March 04 2006

I have no memory of my direction
by Midi Onodera
2005, 77 min., experimental narrative, digital video, super 8, Lomographic Supersampler, Barbie Wireless Videocam, Intel Digital camera, Tyco & Trendmaster toy video cameras.

Saturday March 4th, 7:30pm
SFU Harbour Centre Cinema (515 West Hastings St.)
Tickets: $5.00 for students, Praxis & Cineworks members, $8.00 General Admission
Midi Onodera will be in attendance

I have no memory of my direction
The story unfolds through a Canadian-born Japanese woman's voice-over as she dreams her way though Japan. Ostensibly searching for an emotional connection with her aging father, the woman contemplates her own inherited culture and familial touchstones. Her North American pop culture sensibility fuses with a distorted Japanese perspective to create a surreal interpretation of a “Japan of the imagination”. This fictional landscape is peppered with invented Japanese myths, ruminations on memory loss, the temporal space of digital photography and the ghosts of inherited imagination. Onodera acknowledges that her piece is a tribute to Chris Marker's groundbreaking Sans Soleil (1983).

Onodera's work has been screened in many prestigious festivals, including Toronto, Berlin, Rotterdam and Bilbao. She was recently honoured with a retrospective at Toronto's Reel Asian International Film Festival.

As Adam Nayman (Toronto's Eye Weekly) wrote: "A survey of the films she has produced in her 20-year career…reveals not only a fierce filmmaking intelligence but also an eagerness to deal with controversial subject matter." And Onodera herself acknowledges, "Being a third-generation Japanese-Canadian, being a woman and being a lesbian are all things about me that come together in my films. They all have a personal edge."



The world premiere of I have no memory of my direction is presented by Cineworks Independent Filmmakers Society, Praxis Centre for Screenwriters and Midi Onodera's visit here is generously sponsored by CityTV