Naomi Kawase
Directing
Biography
Naomi Kawase (河瀨直美 Kawase Naomi, born May 30, 1969) is a Japanese film director. She graduated from Visual Arts Osaka in 1989. Many of her works have been documentaries, including Embracing, about her search for the father who abandoned her as a child, and Katatsumori, about the grandmother who raised her. Aside from being a filmmaker, she is the founder and Executive Director for the Nara International Film Festival.
Born: May 30, 1969
Place of Birth: Nara, Japan
Known For
Love & Pop
Tokyo schoolgirl Hiromi and her friends engage in a practice known as enjo kosai, or "compensated dating", where older men pay young girls for dates. Hiromi plunges deeper into this world to raise money for an expensive ring.
It Stopped Raining
A young bioarchaeologist Yukisuke is attracted to a girl Koyomi, who runs a small stand of taiyaki pastry that he often buys. Koyomi is hospitalized, however, by a car accident on a rainy day after they go out together, and wakes up with short term memory loss, where she cannot remember anything beyond the present day. Yukisuke tries to live close to her as before but the lack of collective memory starts to stagger him.
Katatsumori
Filmmaker Naomi Kawase captures the love, loss, and loneliness felt as she prepares to move out of her foster mother's home.
Sun on the Horizon
The last piece of the trilogy, following 'Katatsumori' and 'See Heaven', filming her grandma and herself. Her gazes and insights are cast on the lovable beings in front of her eyes.
The Tale of Iya
As a tunnel construction project threatens the natural order of one of Japan's last untouched regions, an old man and his granddaughter Haruna's humble lifestyle begins to influence the outlook of a man from Tokyo.
Reel Herstory: The Real Story of Reel Women
Using rare footage and exclusive interviews with filmmakers from all over the globe, "Reel Herstory" corrects the historic notion that women behind the scenes in motion pictures held peripheral careers compared with their male counterparts.
Amami
Naomi Kawase goes to the south of Japan in search of her family origins on Amami Island, with her four-year-old son Mitsuki. They meet parents, chat with the island’s inhabitants, eat traditional goat soup, observe a total solar eclipse. By reconnecting the threads of her family history, Naomi Kawase gradually fills the void left by her parents' abandonment.
Shara
The Aso family live in the old town of Nara. One Day, Kei, one of the Aso's twin boys suddenly disappears. Five years later seventeen-year old Shun, the remaining twin, is an art student. He now has to move forward with his life, together with his childhood friend, Yu.
Birth/Mother
Tarachime is a documentary film which observes 'life' through childbirth. Kawase Naomi, a film director working under the theme of family, life and death, presents the bond of life through her own childbirth experience. "First, I was planning to film from the day I conceived a child and to the moment I gave birth. But I realized, while filming, that this is not the story of "one life." In the end, the film sublimed to a higher stage on which we can witness the knot tying one life with another."
Embracing
A diary film about Kawase's relationship with her grandma and her search for her father, whom she has not seen since her parents divorced during her early childhood.
Filmography
as Self
as Koyomi's Mother
as Self
as Dr. Amamiya
as Self
as Self
as Self
as Reiko
as Self
as Woman speaking to Hiromi (voice)
as Self
as Self
as Self