TAKESHI KITANO MASTERCLASS
Takeshi Kitano held a masterclass at the John Kassavetes Theatre on Wednesday, November 19th. Takeshi Kitano, one of the most important Japanese directors of our days, talked about his films and painting. ‘Art as a creative process has nothing to do with art as a product. However, in our days, we are focusing more on reviews, public relations and dealers. The situation is not in the artist’s hands anymore’, he said.
Tony Rayns, a film critic and expert in Asian cinema was co-ordinating the masterclass. During the masterclass, Οne fine day, one of the short films of Cannes’ Chacun son cinema was screened.
‘We have with us a multi-talented director, a great film personality, who combines his particular way of seeing things with poetry and violence, humor with drama. Takeshi Kitano, who reinvented not only cinema but also his own personality, is at the most mature phase of his career’, pointed out TIFF director Despina Mouzaki.
‘My most popular films are action films or archetypical dramas but I don’t like to repeat myself. In this film I died as an artist, in my next one I will be re-born’, commented Takeshi Kitano in relation to his latest film Achilles and the Tortoise. The film tells the story of a painter who is seeking to be professionally acknowledged. The main character’s paintings are made by Kitano himself, who insists on remaining an amateur painter.
‘I didn’t want to create the portrait of an unsuccessful painter’, he explained. ’I wanted to illustrate the inner dialogue on art and artistic creation. Art is scary. It can infect the artist’s environment and result in catastrophic results’.
Takeshi Kitano was also asked about his relation to Yakuza, the Japanese mafia which is a common topic in his films. As Tony Rayns noted, some people consider him to be a member! ‘I used to work in a working-class neighborhood and many of my friends became Yakuza members and were killed. It is difficult to depict Yakuza’s reality in cinema and besides that, I didn’t want to be executed by my old friends for making a film out of their story!’
