Fire Flower

Justin LaLiberty4.0

hard to not contextualize this against Godzilla Minus Zero — both selections of NYFF that wrestle with the reality of nuclear disaster in Japan, manmade and natural, with one being the product of the country and the other, rather distinctly, not — far more interesting as a free form essay film than a tried and true documentary (which it really isn’t) and its languid shots of the sky and titular fireworks are some of my favorite visuals of the year

Robert Daniels4.0

Of all the films I’ve watched at Locarno, the most impenetrable is Anna Vaz’s experimental essayist documentary “Fire Flower” (“Hanabi”). An adaptation of Yoko Hayasuke’s Journal of a Radioactive Brain, the film, which was captured over the course of a decade, is a reaction to the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake that caused the Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Plant to melt down. The stream-of-consciousness narrative oscillates between a meditative narrator describing their anxieties about radioactive elements in the food they consume, the air they breathe, and the ground they walk on, and interviews with different Japanese citizens who are equally worried by the toxicity (both political and physical) around them. Vaz further scrambles the material via an aesthetic approach that’s as resistant as the wider society that refuses to accept that they’re living through the remaining consequences of the meltdown. It’s explained that many have instead called for “unity” and nationalism rather than allowing individuals to question the safety of their environment. Consequently, in the aforementioned interviews with her subjects, images of them speaking are matched with asynchronous sound, aurally demonstrating the disconnect between their truth and the accepted “reality.” [full capsule review via RogerEbert]

Luca Bruno1.5

As I've mentioned before here and there: I work in radio. Every now and then, we have things like call-ins for your favorite song where we ask listeners to send us a voice message. Our system is set up so that it records every message immediately, even if you withdraw or delete it a few seconds after sending it in.A recurring thing that happens is that listeners indeed delete their voice message (probably after listening back to it), only to immediately send basically the exact same thing again. But when you compare the recordings, the second messages are invariably delivered in a deeper, almost hushed voice. And slower. I don't know exactly why, but I suspect people (wrongly) think that speaking this way gives what they're saying more weight, makes them sound more serious or maybe even smarter? When in reality, even someone with an untrained ear will instantly hear the difference when comparing the two recordings and ask, «Why does the second one sound so weird, unnatural and silly?»Well, I wish whoever directed the voice-over recordings of this film had told the director exactly that: that her «serious» voice sounds very silly. And yes, her very trivial observations about banana juice, the origin of the meat she eats, or whether pussy waxing would help against radiation or not (Okay, that last one was kinda funny. We have to give her that!) unfortunately do not sound any less trite when spoken in a faux-dramatic tone.Anyway. Hanabi! There were a few good moments! Not many, but still. One of the unidentified interviewees musing about how the Fukushima nuclear disaster can (or cannot) be reconciled with their Buddhist faith? Pretty interesting! But for the most part, you just want to congratulate the director on finding a clever way to subsidize her trip (or multiple trips?) to Japan.Locarno79, #32