PRESS RELEASES – PAGE 7

SEX AND THE CITY: TOKYO

Last year, Japanese producer Arakawa Reiko put together coalitions of smallish independent production companies to finance a series of low-budget features, to be shot on digital tape. To make them, she hand-picked directors from the grey area between mainstream commercial filmmaking and the indie fringe, many of whom have been guests of ours in Vancouver. Her one stipulation was that the films should deal in some way with sexual issues; she called the series Love Cinema. Of the six films, we are presenting four in our extra special Sex and the City: Tokyo program, which also includes another Japanese indie film on the topic.

Japanese directors have long tended to focus on the obstacles on that path, the hang-ups and blockages in some minds and the darker shades of sexual desire. The Sex and the City: Tokyo films are founded on the idea that the balance of power in any sexual relationship can shift. Their characters include a woman stalker, a cop over-reaching his authority, a strange dominatrix and a silent man with the power to liberate other people’s most embarrassing fantasies.

A funny/sad exploration of sexual obsession, Hiroki Ryuichi’s TOKYO TRASH BABY finds a shy Tokyo girl rifling through the garbage of her downstairs neighbour and turning her room into a museum of his trash. In Shinohara Tetsuo’s intense psychothriller STAKEOUT, a policeman requisitions a woman’s apartment balcony to stakeout the apartment opposite. But is he really a policeman? Is she safe in his company? Shiota Akihiko’s deliciously perverse GIPS charts the relationship between two women, the submissive stenographer Kazuko and the dominant Tamaki, who has interesting ways of enslaving members of both sexes. VISITOR Q, Miike Takashi’s third film in this year’s program, which follows the template of Pasolini’s THEOREM, is one of the most offensive satires ever made. Finally, we have added the two-part ZIPPERS AND TITS, in which Shirakawa Koji sees prostitution as an often humiliating and risk-fraught profession.

Previous Page • Back to Headlines • Next Page

| Home | Film Guide Central | Schedule Changes | Theatre & Ticket Info |
| General Fact Sheet | Trade Forum | Press Releases |
| Contacts and Staff | Sponsorships | Volunteers |
| Guest Accreditation | Venues | Window Display Contest |