Innovative Curatorial Projects – Paris / SingaporeYuki Kawamura
*1979, Sapporo, Japan. Lives and works in Paris.
A video artist strongly influenced by his own Japanese culture, Yuki Kawaruma’s work is characterized by its purist and minimalist approach that nevertheless comes across as both poetic and dreamlike. Fragile and luminous images are interweaved in the search for memory and eternal unfading beauty.
Grandmother / France - Japan / 2009 / 36' / 16:9
The grandmother of filmmaker Yuki Kawamura dies after spending fifty days in a coma; with the whole family we accompany her through this journey. It is an opportunity for each and everyone to reflect upon mourning, and beyond that, upon life, its multiple forms, its disappearance as well as its inexhaustible resources, and the signs of its infinite diversity. Life's beauty is in water, mist and foam, in lichens and trees, in this grandmother's dying face, and in her family's care, affection and joking, in her children's every world, every breath. (Grand Prize short film category, Cinéma du Réel 2010).
Senko / France - Japan / 2008 / 37 / 16:9
A young Japanese family is confronted with their mother’s illness. This impressive short film shows us in deeply symbolic images how Yu and his father deal with the possibility of death, and how it affects a small child's vision of life.
Lethe / Japan / 2005 / 4’ / 4:3
Two lovers swim in the river Lethe, the river of forgetfulness and oblivion. In Greek mythology, the river Lethe flowed through the Underworld, where all those who drank from it experienced complete forgetfulness. The lovers never meet and thus drift apart. A girl dives into the river to forget an unhappy love.