The Producers
Director - Masaaki Miyazawa. Born in Tokyo in 1960, Masaaki graduated the Faculty of Arts at Nihon University. "Ten Nights of Dreams" used infrared photography and won NY ICP's first rookie of the year. "In Between Mountains and Oceans" is his first film. It has been very successful in Japan and was also nominated for 2015 Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival and won the Best Foreign Feature Documentary at Madrid International Film Festival.
Producer - Yusuke Kamata. Yusuke is an independent film producer based in Japan. Until 2009, he resided in New York City for about 12 years. He worked as a TV news director for Fuji TV and NHK, and later became a producer at local independent film production company, Gigantic Pictures. Since he moved back to Japan, he has produced a variety of films and TV dramas and documentaries. His recent works include, "Bungo" (Japanese literary legends), and “Graceland" (directed by Ron Morales).
Making The Film
"The deity makes an equal treatment for everyone and everything". It is my starting point of the journey when I heard this comment from a Shinto priest at Ise Grand Shrine. I have found that my country has two thousand years of history where people have lived together with forest through cyclic regeneration. This documentary is a compilation of my ten-year journey of seeking the deep root of our culture. (Masaaki Miyazawa)
Every twenty years the sacred Japanese temple of Ise Jingu is rebuilt entirely from scratch. Its creation involves both huge scale and absolute attention to detail - and it takes the full twenty years to build. It's an endless cycle, time slowed down, classic Japanese. This doc contrasts traditional Japanese wisdom against the impact of modern life as celebrated photographer Masaaki Miyazawa brings his theme to life with riveting panache.