Movies: Naomi Kawase

Kazuo Nishii, renowned editor and photography critic, died in 2001 of stomach cancer. Two months earlier he contacted Naomi Kawase, whose works he admired, to document the remaining weeks of his life. Kawase visits him in the hospital and films the p...

Naomi Kawase observes people in the city of Shibuya with curiosity and openness, drawing parallels between life and filmmaking and discovering her abilities as a filmmaker....

The film takes shape through the form of a video exchange between Hirokazu Kore-eda and Naomi Kawase. Each films the world around them and intimately reflects on their individual struggles with making films. Kore-eda self-consciously reflects on his ...

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This is the story about the life and artistic views of a designer through an interview that’s replete with poetic dialogue....

Through this short film directed by Naomi Kawase you will witness the expressiveness of students and interviews with educators from Waldorf school’s throughout Japan....

1988 short film...

1991 short film...

Naomi Kawase collaborates with Shinya Arimoto, a Taiyo award-winning photographer she knows from university, to create a photo album of Machiko Ono (who Kawase scouted for her previous feature film Moe no Suzaku) and Mika Mifune (daughter of famous a...

In the form of a fiction, Naomi Kawase delivers a self-portrait which is also a re-crossing of her earlier films. The old city of Nara, the first capital of Japan where Naomi Kawase is from and where she still lives, opens up a reverie where past, pr...

Naomi Kawase returns to the mountains of her feature film Suzaku and portraits the people that inspired the movie....

Kawase pays tribute to the grandmother that raised her after being separated from her parents as a child. The film teems with memories, but it is the faded, dusty photographs capturing the kindness in her grandmother’s shy smile that truly bring the ...

Kawase's entry in the Haiku project...

1989 short film...

From the music of Tunisian composer Amine Bouhafa, Japanese filmmaker Naomi Kawase crafts a story of two young people ruminating on existence and life in a city. This short film is part of the 2x25 Project of Film Fest Gent and the World Soundtrack A...

1988 short film...

1988 short film...

Taichi, a security worker, meets a girl, Heki, at a bar. The next evening, he sees the beautiful view of his town for the first time in ages, and decides to take the long way home, where he runs into Heki again....

The song "Sakura Nagashi" by Hikaru Utada, reflects on themes of love, loss, and the beauty of fleeting moments. The opening lines describe cherry blossoms falling after just blooming, and the disappointment of witnessing their ephemeral nature. This...

1990 short film...