Kuichisan

The camera follows a young boy: He practices characters, plays with a plastic gun and walks at a construction site. The flow of images shifts between black-and-white and colour, flickers, moves on to the next scene associatively. The disconnected scenes stealthily thicken into a solid web that in a bizarre way represents Okinawa – a unique island where the film was shot. The former kingdom became a US military base and later part of Japan. The quiet boy interprets the island's mysterious characteristic with prophetical sensitivity.

 

Director Maiko Endo, who has also lived in Finland, uses the film playfully as a tool for poetic expression. Endo's debut work awakens the joy that cinema as an art form can still offer an abundance of unexplored dimensions. Kuichisan is a treasure chest that contains something that will fascinate the lovers of experimental documentaries.