Tribeca 2011: Meet The Sexy Kappa From Shinji Imaoka's UNDERWATER LOVE
The Tribeca Film Festival is getting a taste of pinku in this year's Cinemania program. And not just any pinku, this one's a full on fantasy musical with cinematography by acclaimed DP Christopher Doyle.
For the uninitiated, pinku is a subtype of softcore porn unique to Japan. These films have been used - among other things - as a proving ground for directors for years and the number of prominent talents that have rolled through the pinku world is pretty staggering. Hideo Nakata (Ringu) and Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure) have both spent time in pinku circles as did the director of Oscar winning Departures (Yojiro Takita) has pinku titles such as the lewdly titled Groper Train on his resume.
The appeal is pretty clear on both sides. For producers it's a low cost, low risk way of seeing whether a director can produce on schedule and on budget. For directors the appeal lies in the immense freedom the genre offers. Keep under budget and supply the requisite amount of t&a and you're otherwise free to do pretty much whatever you want.
And what pinku icon Shinji Imaoka has done with Underwater Love is to create a full on fantasy musical involving cross species sex between human women and kappa males - the kappa being an iconic turtle like creature from Japanese folklore. And he did this on a shoot that lasted just over five days from start to finish with frequent Wong Kar Wai collaborator Christopher Doyle manning the cameras and with special effects from Yoshihiro Nishimura's creature shop. We've run material from this one before but you can get a gander at the first clear shot of one of the creatures up above.
For the uninitiated, pinku is a subtype of softcore porn unique to Japan. These films have been used - among other things - as a proving ground for directors for years and the number of prominent talents that have rolled through the pinku world is pretty staggering. Hideo Nakata (Ringu) and Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure) have both spent time in pinku circles as did the director of Oscar winning Departures (Yojiro Takita) has pinku titles such as the lewdly titled Groper Train on his resume.
The appeal is pretty clear on both sides. For producers it's a low cost, low risk way of seeing whether a director can produce on schedule and on budget. For directors the appeal lies in the immense freedom the genre offers. Keep under budget and supply the requisite amount of t&a and you're otherwise free to do pretty much whatever you want.
And what pinku icon Shinji Imaoka has done with Underwater Love is to create a full on fantasy musical involving cross species sex between human women and kappa males - the kappa being an iconic turtle like creature from Japanese folklore. And he did this on a shoot that lasted just over five days from start to finish with frequent Wong Kar Wai collaborator Christopher Doyle manning the cameras and with special effects from Yoshihiro Nishimura's creature shop. We've run material from this one before but you can get a gander at the first clear shot of one of the creatures up above.
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