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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.
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.
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