Appendix: Interview from “Film Workshop with Director Hamaguchi Ryusuke”

Summary

(In the Common Study Room, Kyoto University Faculty of Letters, Department of Sociology, February 18, 2015)

Wada-Marciano (moderator): To start with, I am going to set aside the two films we screened today—Intimacies (Shinmitsusa, 2012) and The Sound of Waves (Nami no oto, 2011)—for now and ask you a general question. As we enter the digital age, we scholars of cinema studies are being challenged with an ontological question of how we define the cinema/ film medium itself, the subject of our research for a century. I would like to ask you what you think it means to be a “film” director in this time and age. After that, I am going to ask you questions more specific to the two films we screened today. Thank you again for spending time with us, Mr. Hamaguchi.

Hamaguchi: You are welcome. I would like to say first, thank you for watching my films.

Wada-Marciano: Many of you who are attending this workshop today are already familiar with Director Hamaguchi or his work. And we can find information to some degree online, so rather than dwelling on minute matters, I would like to ask questions focusing on points that I find intriguing. After graduating from the University of Tokyo, Faculty of Letters, and by the time you became independent as a film director, you had worked as an assistant director in film and also in television for about three years?

Hamaguchi: For about two years I worked as an assistant director in film and TV.

Wada-Marciano: After that, you spent two years in the Graduate School of Film and New Media at Tokyo University of the Arts. I heard you studied film mainly with Kurosawa Kiyoshi. Kurosawa has directed mostly narrative films; and studying with him, what left the biggest impression on you, or what was the biggest influence?

Hamaguchi: I attended the so-called Kurosawa seminar for two years, though I am not quite sure if it was a seminar in a traditional sense. What we did for two years was chat over tea (laughs).