Year: 2005
Duration: 93'


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.”

Biography

film director

Kohei Oguri

Kohei Oguri (Maebashi, Japan, 1945), after graduating in drama from the University of Waseda, worked as assistant director for Masahiro Shinoda and Kiriro Urayama. In 1981 he directed his first film, Muddy River (the screen adaptation of a novel by Teru Miyamoto), which tells of the difficulties of a group of young people in Osaka during the 1950s and which represented a return to the genre of shomingeki, neo-realistic tragicomedy in black and white. The film received an Oscar nomination for best foreign film and second prize at the Festival of Moscow. In 1984, his second film, For Kayako, based on a novel by Hwe-Song Lee about discrimination against Koreans in Japan, won the George Sadoul prize. In 1990 his film The Sting of Death was  awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the Festival of Cannes and the FIPRESCI prize. In 1996 he directed the film Sleeping Man, Grand Jury Prize at the Festival of Montreal. In 2005, after almost a decade’s absence, he shot The Buried Forest, a metaphysical fable that shows daily life in a small mountain village. The film was presented in the section Quinzaine des Réalizateurs at the Festival of Cannes.

FILMOGRAFIA

Doro no Kawa (Muddy River, 1981), Kayako no Tameni (1984), Shi no Toge (The Sting of Death, 1990), Nemuru Otoko (Sleeping Man, 1996), Umoregi (The Buried Forest, 2005).

Cast

& Credits

regia/director Kohei Oguri
soggetto, sceneggiatura/story, screenplay Kohei Oguri, Tsukasa Sasaki
fotografia/cinematography Norio Teranuma
montaggio/film editing Nobuo Ogawa
scenografia/production design Koichi Takeuchi, Yoshinaga Yokoo
musica/music Arvo Pärt
suono/sound Masato Yano
interpreti e personaggi/cast and characters
Karen (Machi), Hiromitsu Tosaka (Tomo), Tadanobu Asano (San-Chan), Akira Sakata
(il pescivendolo/Fishmonger), Taka Okubo (il venditore di tofu/Tofu Monger), Sumiko Sakamoto (Tomie), Yuko Tanaka (la madre di Machi/Machi’s Mother), Mitsuru Hirata (il padre di Machi/Machi’s Father), Ittoku Kishibe (Marui)
produttori/producers Kohei Oguri, Chiaki Yamamoto, Isaku Sato, Uujio Sunaoka
produzione/production Umoregi Seisaku Iinkai
vendita all’estero/world sales Pyramide International
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