Red Persimmons
The Avant-Garde
•
1h 30m
Directed by Shinsuke Ogawa, Peng Xiaolian • Documentary • 2001 • 90 minutes
The ostensible subject of this remarkably beautiful film is the growing, drying, peeling and packaging of persimmons in the tiny Japanese village of Kaminoyama. The inhabitants explain that it is the perfect combination of earth, wind and rain that makes their village's persimmons superior to those grown anywhere else, including the village just a few miles away. The film's larger subject, however, is the disappearance of Japan's traditional culture, the end of a centuries-old way of life.
Apart from its fascinating record of a vanishing way of life and its colorful anecdotes about human inventiveness, however, RED PERSIMMONS is a film of stunning visual beauty. Its scenes of time-lapse photography, whether revealing the gorgeous deep red-orange colors of the fruit in full blossom or drying after having been peeled, bathe the screen in radiant beauty.
"A moving, wistful look at the effulgent, eternal cycle of life and death."—Film Journal International
Up Next in The Avant-Garde
-
Silent Witnesses
Directed by Luis Ospina, Jerónimo Atehortúa • Experimental/Drama • With Mara Meba, Roberto Estrada Vergara • 2023 • 79 minutes
“Silent Witnesses” tells the impossible love story between Efraín and Alicia during the first half of the 20th century in Colombia.
Based on remnants of the few Colom... -
The Society of the Spectacle
Directed by Guy Debord • Documentary • 1973 • 91 minutes
New! This version of the film has an English language voiceover produced by Light Industry and narrated by Paul Chan.
Six years after the publication of his Situationist classic The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord released this semi-...
-
The Society of the Spectacle (French ...
Directed by Guy Debord • Documentary • 1973 • 91 minutes
Six years after the publication of his Situationist classic The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord released this semi-experimental, essay-film adaptation. Using the classic Situationist technique of “détournement” (think pre-digital remi...
