Ashizawa Akiko, a veteran of greater than 70 options and one of the vital completed cinematographers within the historical past of Japanese cinema, delivered a wide-ranging masterclass on the Cannes Film Festival, tracing her profession from an unlikely entry into the business via options spanning horror, comedy, drama and historic epic. The session preceded her receipt of the Pierre Angénieux Tribute.
The occasion opened with Ashizawa describing an upbringing completely faraway from cinema – till, as a pupil at Aoyama Gakuin College in Tokyo, she encountered the movies of Jean-Luc Godard. Early ambitions to direct dissolved when she noticed the 8mm work of fellow pupil Morita Yoshimitsu. “He’s really talented and I can’t win over him, so I decided to find another way – that’s why I took the path for the cinematographer,” she mentioned.
Breaking into the business within the early Seventies required discovering a aspect door. With no feminine digicam assistants within the Japanese movie business, Ashizawa discovered her opening via cinematographer Ito Hideo – recognized for taking pictures Oshima Nagisa’s “In the Realm of the Senses” – who agreed to take her on as an assistant. The lesson Ito imparted proved foundational. “Whether it’s a big-budget job or a small job like just taking photos for a panel, there is no doubt that you should pour all your energy into it,” she mentioned, noting she nonetheless passes that precept on to her personal assistants.
With the movie business nonetheless largely closed to girls, Ashizawa moved into TV commercials within the Eighties – a more recent discipline much less entrenched within the male hierarchy – earlier than returning to options within the Nineties.
Her breakthrough into sustained worldwide recognition got here in 2005 when she started working with Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Japan’s foremost practitioner of atmospheric unease. She instructed the viewers she pitched herself for the collaboration after listening to Kurosawa was looking for somebody who may shoot overcast skies and gloomy climate – the inverse of what she described as most Japanese administrators’ desire for brilliant, sunny situations. Eight options adopted, amongst them “Tokyo Sonata,” which gained the Jury Prize in Un Sure Regard at Cannes 2008, and “Journey to the Shore,” which took the part’s directing prize in 2015.
Ashizawa additionally screened a clip from “Chronicle of My Mother,” directed by Harada Masato, and paid tribute to Harada, who died on the finish of final 12 months with out realizing his ambition to go to Cannes. She provided a frank account of their working relationship – marked by persistent on-set disagreements over digicam angles that she would typically quietly appropriate when Harada’s consideration was elsewhere – earlier than acknowledging that the friction produced one among her best outcomes. “Even if things don’t go well on set, a good movie can still be made,” she mentioned. “On the other hand, even if the set is fun, a movie might not turn out well.” The movie gained Ashizawa the 2012 Mainichi Movie Award for Finest Cinematography.
“Journey to the Shore” prompted one of many session’s extra revealing technical discussions. Capturing throughout the analog-to-digital transition, Ashizawa mentioned she rejected the then-prevalent “film-like” development in favor of exploiting what digital may do by itself phrases. She pushed Sony cameras past the producer’s really helpful ceiling – taking pictures at ISO 3200 or 4000 moderately than the handbook’s restrict of 1600 – and constructed customized LUTs designed to protect, moderately than get rid of, the digital noise most cinematographers labored to suppress. Lenses had been classic Kowa CinemaScope glass greater than 50 years previous, which she discovered matched unexpectedly effectively with trendy digital sensors. All the movie was shot on three lenses.
Her broader philosophy towards digital expertise emerged as a constant thread. “If you think you can do anything later, it means you can’t do anything at the moment,” she mentioned, describing a desire for committing totally to tone and picture throughout pre-production moderately than deferring to the colour suite.
Ashizawa additionally produced a number of bell peppers on the podium – bought at a neighborhood market the day prior to this – for example her most popular technique for digicam testing. “Rather than placing a chart, shooting like this makes it much easier to understand the state of the light naturally,” she mentioned. “Coming to Cannes this time, I confirmed that bell peppers have the same color all over the world, so I think I will continue to use these vegetables for camera tests instead of charts.” She joked that when testing is full, the greens will be became a salad.
Dialogue of her current work with Indonesian director Edwin – their second collaboration after “Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash,” which gained the Golden Leopard at Locarno in 2021 – illustrated the changes required when working throughout cultural contexts. On “Sleep No More,” a horror movie that premiered on the Berlinale this 12 months, Ashizawa mentioned she discovered that Indonesian and Japanese conceptions of concern diverged markedly: the previous bodily and tactile, the latter extra conceptual and psychological. “The director also modified his approach, and I think it turned out to be a work that can be understood by people all over the world,” she mentioned.
On the query of how the business has shifted for ladies since she entered it, Ashizawa was direct. “It has changed dramatically,” she mentioned, citing the expansion in feminine cinematographers and assistants and pointing to Toho Studio’s addition of a daycare facility as proof of structural change.
Closing the session, she expressed a need to shoot her first Korean manufacturing – “I haven’t worked with our neighbor South Korea yet, so I’d like to do that if there’s an opportunity” – earlier than returning to first ideas. “In this chaotic and dark world, I hope that cinema can serve as a ray of light to brighten the world,” she mentioned.
French actress Irene Jacob, who labored with Ashizawa on Fukada Koji’s “Sayonara,” attended the masterclass. Ashizawa is the second feminine cinematographer to obtain the Pierre Angénieux Tribute, following Agnès Godard in 2021.
