Naoko Ogigami

Naoko Ogigami (荻上 直子, Ogigami Naoko, born 1972 in Chiba Prefecturea[1]) is a Japanese film director. Among her most notable works are her films Kamome Shokudo and Megane.[2] At the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival Megane won the Manfred Salzberger Award, for "broadening the boundaries of cinema today."[3][4]

Naoko Ogigami
荻上 直子
Naoko Ogigami at the 15th Annual Tama Cinema Forum in 2005.
Born (1972-02-15) February 15, 1972
Chiba Prefecture, Japan
OccupationDirector, screenwriter, cinematographer
Years active1999–present

Early life and education

Ogigami attended Chiba University's Image Science program. After graduating in 1994, she moved to the United States to study film at the University of Southern California. There she studied for six years, learning English and completing a graduate degree in film production.[5] In 2000, she returned to Japan and later began writing and directing films.[6]

Career

While living in the United States, Ogigami worked on several short films, television shows, and commercials[5] as a cinematographer, camera operator, and production assistant. She also wrote and directed two short films, Ayako (1999) and Hoshino-kun, Yumino-kun (2001). Yumino-kun won 3 different awards at the PIA Film Festival the year it premiered.[7] Her first feature film, Yoshino's Barber Shop premiered at the PIA Film Festival in and the Berlin International Film Festival in 2004 winning awards at both.[8] Her next feature film, Love is Five, Seven, Five! was released a year later in 2005. In 2006 her third film Kamome Diner was given a limited release in Japan. It would later go on to tour a number of festivals, and was awarded the 5th Best Film at the Yokohama Film Festival in 2007.[9]

In 2008 Glasses, her fourth film, was featured at the Berlin International Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, and San Francisco International Film Festival, though it first premiered a year earlier. At the Berlin International Film Festival, Glasses was nominated for and won the Manfred Salzgeber Award for "broadening the boundaries of cinema today."[10] The film was also nominated for the Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic World Cinema, though it lost to Jens Jonssen's The King of Ping Pong.

In 2008, she also helped found the production company Suurkiitos, which is the Finnish word for "thank you very much."[11] The company handles advertising, actor management, and film distribution. Her two subsequent films were distributed through the company. After a break in writing and directing, her next film Toilet was given limited theatrical release in Japan and South Korea in 2010, and went on to tour the festival circuit, being shown in festivals in Canada, the United States, Japan, and Taiwan. Her film Rent-a-Cat premiered in 2012 at the Stockholm International Film Festival, and was later nominated for Best Feature at Oslo Films From The South Festival.

Style

Ogigami has written and directed all of her films, which have been classified as "iyashi-kei eiga," or, "films that provide emotional healing."[7] Thematically, all of her films are similar in nature, a recurring theme being culture clash; foreigner comes to a new place and is faced with unfamiliar practices and elements. The films then depict how they deal with this clash. Ogigami's films are lighter in nature than most Japanese cinema.[12] When asked about one of the practices characters participate in with Glasses, she commented, "Somehow Glasses went to lots of film festivals. And especially European and American people think that twilighting means something about Zen spirit, like in Buddhism. But I always answered that maybe this is just because I grew up in Japan and I have those kind of things in my mind..."[12]

Filmography
  • Ayako (short) (1999)
  • Hoshino-kun, Yumino-kun (short) (星ノくん･夢ノくん) (2001)
  • Yoshino's Barber Shop (バーバー吉野, Barber Yoshino) (2004)
  • Love Is Five, Seven, Five! (恋は五・七・五, Koi-wa go shichi go!) (2005)
  • Seagull Diner/Kamome Diner (かもめ食堂, Kamome Shokudō) (2006)
  • Glasses (めがね, Megane) (2007)
  • Toilet (トイレット, Toiretto) (2010)
  • Rent-a-Cat (レンタネコ, Rentaneko) (2012)
  • Close-Knit (2017)
  • Kawapperi Mukoritta (2021)[13]

Awards and nominations
Year Film Festival Award Notes
2001 Hoshino-kun, Yumino-kun PIA Film Festival PIA Festival Scholarship Award Won
2001 Hoshino-kun, Yumino-kun PIA Film Festival Best Music Won
2001 Hoshino-kun, Yumino-kun PIA Film Festival Audience Award Won
2004 Yoshino's Barber Shop PIA Film Festival PIA Festival Scholarship Award Won
2004 Yoshino's Barber Shop Berlin International Film Festival Special Mention - Best Feature Film Won
2008 Glasses Berlin International Film Festival Manfred Salzgeber Award Won
2008 Glasses Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic World Cinema Nominated
2012 Rent-a-Cat Oslo Films From The South Festival Best Feature Nominated
2018 Close-knit Tromsø International Film Festival Audience award Won

References
  1. "Ogigami Naoki". Dejitaru Daijisen (in Japanese). Shōgakukan. Retrieved 27 February 2014.
  2. Schilling, Mark (2007-09-21). "Japan Times review of Megane". Japantimes.co.jp. Retrieved 2014-02-18.
  3. Hernandez, Eugene (2008-02-16). "BERLIN '08". Indiewire. Retrieved 27 February 2014.
  4. Currie, Nick (May 16, 2008). "Japanese Food Porn". The New York Times. Retrieved June 5, 2012.
  5. Laird, Colleen (2012). Sea Change: Japan's New Wave of Female Film Directors. Oregon: Proquest Dissertations Publishing.
  6. "'For foreigners the Japanese toilet really must be something amazing': An Interview with Ogigami Naoko". Film International. Retrieved 2016-02-09.
  7. Laird, Colleen (May 2013). "Imaging a Female Filmmaker: The Director Personas of Nishikawa Miwa and Ogigami Naoko | Frames Cinema Journal". framescinemajournal.com. Retrieved 2016-02-09.
  8. Nelmes, Jill; Selbo, Jule (2015). Women Screenwriters - An International Guide. Palgrave Macmillan UK. ISBN 978-1-137-31236-5.
  9. "第２８回ヨコハマ映画祭　日本映画ベスト１０". homepage3.nifty.com. Archived from the original on 2014-03-18. Retrieved 2016-02-27.
  10. Currie, Nick (2008-05-16). "The Post-Materialist | Japanese Food Porn". T Magazine. Retrieved 2016-02-27.
  11. "スールキートス". スールキートス. Retrieved 2016-02-27.
  12. Zimmermann, Christina (2012-01-01). "Juggling with cultural stereotypes: The light humour of Naoko Ogigami". Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema. 3 (1): 45–53. doi:10.1386/jjkc.3.1.45_1. ISSN 1756-4905.
  13. "松山ケンイチ主演×ムロツヨシ共演、荻上直子監督最新作『川っぺりムコリッタ』来年公開". Crank-in!. Retrieved October 5, 2020.
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