Shinya Tsukamoto - Biography, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Filmography (Read)

Shinya Tsukamoto - biography, date of birth, place of birth, filmography, clips.
Japanese actor, film director, screenwriter, cameraman, editor, producer and artist. Born on January 1, 1960
Shinya Tsukamoto is an iconic underground figure in Japanese cinema. He is compared to David Lynch and David Cronenberg, and is respectfully called the master of independent cinema. He actively acts in his own and other people's films. His acting career even earned him a prize for Best Supporting Actor on Mainichi Film Concours.
Shinya Tsukamoto is much more popular all over the world than in his homeland in Japan. He himself explains this by the fact that there are too many actions and few words in his films. The title of "cult" director hovers over Tsukamoto's head like a halo, although he came to the cinema, as it should be, for an art-house master, from advertising. The topic of human-technical mutation is the most important for the director, scientific and technological progress as such (on the scale that he has acquired in recent years) is clearly unpleasant to him. Tsukamoto's interest in images on the screen was awakened when, as a child, his father gave him an 8mm movie camera. Tsukamoto began filming short films with an 8mm camera at the age of 14. The first film was his 10-minute short film "Genshi-san" (1974). Studied oil painting at the university. In 1982, after passing the exams, he entered an advertising firm, where he shot commercials for television. In 1986 he left there and founded the Kaizu Theater (Theater of Sea Monsters), where he staged three plays. He was a producer, playwright, actor and director in the theater. Some of his productions were filmed with an 8mm camera, and one such film, The Adventure of Dentu Kozo, won the Grand Prix at the PIA Film Festival .
Tsukamoto's first short films, Wonderful Analog World (1987) and Hiruko-Goblin (1991), demonstrated the author's interest in avant-garde theater and cheap fiction, surreal fantasy and a sense of humor, but above all - absolute directorial amateurism. But already in 1989, Tsukamoto shoots the first full-length film, which became his calling card, his main contribution to cinema. This is "Tetsuo - Iron Man". This film was awarded the highest prize of the Fantastic Film Festival in Rome and earned him the fame and reputation of a director with his own style. Now the film "Tetsuo" is studied in universities and art schools, as an example of the so-called. "Contemporary art" .
Two years later, Tsukamoto made the less successful film Tetsuo 2: The Hammerman on the same topic. Affected by the inability or unwillingness to tell the story in an interesting and intelligible way, characteristic of directors of experimental cinematography. In connection with these films, criticism appeared to characterize Tsukamoto as "the creator of cyberpunk films." The film "Tetsuo: Hammerman" (1992) has visited many film festivals around the world, and the film "Tokyo Fist" (1995) won the Grand Prix at the Sundance Film Festival in Tokyo. The world premieres of Ballet of Bullets (1998) and Twins (1999), which won the Audience Award at the Busan International Film Festival, took place at the Venice Film Festival. A paranoid atmosphere full of anxiety, despair, fear, hopelessness is what remains in the memory of Tsukamoto's films. This atmosphere was borrowed by the director from the American "noir" of the 40s, in whose love Tsukamoto honestly confessed back in 1995, having shot the film "Tokyo Fist", the heroes of which carefully watch on TV the best "noir" of all times and peoples - "The Third man ”K. Reed.
And as the true author of "noir," Tsukamoto is an urban director; his image of a beautiful and sinister ultra-modern city, a city that is self-sufficient, not needing people - is perhaps the most impressive in modern Japanese cinema. Of course, making "pure noir" Tsukamoto is not interesting, he loves to mix genres. Even in his most integral and intelligible film "June Serpent" (2002), which has collected a lot of prizes at various festivals, the purity of the genre is not maintained. Towards the end of this brilliant neo-noir, built on the eternal motif of voyeurism for cinematography (the film contains references to the famous "Peeping Tom" by M. Powell). Tsukamoto recalls his past hobbies - and episodes appear on the screen directly from the avant-garde performance. Tokyo Fist mixes thriller, horror, family drama and even such a specific subgenre as "boxing film". It is interesting to watch such films, especially for a film lover, but it is difficult to establish emotional contact - the author always "deceives" the expectations of the viewer. However, Tsukamoto himself believes that the film should not attract, but annoy people, he likes to say that it is not the viewer who chooses the film, but the film chooses its viewers. Shinya Tsukamoto is the author of numerous, by his own definition, "cult-entertainment" films, marked by the director's unique, individual vision of the world. His work can be compared with the films of David Lynch (especially such as "Eraser Head") or Cronenberg (especially "Videodrome"). In recent years, Tsukamoto has been slowly moving towards national film traditions, which he ignored in the 90s. For him, there is no “yakuza myth” that is so important to Kitano and Miike, he did not shoot fashionable “city quaidans” like the movie “The Ring”. Already in The June Serpent, Tsukamoto wittily combined the pictorial stereotypes of noir with the Japanese visual tradition. The whole film creates the proper anxious-depressive mood. At the same time, for the first time in his practice, Tsukamoto builds many shots in the spirit of classic Japanese cinema: frontally placed characters against the background of a door or window opening, behind which streams of rain are pouring. It's not like Kurosawa, here you will remember Ozu too. Such films by Tsukamoto as "Twins", "June Serpent", "Vital" marked the director's shift to a more traditional art-house, and are shown not only at "genre" festivals, but also in various programs of the Venice IFF. A monograph about Tsukamoto has been published in the USA with a binding title: "The Cinematography of Shinya Tsukamoto". In his interviews, the director claims that he does not differentiate between his early cheap independent films and the films he has shot in recent years - in cool studios with "stars" in the lead roles. S. Tsukamoto: “Sex and violence are fundamental elements of all my films. In the most vulgar, I want to show something pure, noble, sympathetic. All my films talk about the fear of a person in a big city. I want the viewer to hear the faint cries of the heroes coming from the bottom of the darkness. "
Interestingly, Shinya Tsukamoto considers his main film not to be "Tetsuo", but a more traditional film "June Serpent", to which he went, in his words, all 15 years of his work in cinema. In 1997 he was a member of the jury at the Venice Film Festival, where five years later he received a special jury prize for the film "The June Serpent". In 2003 he was named "Best Supporting Actor". Shinya Tsukamoto has starred as an actor in a number of films by Takashi Miike, Go Riju, and other famous directors.

All Information About: Shinya Tsukamoto - Biography, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Filmography.
Author: Jane Watson