Winter Oranges

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Audience Rating: (1) login to rate this Embed		Directed by Rob Nilsson Written by Rob Nilsson Produced by Hideyuki Miyaoka Rob Nilsson Tazz Nishihara Kevin Michael Winterfield Genre Drama Asian Foreign Runtime: 73 min Release Date: September 2007 Advisory: Nudity Filmmaker's Website Send to Friends URL:
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Plot Outline

Winter Oranges, directed by Rob Nilsson, winner of the Camera d'Or at Cannes and the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, follows the life of Ryuki who lives on Sagi, a small island off the coast of Hiroshima. His ancestors have always grown oranges and scallions but Ryuki is tired of all that.

Although his wife Kaori is expecting their first child, Ryuki dreams about going to Tokyo to work in the theatre. He wanders the island distracted but inspired by Basho, a wandering Japanese poet from the 17th Century.

But with modern instant communication what does travel mean? Can we really get away from anything any longer? And now Ryuki meets temptation in the person of a visiting Tokyo journalist and her friend, who come to Sagi to view the mythical "Winter Orange" festival.

Moody as a Basho Haiku, the film is about Ryuki’s decision. Should he stay with what he has always known or venture into the world to take his chances? In the end the unanswered question is asked in each viewer’s heart.

Filmmaker Notes

Winter Oranges was shot on a three-day schedule, with the cast improvising most of their dialogue.

Rob Nilsson shoots his films with the Direct Action Cinema philosophy, which he describes as:

In my Direct Action lab the story which occurs to me, coming from God knows where, is only a starting point, a road map, a pithy suggestion of a juicy outcome. If I were writing a novel, I’d write it, edit it, worry it to death, and it would come from inside me, onto the page, and into your minds through the medium of language.

But if it’s a film, I have many more tricks up my sleeve, many more arrows in my quiver to employ, a totally different set of possibilities to explore, wider and more fertile collaborations to manage. My idea is: the more open my process in the beginning, the more options I will have for form, structure, and content in the end.

Therefore, I don’t write scripts. Most of the time. SIGNAL 7 and HEAT AND SUNLIGHT didn’t have scripts. STROKE, HUSHED, SINGING, and SCHEME, the new 9@NIGHT features, don’t have scripts. They have what I call scenarios: descriptions of a film idea, scene order, character suggestions. Rehearsals consist of improvising the character’s back story at great length, taking as much time as possible to give actors on-location experience (as opposed to intellectualized ideas) of their characters. The ideal is to do all of this out in the world in front of cameras. Then one day the back story ends and the film begins. Nothing changes, but now we’re making the movie. I have set the actors, cameras, art directors and other creators free into their cinematic world. I am still a sort of puppeteer, yes, but a puppeteer who wants to set the puppets free.

Wants to, but never quite does.

Castlist
Ryuki Tenmaya
Naori Nakata
Hinako Atsumi

Cinematographers
Tazz Nishihara

Film Editors
Chikara Motomura
Marshall Spight