Tsuma Musume Haha
How are Japanese men coping since women disappeared? A fictional premise tacitly undergirds Alain Della Negra and Kaori Kinoshita’s severalyear-long documenting of modernday love relationships. If such a disconcerting speculation exists, it is because several phenomena are there to substantiate it. First, of course, the sincere love that humans give – everywhere in the world but very markedly in Japan – to human representations: inanimate objects (love dolls, dakimakura), virtual avatars (digital popstars, video game characters) or body costumes (cosplay, kigurumi, zentai). Then there is also a diffuse concern about the future: where can desire find a sound anchor in a Japan struck by natural disasters, its economic and social structures shaken, haunted by the decline or even disappearance of its population? Caustic yet comic, extravagant but never ironic, the film of Kinoshita and Della Negra invents a new documentary form, a joyful counterbalance created out of all the fictions able to repopulate a disquieting and vibrant reality.
Antoine Thirion
Alain Della Negra, was born in France in 1975 and studied at the Beaux Arts in Strasbourg before entering Le Fresnoy Contemporary Art Studio. There he met Kaori Kinoshita who was born in Tokyo in 1970. She first studied sculpture in Japan before coming to France in 1997 to study art video at the Beaux-Arts in Dijon. For the past ten years, they have now been working together in Paris on the relationship between personal identity and avatars: virtual characters, masks and disguises, community events…
Kaori Kinoshita was born in Tokyo in 1970, where she studied sculpture. She came to France in 1997 to study art video at the Beaux-Arts in Dijon, before entering Le Fresnoy Contemporary Art Studio. There she met Alain Della Negra, who was born in France in 1975 and had studied at the Beaux Arts in Strasbourg. For the past ten years, they have now been working together in Paris on the relationship between personal identity and avatars: virtual characters, masks and disguises, community events…
Mathilde Delaunay (Ecce Films)
Ryuichi Shimokawa, Alain Della Negra, Kaori Kinoshita
Osao Hori, Gen Takahashi, Mikaël Barre
Fred Piet, Alain Della Negra, Kaori Kinoshita
Ecce Films, rinaldi@eccefilms.fr