In partnership with PAN and Café Oto we're thrilled to welcome Joji Koyama and Tujiko Noriko to present the London premiere of their new film Kuro. This screening will be preceded by a special matinee performance by Tujiko Noriko at Café Oto at 2pm. 

"When we first decided to "split" the film into what might be described as two parallel layers – the narrated story and the visual story – we found that it opened up an "in-between" space, a space where what is heard and seen continually wrestle with one another. We envisaged that the true setting of the film would emerge from this friction, as something imagined and projected by the audience. After a few screenings we were struck by how some audience members would refer to scenes or events in the film that, for us, did not take place… We both thought of the music of Kuro as a score to this space in-between." – Joji Koyama

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Parallel Programme

Off-site matinee performance by Tujiko Noriko & Isambard Khroustaliov at Café Oto.

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Kuro
Joji Koyama & Tujiko Noriko, 2017, 84 min 

Kuro tells the tale of Romi, a Japanese woman living in the suburbs of Paris with her paraplegic lover Milou. Tending to Milou by day and working in a karaoke bar by night, Romi reminisces about a time she and Milou once lived together in Japan with a mysterious ailing man named Mr. Ono. Weaving together personal history, anecdotes and myths, her stories soon turn ominous, reflected as the narrated story and the visual story diverge to reveal an ambiguous space which is subtly coloured and accentuated by the soundtrack’s suggestive daubs of ambient electronics and burnished instrumental tones.

"The premise for Kuro stemmed from our desire to portray the volatility of the ways in which we grapple with what is unknowable. As we wrote the script, we became interested in our need for narrative to make sense of our lives, and how stories become a kind of fragile architecture through which we navigate our understanding of the world. […] We wanted to explore and dramatize the push and pull of Romi’s struggle to give form and meaning to her experience." – Joji Koyama and Tujiko Noriko

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Joji Koyama is a Berlin-based filmmaker, animator and graphic artist. His short films, animations and music videos have screened internationally, winning awards at the London Short Film Festival and British Animation Awards.

Tujiko Noriko is a Paris-based musician, singer, songwriter and filmmaker. To date she has released over seventeen highly regarded albums for labels including Editions Mego, PAN, Tomlab, Fat Cat and Room 40.

Kuro (OST) is the inaugural release of Entopia, the soundtrack-focussed offshoot of PAN. The series will survey critical works across the spectrum from musical composers on PAN and beyond, commissioned for the worlds of film, art, performance, installation works, theatre, dance and fashion.

More info:
https://delinear.p-a-n.org
www.cafeoto.co.uk