Onikuma

Onikuma is Japanese yokai, a demon bear known for chasing horses. Surrounded by a foreign
landscape, two women will understand that demons can come in different forms.

In an essay titled Acinema postmodern scholar Jean-François Lyotard praised a form of filmmaking that, as a shift away from mainstream filmmaking, would make use of stillness and movement. Defining filmmaking as fundamentally concerned with movement, he argued that the potentially infinite number of movements is limited through framing, editing and composition. The rationale behind these choices is, according to Lyotard, dictated by matters of functionality that eventually have to do with the capitalistic system. In order to make sense, commercial cinema excludes movements and shots that are not identifiable or related to the logic of the scene. In Onikuma, I privileged stillness over movement through a process of subtraction. Moving through still shots of the environment and of the two protagonists, I opted to privilege contemplation over action excluding some elements that, while usually pursued in traditional narrative filmmaking, I find unnecessary to include because they can easily inferred. One of these elements is the representation of the trope of the discovery. Instead of showing the characters while they find something, I show them before and after; two moments of emotional stillness. These moments of contemplative immobility are places for the user to fill in with their own set of experiences and memories, leaving room for an empathetic experience. Instead of seeking the engagement of the viewer through close ups or a piano soundtrack, I privilege wide shots and immobility that allow space for poetic contemplation.