Buried Forest, The Japan
2005, 93min.
Prod.: Kohei Oguri, Chiaki Yamamoto, Isaku Sato, Ujio Sunaoka, Script: Kohei Oguri, Tsukasa Sasaki, Dir.: Kohei Oguri, Dir. of Phot.: Norio Teranuma, Compos.: Arvo Pärt, Prod. Design: Koichi Takeuchi, Yoshinaga Yokoo, Sound: Masato Yano, Edit.: Nobuo Ogawa.
Cast: Karen, Hiromitsu Tosaka, Tadanobu Asano, Akira Sakata, Taka Okubo, Sumiko Sakamoto, Yuko Tanaka, Mitsuro Hirata, ItokuKishibe.
Machi is a student who lives in a mountain village. She and her girlfriends begin to make up a story, transforming it into a dreamlike tale that seems to embody their hopes for the future. In the small village, the lives of the adults proceed differently, for they are more tied to the rhythms of nature, to the past and to their traditions. One day, a violent thunderstorm causes a landslide that reveals a petrified forest. The event sparks sudden happiness in the inhabitants and marks a small but significant turn in their lives. “Images appeal to the senses. Compared to words, there is less emphasis on logic. Most children first learn expression through picture books. I would go as far to say that we interpret our world through the medium of images before using words. If images are so important to us, then we must exercise caution when transferring them artificially to the screen. In the Buried Forest the images that we can see and the images that we want to see are compounded and as a result, a certain degree of abstraction was unavoidable in the film” (K. Oguri).
Production Company
Umoregi Seisakulinkai
| Oguri, Kohei (born 1945, Maebashi, Japan)
Graduated from the Waseda University drama Department. He made his directing debut in 1981 with Muddy River, which was voted number one in Kinema Jumpo's best ten list, received the Blue Ribbon Prize, as well as Best Director award at the Mainichi Competition. The film won also the Moscow IFF Silver Prize and was nominated for the American Academy Prize (Foreign Films Section).In 1984 came For Kayako written by Lee Hwe-Song, which won the George Sadule Prize, a first for a Japanese director. In 1990,The Sting of Death won both the Cannes IFF Grand Prize of the Jury and the FIPRESCI. All three of these films were set in the 1950s, and dealt with “post-war life” and “the Japanese and I” themes. In 1996 Sleeping Man became the first film to be both written and directed by Oguri, and it drew much attention for being produced and set in his native Gunma prefecture. Nine years later, in 2005 Oguri's latest endeavor, The Buried Forest come out.
Filmography
Muddy River (1981),For Kayako (1984), The Sting of Death (1990), Sleeping Man (1996), The Buried Forest(2005).
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