In Depth with the Director - Robert Capria

Tell us a little about yourself and your background in filmmaking

Making movies started young, maybe I was eight when my brother James and I got our hands on a Super 8 camera. When I was 15, I edited my first documentary when my brother came back with Super 8 footage from the Peruvian Amazon. Later I went to NYU film school where I won three best documentary films about a young Albanian-American woman who ran away from home to escape a traditional arranged marriage in the Bronx, New York. One of the awards was from director Martin Scorsese. Some years later, I was later hired to set up and run the Scorsese Media Center at the director’s old high school in the Bronx.

How did Mayonaka first come together as a project?

A Japanese friend invited me and because it was a totally new world to me, I thought it would be very interesting to make a film there. After I thought of the theme of a young woman who wants to kill herself on her birthday, I was able to write it rather quickly - maybe it took me a week. I used a fairy tale structure to make a kind of dark Cinderella story that leads to midnight – this is why the film is called “Mayonaka” which means midnight in Japanese. Later I learned that midnight is “the darkest hour” and often symbolically represents the “female principle” in mythology. These are all unconscious things which guide the pen.

The setting of Shinjuku at night has a magical quality to it. What is it about the setting that attracted you?

I researched a lot of maps of Tokyo before I came up with the story and decided to center a story around Shinjuku Station which is the busiest in the world. I thought a story about “loneliness in a crowd” would make a good contrast against a busy place. Train stations also have an existential quality or conjure the feeling of a journey. I decided to film at night because it's a dark drama so I thought that could better reflect the mood - all the colored lights can reflect the wavering moods in the characters. Also, since I was dealing with a time theme, it made me think of trains and schedules. Trains are almost synonymous with cinema. They move through time and space and are almost like the unfurling of a reel of film with it’s sprockets and engine like a camera or projector. I tried to use the train as a physical and psychological spine of the film. I filmed over about two weeks from 6pm to midnight like the action of the film to give the film a feeling of a night journey or a road movie set in a city. The characters are “two trains passing in the night”.

The isolation and loneliness of your characters is apparent despite the metropolitan sprawl of Tokyo. Was the film a conscious commentary on these themes?

I took up the theme of isolation, loneliness and suicide in the same way filmmakers maybe do war films. These types of films are the examination of people under pressure so they make for good drama and reveal character. Also the question of suicide is the inner debate between hope and despair. I think films with an inner debate like a novel can be very strong. There is a war of ideas inside the characters which can make them seem more real within this time compression.

The film is interpolated by Kumi's 'vlogging' segments. What influenced the decision to film scenes in this way?

I thought the contrast between an obnoxious foreign vlogger who just wants to get laid within his time frame would be a great irony to Kumi's deep inner struggles. She has some fixed ideas about virginity and suicide that are making her unhappy. To use the train metaphor, the destinies of Kumi and Akira run on parallel tracks until they intersect. Initially the vlogger character had a larger role in the film but his character derailed in the edit and Mr. Onoda took over his track.

What was the biggest challenge in making this film?

Since I’m not Japanese, nor speak the language or know anything very deep about their culture I had to stick to ideas and make it seem real. Although the film takes on Japanese social problems of depression and suicide, it’s really house of fiction filmmaking. At first the actors Tsuyoshi Takashiro and Shinichi Shirahata objected to the way their situation is confrontational - this isn’t how Japanese would normally behave – I told them the characters weren’t Japanese but THE CHARACTERS. They are fictions that are filmed with some level of documentary realism. I think the actors understood there is an underlying spiritual realism to it. In the end movie viewing can be a kind of secular church especially arthouse or quieter dramas where you are forced to lean in the film more and get in touch with your own soul.

What projects are coming for you in the future?

I'm planning on making another film in Japan which is a crime-mystery involving "johatsu" or missing people which is another social issue in Japan but again maybe with a Twilight Zone quality to it. As the film will also be released in France by, I’m working on some possible production there that may be a crime-romance involving a con artist with a theater of the absurd aspect to it. I like to combine elements of fiction with documentary to get the best of both aspects out of filmmaking in the same way if you could make a film that is both comic and tragic.

Do you have any message for our Melbourne audience?

I'd like to thank the Pigdon festival for recognizing the merits of my film. From my experience I've seen that cinephile distributors and arthouse theater owners along with a certain kind of indie film lover all appreciates my film. When “Mayonaka” has been rejected by festivals and distributors. I try to remember that people judge film but films also judge people. The film will receive a two week screening in Tokyo at Cinema Rosa from May 21st to June 3rd and possibly a preview screening at House of Culture of Japan in Paris in March along with screenings in June and July in France. The distributor Camille Jouhair of Hevadis Films loves “Mayonaka” like Mr. Katsumura in Tokyo. These cinephile distributors who champion certain films are very important. They can make the difference between success and failure. Their taste does matter.