Saturday, November 29, 2008

Sean McAllister - Japan: A Story of Love and Hate

I haven't seen this film yet, but I met Sean Mccalister last week, sat in on a lecture, and saw his film "The Minders" which I found surprisingly tender, sincere, heartwarming and funny (all at the SHADOW film festival). Having seen him talk, I expected the humor but not the tenderness. Very impressed.

Sean McAllister - Japan: A Story of Love and Hate



How to make a film using Sean McAllister’s tried and perfected method:

1. Head to a hostile environment to report on an important political issue
2. Brutally collide camera lens with your topic head on
3. Realise your subject is a victim sprawled open for examination, like a bug in a petri dish, divorced from the context of its being and devoid of individual detail
4. Become depressed and think you’re losing your way with no human narrative to grasp onto, as you drink and talk your frustrations through at night with a bar fixture
5. Leave, and almost give up on the facade of making a film, until you understand the one who propped you up with their near-immunity to the surrounding scenario is the one you must return to
6. Stake down your claim on this surviving social misfit whose eyes dance above a slouching spine, and attach yourself fast for the next 6 months
7. Question the basics until they laugh and reveal their seams
8. Spot the potential drama of their destiny, and divine it

Again, Sean McAllister has cast the most charismatic of characters, in another free-spirited hero, at odds with his society and expected role. Welcome to Naoki and the class of working poor in Japan.

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