Yasuaki Nakajima on "After the Apocalypse"
06.19 - Posted by Editor
An interview with the writer and director of the festival hit
Yasuaki Nakajima is a Japanese filmmaker living in Queens whose first feature film, "After the Apocalypse," screens this week in competition at the Los Angeles Film Festival. AsianAmericanFilm.com editor and "Robot Stories" director Greg Pak interviewed Nakajima on the eve of his screenings.
Q: Can you give us a brief synopsis of the film?
A: "After the Apocalypse" is a futuristic fable about five survivors trying to make sense of a new world after a devastating urban catastrophe challenges all their human needs.
Q: Tell us a little about your background -- where are you from, where do
you live now, and how did you get involved in filmmaking?
A: I live in Queens, NY. I was born and raised in Japan. I started watching Jackie Chan movies on TV when I was about 12. Jackie's movies were shown often on Saturday night late movie shows. As I was researching about Jackie, I found that he does not only act but also writes, edits and directs. I remember I was very inspired by it. After my high school graduation I went to Tokyo and worked as a high-rise window cleaner at day and started to make a claymation short film at night in my apartment. I bought a used Super-8 film camera and spent a year making a short claymation film, writing, directing, lighting, shooting, editing and sound designing it myself. That was my film school. When I didn't understand how to use camera I went to the camera store where I bought the Super-8 camera to learn from them. In 1996, I moved to New York to join the independent filmmaking movement.
Q: You produced, wrote, directed, edited, and starred in "After the
Apocalypse." Which of those roles was the hardest?
A: "After the Apocalypse" was my film school as well as my previous short films. I enjoyed every aspect of learning filmmaking by doing many tasks. The hardest thing was to keep my personal relationship while I was making "After the Apocalypse." Over the last past five years, I devoted my life just to making this feature. I woke up, ate, slept and dreamed just to finish this feature film. My girlfriend left me at the early stage of production of "After the Apocalypse," of course...
I became a full-time college student, interning at several post-production companies in order to get access to editing equipment to keep editing picture and sound on weekends. But it was the kind of thing that you can do once in a lifetime. I would like to make good films, but I cannot continue this kind of life. Otherwise my life will be miserable...
Q: Are you a big science fiction fan? What are some of your inspirations,
science fiction or otherwise?
A: Actually, I cannot say I'm a big fan of science fiction. I can't come up with any sci-fi writer if you ask me. But the freedom you can have in this form is no limits. You can take audience to a really crazy world once you can convince them.
Q: Can you tell us about your creative decisions to shoot the film in black
and white and to include almost no dialogue?
A: There was no second thought other than using B&W film. B&W 24 frames per second film has strange quality that takes our brain into some kind of dreamlike world. "After the Apocalypse" takes place in the near future, but all modern society has been destroyed. It's the future, but human life goes back to basic living, as in our past. So I wanted the world to be looked on as past and future using B&W film.
The reason I used no dialogue in the film was my premise that our life would go back to its basis as animal if we lost all modern society. I wanted to explore how animals communicate without using language or body language like miming. Animals sense each other with eyes and distance. We human do that all the time, but we tend to forget about this of communication because we talk too much.
In 1994 I hitchhiked all around Australia for six months. At the time I couldn't speak English at all. It was my first trip outside of Japan. But I realized that I needed to communicate to survive. And I discovered and developed non verbal communication to express emotion.
To tell a story about not be able to talk, I came up with a premise of five survivors who lost their voices because of a poison gas after an imagined nuclear war. Since we didn't need special costumes or sets for the apocalyptic setting, I became very realistic when I found a few great apocalyptic look locations around my neighbor in Brooklyn and, Queens.
Q: You and I have both made independent low-budget arthouse science fiction movies with Asian leads. Do you have any opinions about the audience for these kinds of movies? Is the world ready?
A: That's really important question and I wasn't really thinking about it until you asked me now. I really have to investigate what to say about it as I go on my film festival circuit. So far, our film has been playing at very similar festivals like SXSW, Rhode Island Int'l, Asian American Int'l and Dallas Asian. Audience reaction at festivals has been great so far, but I don't remember if any audience asked me any questions or talked about the Asian lead or Asian filmmaker issues.
Q: You're one of only ten narrative feature films in competition at the Los Angeles Film Festival. What are your hopes and dreams for this festival and for the film?
A: I'm very happy with just to be able to show our film in the top section at the one of top film festival. Now it's really about enjoying this festival by watching other films and making friends. There is nothing I should expect from the festival.
Q: You've been to many great film festivals, including South By Southwest, Lake Placid, and now the Los Angeles Film Festival. What are your best and worst festival experiences so far? Any advice for other filmmakers?
A: And the film has also just gotten an official invitation from the Rhode Island Film Festival, actually!
So far I'm having an amazing time at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Two days ago, all the feature filmmakers of the festival were taken to a top resort hotel in Santa Barbara with experienced filmmakers like Mira Nair, Joe Dante, Mario Van Peebles and more to spend a relaxing time. All the filmmakers became friends and we don't have to worry about feeling competition anymore. Today, I have just been enjoying watching my new friends' films. I'm sure we will stay in touch and may make films together.
SXSW was our World Premiere. I'm very lucky to start up from such an independent-filmmaker-supportive film festival. They don't ask you to send anything other than a VHS tape screener with a one page application form and a fee of about $35. They really watch each film carefully. They decided to screen our no-budget film made by nobody out of over 2100 submissions.
The media attention was amazing at SXSW. We received great reviews because of the SXSW. Being independent and strange is a cool thing there. I really recommend SXSW for filmmakers who made good or strange films but have no history nor rep.
Q: What's next for you?
A: To continue exploring ways for "After the Apocalypse" to fit into the market. As you asked me before, our film is unusual. We need to nurture how the film is to be represented in the world. I'm looking to spend some time for that.
