Shigeto

I somehow stumbled upon this Shigeto individual. The description of his music automatically grabbed me. Ended up buying his Semi Circle EP on iTunes. A bit of an impulse buy, but I didn't regret it at all.

"They say some of the best art is born of struggle, but in the case of Shigeto’s Semi-Circle EP, that struggle began more than 50 years ago, when the artist’s grandmother was a prisoner in her own country, locked in a Japanese internment camp in the US. Half a century later, her diminutive, half-Japanese grandson fought to forge his own identity as a musician and bi-racial American, ultimately taking on the name Shigeto (his middle name) as a tribute to his great grandfather. The Semi-Circle EP, Shigeto’s first release for Ghostly International, is a deep, vividly beautiful suite of electronic music—the opening salvo of Shigeto’s ode to family, melody, and the art of the beat."

x. Yu

Two DeLillo quotes that seem relevant here

“Film is more than the twentieth-century art. It's another part of the twentieth-century mind. It's the world seen from inside. We've come to a certain point in the history of film. If a thing can be filmed, the film is implied in the thing itself.”

"Film allows us to examine ourselves in ways earlier societies could not—examine ourselves, imitate ourselves, extend ourselves, reshape our reality. It permeates our lives, this double vision, and also detaches us, turns some of us into actors doing walk-throughs."

- Don DeLillo

Berlinale Talent Campus

(photo via flickr)

Great news, people: Eunsoo, cinematographer of LAYOVER ON THE SHORE is heading the Berlinale Talent Campus next year!

The Berlinale Talent Campus is a six-day gathering of filmmakers from all over the world for a series of lectures, workshops, films, and (I'm guessing) good conversation. Needless to say, this is very hard program to get accepted into and I am not in the least surprised that she is going.

She will return with treasures from the Occident.

Berlinale Talent Campus: http://www.berlinale-talentcampus.de/

Chris

Artist Edwin Ushiro

At the Giant Robot Biennale this past week, I came across a small 4x6 watercolor. Just a few kids behind a Japanese restaurant at dusk, surrounded by lush green. Like a photograph of a moment, ambiguous but decisive. It reminded me of Hawai'i. I looked up the artist, Edwin Ushiro, and it turns out he's from Maui.

"I am primarily focused on listening and researching the ghost stories of Hawai'i. For the moment, they are the inspirational foundation for my artwork. I hope this doesn’t sound selfish of me!"

You can check out his work online at LeBasse Projects, a gallery in Culver City.

Yu

FLUX magazine

Jared Yamanuha's coverage of our film on the FLUX hawaii blog:

Layover, on the Shore, filmed both in LA and Honolulu, on dreamy film stock and über-realistic HD video, is, essentially, a love letter to Hawaii. It’s also Yogi’s attempt to reconcile two different, yet equally relevant Hawaiis: the real, actual Hawaii, where we live, and the imagined paradise with which the rest of the world is acquainted.

It’s precisely for this reason that Layover, on the Shore signals a new type of film, one that engages in the complexities of Hawaii. His film doesn’t seem to fit snugly into either of two categories to which most films about Hawaii belong: it’s not a film that uses Hawaii as a stunt double, so to speak, for other, more exotic locales (think: Jurassic Park and Tropic Thunder), and it certainly doesn’t reduce its characters to caricatures, or make broad generalizations about Hawaii and its people. Yogi seems to be making movies in heretofore uncharted territory, realistic films about us, here and now.

Premiere

We are very pleased to announce that LAYOVER, ON THE SHORE will be premiering at this year's Hawaii Int'l Film Festival. For those of you in Honolulu, it will be screening with

Shorts Program #4
Sunday October 18th at 6:45pm
Dole Cannery Theatres

Find us on the HIFF website here: http://hawaii.bside.com/2009/films/layoverontheshore_hawaii2009

Chris

2AM

DONE.