naked and perfectly still. Since then, in Europe as well as Japan, Iwana has presented his performances and workshops continuously, and has created works built on his sharpened aesthetic in more than 100 cities and 40 countries around the world. Iwana represents the institute for the research of Butoh – La Maison du Butoh Blanc, based in southern Normandy in France.In 2008 he produced and created the theatrical film Vermilion Souls. A Summer Family is his second feature film.
Media Presenting Partner
