NEWS/
AN INTERVIEW WITH
NAOKI OGIGAMI
By Maria Belilovskaya
How did you decide to make this film?
The first thing I determined was a location. Once I’d figured out where to shoot it, then I went there and started to come up with the story. The location is a small island called Yoron, near Okinawa. To get there, you have to go to Okinawa first and then take a small propeller airplane.
Did you go there on vacation?
Vacation at first, and then I decided to film there. There are some surreal aspects to this island. The ocean there is so beautiful that it’s almost unreal. And the more I spent time there, the more I became unable to do anything. I brought all this stuff, all the experiences I had on the island, back to Tokyo. I was able to put it all into the screenplay, get everything prepared and then go back to shoot the film.
Do glasses in the movie have any symbolic meaning?
They do not really symbolize anything. It just happened that myself, all of my producers and many of the actors wear glasses. We were getting together at our meetings and everybody would wear glasses. It just emerged that way.
My friend described Glasses as a movie about the ideal vacation.
Yes, yes! I want the audience to have this feeling and to experience this journey with my characters.
Why do they never go swimming?
[Laughs] First of all, it is spring and the water is still a little bit cold. But when I decided to film at the seaside, I just knew that I didn’t want to shoot anybody going into the ocean and swimming. It was just one of those things that have no reason. I just like to be a contrarian!
This film has screened at festivals all over the world. Were there any cultural barriers that made it hard for people to understand what was going on?
Nowhere more than in the United States. This came up here during the Q&A, and also at Sundance. Many people want some kind of an answer to every question that is posed. They want to assign some kind of meaning to everything presented in the movie. In Europe and Japan, I have a feeling that the audience simply accepts the film as is, instead of looking for an answer for everything.
What is your inspiration as a filmmaker?
I think it all comes from people. I observe people a lot and many of my ideas come from it.
What is your background as a filmmaker?
In my university in Chiba I studied photography and quickly got bored with it. I wanted to see it moving. I decided to explore filmmaking more and I went to study at USC. They teach all the fundamentals of filmmaking and they happen to have a very good instructor for screenwriting. After just one semester in this class, I was able to become much more confident in screenwriting. I enjoyed the process and I knew that I wanted to turn my writing into an actual film. After I graduated, I returned to Japan and made a very small-budget independent short film for $4,000 or so. That film was selected by the well known independent film festival in Tokyo. Each year they give out a scholarship to one filmmaker to be able to make a feature. I was fortunate to win this award to make my debut feature, Barber Yoshino (2004), and since then I’ve been lucky enough to be able to make about one film per year.
