Shinsedai Special Podcast Report #3 Director’s Spotlight: Yasunobu Takahashi
This is the first of four podcast episodes recorded for the Shinsedai Cinema Festival which happened on July 22nd – 25th. Specific details about the festival can be found in the remaining three special episodes and at the Shinsedai official website.
In this episode, we shine the director’s spotlight on another talented Japanese filmmaker, Yasunobu Takahashi, whose feature-length debut “Locked Out” was released by his independent production company On the Road Films and has been in constant festival rotation since its 2009 release. In the first half of this episode, Marc Saint-Cyr of the Toronto JFilm Pow-Wow and I discuss “Locked Out” and, in the second half, I interview Yasunobu Takahashi himself. In the interview, we talk about the film, the independent cinema scene in Japan, and his next film project.
Directly download this episode here.
About The Author
Jon Jung
Jon Jung (aka “Coffin Jon”) is the producer and host of the VCinema podcast and editor-in-chief of the VCinema blog. He is an avid movie fan who specializes in Japanese cinema, but enjoys everything from artsy high-brow to mega-billion blockbusters to straight-to-video turds. As an Asian-American, he got the best of all cinematic worlds as a child by receiving mega-doses of Ozu, Bruce Lee, Kamen Rider, and American drive-in movies in addition to a steady diet of punk rock, Japanese literature, and Buddhism. He spent six years in Japan as an English teacher and translator. In 2004, he returned to the United States to complete his Masters in Language Education and continue his career as a language educator and cultural anthropologist with a focus on language policy and language shift. Jon is a former Myrle Clark Award recipient for excellence in creative writing and has contributed to World Film Locations: Tokyo (Intellect, 2011).