SACHI HAMANO (Japan)

..Midori develops a world that is far from such conventional views as that human being is the center of the world characterized by modern idea, that in arts you make much of individual personality…

Love has no age, nor discriminations, but if it comes to elderly people, images of ugliness and decrepitude predominate, and there is a clear tendency to avoid the matter. We can therefore say that representing sexuality at old age is certainly a taboo.

Yurisai - Lily festival (2001), is based on the novel written by Hoko Momotani, and is an ironic, wise look at old age and at love. The heroines of the story are seven old women (from 69 to 90) living together. When an elderly man moves into their old-fashioned apartment, a tremendous tumult arises. He fascinates the ladies with graceful gestures and eloquent rhetoric.

“Surrounded by such gorgeous women, I’m so grateful that I was born a man!”

“Your smiling face is so beautiful. You’re like a  goddess”

“With that cat, you look like a picture of Mary holding the Christ Child”

He deals with each of them as an individual, not simply as an old lady.  In short time the man shows them the possibilities of sexuality, and they break out of their shells and begin to act. At this point we can assist to the lively reawakening of the sexual energies of old women, who had been shackled by both oppression of women and discrimination against the elderly. Men die earlier, so when you get to that age, there are hardly any left and you are consigned to solitude. Moreover, it is rare to find a man sexually interested in an old lady. The majority of men still value female youth above all else, especially in Japan. But Mr Miyoshi, the 75 years old man who suddenly interrupts the ladies everyday life, makes them rediscover a forgotten, luscious sensation; a definitely different experience from when they were young, but still a gentle pleasure.
They soon realize that the man is an ‘ever playboy’, and that he was paying particular attentions to each of them.  In any case none of them regrets that experience and once the boundaries are broken, they are also ready to experiment new forms of love and some of them will face bisexuality.  

The personal touch of Sachi Hamano makes this story natural and real, with several poetical images, without dropping into sentimentalism. To remark is also the point of view of the narration. It’s a dead tenant of the apartment who is narrating the story.

It is clear that behind the cine camera there is a determined and non conventional woman. Sachi Hamano had always wanted to work as a director and in order to convert into movies her ideas she went against a male-dominated society, she directed porn films to face economical problems and collected money from housewives (for the production of In Search of a Lost Writer she received founds from more than 10.000 women). In 1984 she founded her own production company, Tantansha. Since then, she has released more than 300 low-budget adult films portraying sexuality from women‘s  perspectives. Throughout her career Hamano has maintained her philosophy of celebrating the sexuality of her heroines without degrading their images, and her recent independent films have been widely supported in Japan.

With Yurisai,  Sachi Hamano received invitations at film festivals from many countries of Asia, North America and Europe.

In 1998 she produced In Search of a Lost Writer, for which she was awarded Japan’s 4th Women’s Culture Prize. The movie is dedicated to the writer Midori Osaki, who was born early in the 20th century in Tottori Prefecture, far away from the capital Tokyo. Around 1930 she wrote unique novels as "Dainana kankai Hohkoh" (Wanderings in the Seventh Sensuous World), but at the middle of her thirties, she became mentally deranged from intoxication of headache medicines. The film In Search of a Lost Writer depicts the life of this "writer of illusion", as Hamano describes her, and the world of her best-known novel "Dainana kankai Hohkoh."

Sachi hamano especially tries to break out from the stereotyped women’s figures as “mothers, wives, daughters and prostitutes”. She decided to make movies that were presenting real women, in all their aspects.

“In pink movies made by males, only convenient women appear who suit men’s sexual illusions. I don’t shoot rapes. I don’t make children the target of sex. I don’t make movies to suite men’s desires. Long with these three decisions, I have been filming works in which women experience love-making as their own choice.”

The interesting thing is that the main viewers of her movies are men.  Sachi Hamano explains it in this way:
 “In my movies, soft and delicate women’s bodies are shown gorgeously at close-up. In some scenes a women caresses her beloved man carefully. As I can proceed filming in good communication with the actresses, they also can act freshly. I’m sure that male audiences would like to see beautiful and lively women’s bodies and sex scenes instead of stereo-typed descriptions of bound, raped and suffering women soon feeling ecstasy. My works contains the message that gender-role of ‘manliness’ or  ‘women should please men’ should be thrown away.”

We can only imagine the courage and the strongness of this little lady, but there is certainly to reflect on the message coming from her poetic.