ASK? film festival.

It is a three part series, each lasting only 6 days. In week one, Ryoko Yamaguchi returns to ASK?, having won the competition last year, with three short stop frame animations. Fire is an eight minute film.

It shows a task performer in a darkened room burning matches and staring into the digitally manipulated flame. With each new match the flicker grows larger and expands into images: a pond surface, bright daytime meadow landscape, sky, fish in the pond. Eventually the little match flicker turns into a full screen picture and then again as the match dies out the room becomes dark. Finally another match causes fireworks. The “actor” seems to like it and extends the pleasant daydreaming session by burning a candle. The fireworks keep exploding until the candle dies and the task performer snaps out of her daydream.

The second short entitled One Leaf is also about daydreaming. It’s built around an object. This time the object evoking images is an orange, autumn leaf. A hand moves the leaf back and forth creating a sort of a crater with an afterimage. This is accompanied by quick changes in the background image– landscapes, flowers. At the end the leaf reveals that it’s been shading the task performer form the sun.

The third film is called Turn. It spans a longer period of time, perhaps a day. The object stirring the imagination here is a piece of fruit, a freshly picked fig, which raised against the sun turns into a glass ball. It distorts the image and takes the viewer to different locations. The artist now begins to play with time, in addition to light. Timelapse photography takes the viewer through the daytime light situations.

The music is subtly present and it’s not overpowering the image or the sound effects: footsteps, flowing water, chirping birds and the ever present cicadas.

Yamaguchi’s works: it’s the city, nature, light and daydreaming.