In this masterclass, Naomi Kawase will focus mostly on her early works, the set of autobiographical and documentary-style films that, according to the director, allowed her to establish a connection with the world and led her to dedicate her life to cinema. These personal, intimate, domestic films – such as Embracing [1992] and Katatsumori [1994], where she explored her family history as well as her own identity – were essential in defining a cinematographic sensibility that prevailed in her later work, including her fictional feature films best known by the public. Self-representation, the body as filmic material, the horizontality of the matter/spirit and human/nature relations, the cinematographic authenticity (in the context of overcoming the documentary/fiction dichotomy) or the play between the visible and the invisible are some of the themes often discussed in cinephile reflections on the work of Naomi Kawase. It is also in the light of these and other topics that Kawase will tell us about her experience and her path as a film director.

biografia

Naomi Kawase is a Japanese film director. She was the youngest person to win the Caméra d’Or (for best debut feature film) at the Cannes film festival, for Moe no suzaku [1997]. Kawase began her career as a film director with autobiographical documentaries. Ni tsutsumarete (Embracing) [1992] documented her search to find her father, whom she had not seen since early childhood, after her parents’ divorce. In her second film, Katatsumori [1994], Kawase portraited her great-aunt, who raised her. These and other intimate family themes are recurrent in Kawase’s nonfiction filmography between 1992 and 2012. Since 1997, she also directed several critical acclaimed and multi awarded full-length feature films. In 2007, Kawase won the Grand Prix at Cannes for Mogari no mori (The Mourning Forest), which explored the themes of death and bereavement that had dominated some of her earlier works.

Luciano Barisone is an Italian journalist and film critic. Graduated in Literature and Ethnology. Collaborator of the Venice and Locarno festivals (1997-2010). Director of the Infinity - Alba International Film Festival (2002-2007), the Festival dei Popoli in Florence (2008-2010) and the Visions du Réel in Nyon, Switzerland (2011-2017). He is currently art producer, international consultant, and analyst for new film projects. Between 1997 and 2023 he was a jury member at over thirty international film festivals.

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