Born in 1982 in Otawara, Tochigi Prefecture, Watanabe Hirobumi majored in Japanese literature in college and, after graduation, entered Japan Academy of Moving Images. His graduation project, the 41-minute film The Light Pig of August (Hachigatsu no Karui Buta), won the Grand Prix at the Fuji Film Lovers Festa, as well as other honors.
In 2013 he teamed with his brother Yuji, a film composer, to launch Foolish Piggies Films in his native Otawara. Their first production was also Watanabe’s first feature film, And the Mud Ship Sails Away... The film premiered at the 26th Tokyo International Film Festival and was screened widely abroad. It was released theatrically in Japan in December of 2014.
His second film, 7 Days, won the Best Picture prize in the Japanese Cinema Splash section of the 28th Tokyo International Film Festival. It was invited to many other festivals, winning the Nippon Vision Jury Award at the 17th Nippon Connection festival. After that Watanabe released at least one film a year, always with Watanabe Yuji as composer and Bang Woo-hyun as cinematographer.
But on his most recent film, I’m Really Good (2020), Watanabe served as his own cameraman. It is also his first feature in which his grandmother, who died last year at age 102, does not appear. After nearly a decade of consistency, with many of the same people behind and in front of the camera, Watanabe’s career seems to be reaching a turning point.
– How do you feel about the FEFF Watanabe Hirobumi section?
We’re really happy and really surprised that the FEFF is presenting a Foolish Piggies Films section. The four films that are showing – Party ‘Round the Globe (2018), Life Finds a Way (2018), Cry (2019), and I’m Really Good (2020) – are all important to us. I’m deeply honoured that our latest film I’m Really Good, which we made together with Japanese children, was selected for a world premiere screening at the FEFF. I’d like to express my thanks to the staff, the cast, the children who appeared in the film and everyone connected with the Udine festival.
– It’s a shame that you won’t be able to make it to Udine this year.
It’s really regrettable that we won’t be able to come to Italy due to the worldwide coronavirus crisis. Italy is a country that we’ve long wanted to visit, a country that has given birth to many great film artists that we love and admire. We love Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, Michelangelo Antonioni, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Sergio Leone, Dario Argento, Giulietta Masina, Marcello Mastroianni, Carlo Di Palma, Nino Rota and Ennio Morricone. For us to have our films shown in a country we’ve dreamed about so much is lucky – there’s no other word for it. We hope that people in Udine and Italy enjoy the four strange little Japanese films we made.
– You’ve appeared in all of your films except the first one. Still, the mystery of who the “real” Watanabe Hirobumi is remains. Are you trying to express something about the unknowability of human beings by appearing in different guises? Or is this one of your comic methods?
In our films one of the big themes is the question of what human beings are. The more you question human existence, and the more you try to know and understand it, the stranger and more baffling it becomes. You can never get a grip on it. In both a good sense and a bad sense, human existence is a fascinating subject. Investigating this question is extremely tough and difficult work. It’s work that has no end. There’s nothing more interesting to do.
I started appearing in my own films with 7 Days, the second production of Foolish Piggies Films. When I was young, I wanted to be an actor, so I took a test to enter Mumeijuku, the acting school run by Nakadai Tatsuya, the actor known for his work in the films of Kurosawa Akira. I was a hopeless failure. Thinking I had no qualifications to be an actor, I later studied to become a film director, with no plans to appear in films or act in plays. Then I started a film production collective with my brother Watanabe Yuji, who is a composer. To keep making small independent films, I felt it was necessary for me to appear as an actor in the films I directed. That way it was easier to persuade my family and friends to appear in them.
– How do you feel about your acting?
We’ve had worries and stress and faced various hurdles, but we’ve finally able to generate a lot of good results for our film production collective by having me appear as an actor in our films. In the end I’m a film director, so to be honest it’s scary to be called on to act or perform comedy. Fortunately, I’ve recently had more chances to be cast as an actor in other directors’ films. This makes me happy, but it also makes me realise how strange life is. I like being on the sets of films other than my own. Watching other directors work has been a great learning experience for me. When I am cast, it is often for roles as a sumo wrestler, or a villain or a weirdo. I would like to keep appearing in movies if I have the chance.
As a director I always look forward to meeting new actors. When actors everyone knows appear in your film, the audience can watch with a certain confidence, and you can rely on steady box office results. But I always want to use actors that no one knows, and people who may not be professional actors. They often have something about them that is interesting on a human level. I always try to keep an eye out for wonderful new talent.
– Your brother Yuji provides music for all your films. How do you work together?
Music director Watanabe Yuji and cinematographer Bang Woo-hyun are both members of Foolish Piggies Films and they are both people I trust completely when I make a film. It’s no exaggeration to say that they are the friends I trust most in the world, and the artists whose work I most respect. The films of Foolish Piggies Films would have never have happened without them. With them involved, I can continue to make films freely.
– Do you discuss films with your brother?
I often talk about movies with Yuji. We talk about everything from ideas for new films to our impressions of films we’ve seen. Of course, we’ve had differences of opinion any number of times while we are making films, but I have hardly any memories of us clashing or quarreling. As a composer Yuji gives his full effort. He has an extremely rich knowledge of music, and an inexhaustible supply of techniques that allow him to express himself musically. His high level of technical skill allows him to do sophisticated work. I’ve learned a lot from him.
– How do you plan the music for each film?
Making music for a film is a challenge, and we examine and thoroughly discuss various possibilities about how we can use it to breathe life into the movie. The more we make films, the stricter and tougher we’ve become with our work.
– What is your relationship with your hometown of Otawara? Are you a local hero, or do people still misunderstand you? Do you have trouble getting support from the government?
As shown in Life Finds a Way, we get no financial support from the government. But people have still cooperated with us. The residents of Otawara have appeared in our films, allowed us to shoot on location, answered our research questions, and helped us with screenings. We are really grateful to the people of Otawara. In that sense, the relationship between Otawara and Foolish Piggies Films is strong.
But if you ask me if I’ve become a local hero in Otawara, the answer is unfortunately no. When I go for a walk in Otawara I’m hit with disrespectful comments like, “Mr. Watanabe, please make films that are easier to understand.” That makes me think, “Shut up, you idiot,” but at the same time I like the feeling of being in Otawara. Sometimes, though, I’d really like to kick some ass. A lot of people in Otawara have not yet seen my films, so I have to keep trying so that more will see them.
– Are you worried that indie films will disappear due to the world crisis? What has to be done so that Japanese indie films can survive?
I worry every day about the effect the world coronavirus crisis will have on films as a whole. Everyone is worried, I think. But human beings have experienced major crises again and again in the course of history, and forms of artistic expression have continued to be born even in the depths of a crisis. That has been proved over and over in the history of humanity and the history of art. Worry and anxiety about Japanese indie films disappearing has grown in the current coronavirus crisis. But problems with Japanese films unrelated to the crisis have been around for some time now. I can’t say in a word or two what Japanese indies need to do to survive.
– How has it affected Foolish Piggies Films?
Speaking of ourselves, we are continuing to make new films, even as I am giving this interview. We have made seven films since launching Foolish Piggies Films seven years ago, but all of them have been indie films made with no guarantee that they’ll be shown. How have we been able to keep making indie films without anyone asking us to, without anything expected of us and without the prospect of making money or having our films shown? Well, we always have films we want to make, we have a lot of things we want to say, and we have new forms of expression we want to try. So we are constantly thinking about how to make those kinds of films.
It’s important for the film world as a whole to search for ways to overcome the crisis and survive. But speaking for myself as an artist, I think that in the end surviving or not surviving is a problem for the individual filmmaker more than for the film world as a whole. If you’re a filmmaker you may face various crises, but if you have one body and one camera you can keep making films and somehow or other get them shown.
What will disappear will disappear and what won’t disappear won’t disappear. What won’t survive won’t survive and what will survive will survive. As someone who has somehow survived on the fringes of the film world, I am worried that I might disappear tomorrow. Meanwhile, as an individual human being I have fought to keep making films.
– Do you think Otawara will always be the theme of your films? Or are you thinking of changing direction, for instance, making films abroad?
Otawara in Tochigi Prefecture is where I was born and raised, and where my friends and family are, so Otawara is an important theme of my films. But it’s something of an exaggeration to say that it will be my “eternal theme.” The biggest reason I have kept shooting films in Otawara is my late grandmother, Hirayama Misao, whom I lived with for 38 years. The desire to leave behind films as a proof that she lived lay behind all the works of Foolish Piggies Films until recently. She appeared in all six of our films from And the Mud Ship Sails Away... to Cry, but she died at the age of 102 in 2019.
Since the death of my beloved grandmother I’ve been thinking of how to change the films made by Foolish Piggies bit by bit. It’s something we have to do.
– What about I’m Really Good ?
I’m Really Good, which will have its world premiere at the FEFF, is a completely new start for us, so in that sense it’s an important film. Foolish Piggies will continue to make new films that follow in the footsteps of film history and learn from it. I would also like to shoot abroad.
I hope that the coronavirus is suppressed as quickly as possible and that the day will soon come when we can make new films of a type no one has seen, while associating with various kinds of people who have various national values. In that sense, it’s really regrettable that I had to give up going to Italy because of the coronavirus. I wanted to meet the fans who came to our films and mix with film people. I’ve also heard that the food and wine at the FEFF are the best in the world! I will keep trying to make better films so that my new films and I can be invited to Udine, and I am looking forward to the day when I can meet all of you!
Mark Schilling