Thursday 22 March 2012

Chapter 2. Tokyo and David Burliuk


Chapter 2. Tokyo and David Burliuk

The eleven hour flight from Moscow was uneventful and we tried to sleep as much as possible, anticipating a heavy schedule which would start as soon we would reach Japan. From time to time I would look down from the small oval window at the vast emptiness of Siberia as we passed over the Russian interior. We arrived at Tokyo Nartito airport and then onto a train to the centre of Tokyo. By lunch time we had ascended from the metro onto the blazing humid streets of Tokyo. After Moscow it was a bit of a shock but fortunately we were quite close to the hotel already and within fifteen minutes I was unpacking the equipment for the interview which was scheduled for two o'clock in the afternoon. That was when we had our first hitch.


 Natalia always assists me were ever I go but after such a long flight and the heat she felt ill. She lay down for five minutes and fatigue and sickness set in. There was nothing we could do, the interview was already arranged and I couldn't change anything. It was probably a mistake to organise the interview immediately after such long flight but it was too late to worry about that now. Fortunately Michiko, who had done a lot of organising for us and had in fact set up the interview with Akira Suzuki, was on hand. When she arrived she took stock of the situation and reassured me everything would be fine and she would take care of any problems. With that we went down stairs and waited for Akira Suzuki. 


When he arrived in the hotel lobby I was pleasantly surprised and with just one glance I knew he would be a good interviewee. Dressed casually in light coloured trousers and a blue shirt, his attentive expression exuded intelligence and seriousness even though I could see he was a bit nervous. I was nervous myself as I hadn't fully decided in which language I wanted to conduct the interview. I knew Mr Suzuki spoke English but I find that interviewees always give of their best when they speak in their own language. Certainly they come across more natural and relaxed which is really what I wanted. We found an empty part of the hotel lobby with plenty of light and with a good view of the garden and beyond the garden, in the near distance, Tokyo Bay.  After a bit of time spent getting the radio microphone to work properly and getting the sound levels right we made a start. We tried a bit in English and then I asked Michiko if she would actually ask the prepared questions in Japanese to see what the difference would be and I would film Mr Suzuki in conversation with Michiko, although with Michiko out of shot. Straight away I knew this was the correct decision. He began to speak animatedly and enthusiastically as if he was explaining all about Burliuk in Japanese to an old friend he hadn't seen for a while. Also Michiko was very professional almost as if she had been doing this kind of work for years. Mr Suzuki had brought with him editions of the books he had written and translations of Burliuk's books that he had undertaken himself, which Burliuk had written during his stay in Japan. I featured them in the interview quite prominently. The "props" enhanced the interview greatly and gave it a more intimate tone while at the same time adding a visual contrast to the overall conversation. I hate interviews which are just a person's head and shoulders talking all the time. As the interview came to an end Natalia came down and joined us looking much better. I introduced Mr Suzuki to Natalia and unexpectedly he began talking in fluent Russian with her. This was when the "second interview" started. With Natalia's questions, Akira Suzuki seemed to get a second wind and spoke lucidly in Russian about Burliuk for about another hour. As we later discovered, he had been an interpreter in the Far East of Russia in Vladivostok and on Sakhalin when the Soviet and Japanese governments decided on forming a closer trade relationship, in the area of oil exploration. His Russian was extremely good and this meant that I could now understand what he was talking about at first hand. It would help me with the rest of the next two weeks shooting. He was an absolute font of knowledge on the subject of Burliuk in Japan and I kept the tape rolling all the time.

What had been worrying me up to now was how I would integrate the material from the island of Ogasawara into a film about a futurist artist from Russia; stylistically and generally speaking how would it work. It just didn't seem to make sense and while I was looking forward to the idea of spending a few days on some remote tropical island in the Pacific Ocean which could only be reached by ship, I was beginning to wonder why I was actually going there, apart from being able have a holiday by the sea.  Akira Suzuki cleared up the problem almost immediately when he began to explain why David Burliuk went to Ogasawara himself.
  
After a long period of travelling across Russia and Siberia prior to embarking on a military transport to Japan, enduring revolution and the uncertainties and danger of civil war, Burliuk wanted to rest in a warm climate with his family. One of the other reasons was that he was a great admirer of the work of Gauguin. It was Gauguin who inspired Burliuk's early work and that of Burliuk's contemporaries. Burliuk longed to follow the example of Gauguin and paint on a tropical island far away from the cares and influence of the everyday world. This became possible after he had staged a successful exhibition in Japan and managed to raise a considerable sum of money so that he could also bring his family to join him on the voyage. Akira Suzuki further recounted how when Burliuk returned to Tokyo he put on another exhibition of paintings he had completed on Ogasawara. The Japanese public where somewhat taken aback. They had come to expect avant-garde abstract paintings from this futurist artist and instead they were treated to a series of scenic views presenting the astounding beauty of the island of Ogasawara painted on canvas in the traditional manner of landscape painting.


 Immediately I had the last part of the jigsaw and had no doubt as to how this element of the story would fit in with the rest of the film about Russian avant-garde and in fact how it would fit in with the whole series of six films. The simple fact is that Gauguin was a precursor of the avant-garde and in particular the Russian avant-garde itself. Most of the great Russian avant-garde artists and futurists like Kandinsky, Kulbin, Rodchenko and as already mentioned, Burliuk himself, were inspired by Gauguin's work. Here was a way of integrating all this material in a meaningful, coherent and hopefully interesting context and it would tie many elements together which I had been struggling to make sense of within all the other films.


The afternoon was gradually turning towards evening and we decided to call it a day and continue our discussions in a more relaxed mood in the bar of the hotel. I packed up all the equipment and within twenty minutes we were seated at a table on which had been placed some cool clear Japanese beer and some supper. I had a prior agreement with Akira Suzuki as to how much I would pay him for the interview, which was not extravagant  but it was what I had in my budget. Akira Suzuki insisted on spending  most of the fee on treating us to another few rounds of beer and numerous delicacies which the hotel had on offer. We sat for another three to four hours in lively discussion, exchanging ideas about Japanese and Russian culture and our respective interests. It was on this first meeting that we managed to forge a lasting relationship with Akira Suzuki who has many times since helped us on our numerous subsequent trips to Japan.

As far as I was concerned the material for the interview was excellent although it required checking. However, from what I could make out the sound, despite the compromising conditions of the hotel lobby with its background noise and distractions, had come out good which was the most important thing, . It all seemed like an auspicious start to our departure next morning to Ogasawara. We arranged to keep in touch with Akira Suzuki and I promised to keep him up to date with the progress of the film. After saying goodnight we got straight to bed. It had been a long day and Natalia and I were very jet lagged and tired but at the same time satisfied after the anxiety of getting the interview completed.  I knew tomorrow was going to be an early start and filming would be equally demanding. However much I enjoy the process you still have to be able to concentrate and be well rested to give your best.
  

Friday 16 March 2012

Chapter 1 - Birth of a Film

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In September 2005 I travelled from Moscow with my wife Natalia to Japan to make a film about the Russian futurist, poet and artist, David Burliuk, also known as the Father of Russian Futurism. The film was one of a six part series about the Russian Avant-garde. The visit involved a journey to Ogasawara for several days. The following is an account of our voyage to this island in the Pacific Ocean.
The total area of the islands is 73 km², with a population of 2440 (2000 on Chichijima, the seat of the municipal government and 440 on Hahajimi the only two inhabited islands). The common English name for Ogasawara is Bonin Islands.
The Bonin Islands, known in Japan as the Ogasawara Group are an archipelago of over 30 subtropical and tropical islands, approximately 1,000 km directly south of Tokyo Japan. Ogasawara is a sub prefecture Tokyo.

Chapter1. Birth of a Film.

The Journey to Ogasawara begins in Moscow. While researching the documentary film series "The Russian Avant-garde - Revolution or Renaissance". During post production of the fourth film in the series "Meyerhold Theatre and the Russian Avant-garde", I came across a one line statement in a book I was reading to the effect that; David Burliuk, the Father of Russian Futurism and the Russian Avant-garde, spent two years in Japan. That was it, no more information was provided but I was hooked. I knew I would have to make a film about Burliuk and include it in the series.
I had already lived in Moscow for ten years. I arrived on a cold dark march evening and spent the first few years learning the language, enduring various privations and inhabiting a room in an old apartment block on Tverskaya Street known as the "House of Composers". Gradually after alternate periods  of paid work and periods of living with practically no money whatsoever, I managed to build a life for myself in the post perestroika period of the mid to late 90s. As the decade drew to a close I was able to begin my long held intention of making my own films in Russia.


My first stop in the process of making this film was the Library of Foreign Literature in Moscow to see what I could find out about David Burliuk and Japan. The results were pretty minimal; virtually no information existed of this period in Burliuk's life. There were books about his life and work in Russia and later in America after he left Japan but that was all. This didn't deter me and having already decided that somehow or other I would make a film about Burliuk in Japan, I pressed on with my researches. After a few weeks, I discovered that Burliuk not only spent two years in Japan but also lived for three months on a Japanese tropical island in the Pacific Ocean known as The Ogasawara Group of islands or what we call the Bonin Islands. What did he do there, why Ogasawara and where on earth was Ogasawara? Almost immediately, I began to put together a filming trip to Japan which would take in Ogasawara and other locations.
It took about six months or so to find funding, organise the logistics of the trip, finalise locations and other details. During this preparatory period I had managed to find out considerably more about Burliuk in general and about his stay on Ogasawara in particular. A friend of ours in Moscow who was a travel agent specialising in trips to Japan organised most of the trip, even managing to find us a hotel on the island of Chichijima and book us a berth on the only means of transport for reaching the islands, a ferry called the Ogasawara Maru. The journey can take almost thirty hours one way and the ship docks in the port of Futami on Chichi-jima and then waits in the harbour for 3-4 days before returning with the same passengers to Tokyo. We had even received some brochures with information about the ship. This had reassured any doubts we may have had and we speculated where on board the vessel our cabin might be located. In addition to this we had managed, through various contacts, to locate a Japanese academic Akira Suzuki who was an expert on Burliuk's stay in Japan and would agree to be interviewed. He was described to me as some one who had family connections with the island of Oshima.
The plan was that we would arrive in Tokyo on September 1st and then sail straight to Ogasawara the next day, spend 4 days on the island of Chichijima, return to Tokyo, film for a few days in Tokyo then spend a few days in Kyoto and back to Tokyo to pick up any loose ends. Then we would return to Moscow after a round trip of two weeks.

The ship to Ogasawara as a rule departs from the port of Tokyo very early in the morning so as a precaution we had booked into a hotel at the quay, some two hundred yards from where the ship was berthed so that we would not have to race across Tokyo in a taxi through rush hour traffic. I had also scheduled the interview with Akira Suzuki on the day of our arrival so that it would be off my mind for the rest of our stay in Japan. The difficulty was where to interview Mr Suzuki. In the end I decided that the best place would be in the hotel itself, if we could find a suitable corner. This would could cut down on travelling all over Tokyo with camera equipment trying to find the right location for an interview.

I was still in the middle of post production on the film "Meyerhold, Theatre and the Russian Avant-garde", so things were quite frantic leading up to our departure. I relied quite heavily on Natalia in so much as she had already been to Japan a couple of times and knew a great deal about Japanese culture. She is a master of Ikebana of the Sogetsu School which was founded by Sofu Teshigahara, often referred to as the Picasso of the East. He developed a modern school of Ikebana which used contemporary materials as well as traditional plant materials in compositions and pioneered an avant-garde approach to the art of Ikebana. Dali and Miro were some of the people with whom he was acquainted and even worked with. His son, the film director and Ikebana master Hiroshi Teshigahara, was Natalia's teacher when he came to Moscow and founded the Moscow branch of Sogetsu. Also one of Natalia's ex pupils Michiko, a young Japanese woman who had lived in Russia for a couple of years, had been organising things in Tokyo for us before our arrival. As it turned out her help proved invaluable to the whole project.

In addition, my own research into Burliuk had progressed much further than initially expected, therefore I felt sufficiently prepared and was sure there was enough support to complete this stage of the project. I was eagerly looking forward to getting to Japan and making a start. The Ogasawara leg of the trip seemed partuclarily exciting, although I had a few misgivings about how to visually include the material from a sub tropical island into a film about a Russian avant-garde artist and nagging doubts were already beginning to form inside my mind. However I needn't have worried. Just a final check on the equipment I needed to bring with me for filming and we were ready to go.