Oda: Yes. I think it was my final year at the school.

Oda: The only thing I did while a teenager was play basketball. But I tore my ligaments twice, and that slowed me down when running. It was my senior year of high school, and I had a very vague notion to go abroad. So, I went to a rural liberal arts college in Virginia in the United States. I took a course there that focused on filmmaking, and my adviser in my senior year told me to film the “biggest struggle of my life.” I am ambiguous about my gender identity, and as for my sexual orientation, I prefer women. I had never talked to my family about this, so once I made this confession, which I don’t know if I will make into a film, the response was quite harsh. It was almost as if my family was going to pretend that what I had told them didn't happen.

Oda: Yes, that’s right. So, I wondered if I could confirm or face what had happened to us once more through filmmaking. In my first film, Thus A Noizu Speeks (2010), I asked my family members to play themselves and re-create the confession scene. That experience was very intense, and although I had many reflections on it, I saw the potential in the way I communicate through the camera and how I use it as a tool. However, I was burned out and reduced to ashes at one point. At that time, a programmer for the Nara International Film Festival told me that Béla Tarr was going to create a new film school in Sarajevo. I thought that meeting all kinds of people in a new place might change things, so I applied.

Oda: English. The same was true for classes. In Bosnia, English was generally spoken by everyone except the elderly. But I was surprisingly unable to speak English (laughs). I studied it at the college of Kansai Gaidai University for two years, but I realized in the United States that I could speak almost nothing when it came to conversation. However, many people helped me, and I took classes that were not just about language, such as film and painting, so I managed to graduate. My English skills were not that different in Sarajevo.

Oda: I had zero savings, and I wrote “I have no money” on my application form (laughs). In Sarajevo, 2 million yen a year was enough to cover my tuition and living expenses. I borrowed 1 million yen from my parents for the first year. In addition, I got about 400,000-500,000 yen in grants, which I didn’t have to pay back. The second year, I received a grant from the Pola Art Foundation, receiving about 3 million yen. When it came time to pay for my third year of school, I managed to graduate with a tuition waiver.

Oda: After making ARAGANE as my graduation project at film.factory, I finally felt that I wanted to continue making films. When I was thinking of making something like an essay film next, a Singaporean friend from film.factory told me it would be a good idea to listen to various people and spend some time in a place where I could get to know them. I learned about Talents Tokyo from that friend.

Oda: I wanted to organize my ideas at the time by talking about them with others, and I also had doubts about my “pitch.” I still have them now (laughs). But I wanted to learn what my pitch was like and what kind of atmosphere it carried.

Oda: I had believed it was important to make the words easy to understand in order to sell the film, but the person who received the award in my year was a Malaysian named Lau (Lau Kek Huat), and his pitch resonated most, with me as well. He did not choose his words to sell the film in an easy-to-understand way. He conveyed in a very simple way that he really wanted to make the film and that he needed support to do so. I remember feeling that maybe I was just overthinking from a certain perspective.

Oda: Yes. Because I cannot do that, I have never received money for a film that requires a pitch, or a concrete proposal or a script. In the case of Cenote, I received production funds from the Chishima Foundation for Creative Osaka and the Aichi Arts Center, but the rest came from my own savings and from Mexican friends who worked on the film with me. It may be possible to use your name as collateral if you already have a track record, but for young artists like ourselves, there are no guarantees. If I consider that kind of funding support, even I wouldn’t give it to them (laughs). That is the dilemma. But I have come to think that even when I only have a vague idea of what I want to say, I need to make an effort to put it into words. In that sense, I think I need to learn more about what I saw during the Talents Tokyo program.

Oda: I participated in Talents Tokyo in November 2015, graduated from film.factory in February 2016, and returned to Japan. The editing period took until about April and it was completed later in spring. The world premiere was screened at the International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film. I also toured several other film festivals. When I had my own special screening in Japan, it was titled Ano yasashisa e (Toward a Common Tenderness) (2017) and was shown along with Thus A Noizu Speeks.

Oda: In terms of points of contact, I even went to see the film of Lau, the Malaysian, when it was completed and screened in Osaka, and congratulated him. The year I participated, everyone was very serious and all they did was make films, so maybe I should have played around more (laughs). To be honest, I think that people who really have something they want to do or create will do it without going to a film school or Talents Tokyo. But it is also lonely to make a film and complete it by yourself from beginning to end. It is fun to make a film by yourself, but there is another pleasure in discussing it with various people. Also, everyone has a different way of doing things. The way we perceive films and the way we perceive filmmaking are also different. It is lonely to discover that you are different from others, but it is also reassuring to know that it is okay to be different. I think I was very lucky to have been able to go to film.factory and Talents Tokyo.

＞＞Read Talents Tokyo [Part1] Asagi Kimura

Japanese original text: Akira Murayama
Translation: Kae Shigeno