KUZOKU-ku
As part of LUFF Does Tokyo (a LUFF in Tokyo in 2012), the independent cinema Uplink offered us to screen few films from the Kuzoku tribe, founded by the film directors Katsuya Tomita and Toranosuke Aizawa. Afterwards, they informed us of the selection of their film Saudade in Locarno, where they have been brilliantly noticed. The duo began working together in the mid-1990’s on 8mm. Aizawa shot Flower Story Babylon and Katabira-gai, and Tomita undertook Above the Cloud (2003), a thug film shot over a three-year period. Unremitting, the duo shoots during weekends, and works during the week - Tomita is a truck driver, and Aizawa is an employee of a tanning salon and a motorcycle repairer - to spend part of their salary on celluloid. Above the Cloud was shown within a few sessions at Uplink, rented by the duo itself, and seletced at the festival of the Tokyo School of Cinema, where it won first prize. It gave them the opportunity to embark on a 16mm production, Off Highway 20. Again, it was Uplink who gave them some visibility in Tokyo before referral to a network of independent theaters. Over time, Off Highway 20 has acquired a nice reputation, though the professional distributors claimed that the film was not worth the trouble.