Kabukimono

2010, 6 minutes

A symbolic story of the perfect couple, in Kabuki style.

Kabukimono is a five minute film, cut live (edited) in the studios at the London College of Communications. It is a collaboration between LCC's Film & TV program, and the London College of Fashion hair and make-up, costume design and tech effects programs. The idea for the film was conceived straight away, by three words given at the beginning of the term. Ours were:Surreal, Kabuki and Romance. -Surrealism we chose to express on the set, light, and costume designs. We chose to explore elements of the sea for inspiration, as well as organic, earthy, mineral motifs to give impressions of extreme age. We also have visual representations of sensations and themes, all surreally weaving in and out of each other, like tubes and lumps. -Kabuki was explored mostly in the writing. The tempo (slow-medium-fast), the five act structure and the themes in the film are all derived, or inspired by the Japanese traditional form of theater, with a double lover's suicide and the creation myths being commonly explored and used as metaphors for human emotions. The title "Kabukimono" apparently means "those who are strangely dressed". The choice of using an all female cast was also intentional, because in the early years, Kabuki was mostly performed by women. Later on, that changed to only men, and now it is mix gender again (I think?). We also didn't stick rigidly to the visual code of Kabuki because we didn't want to offend the actual art itself, enough to be using it as a backbone :) -Finally, the piece is a Romance. It tells the story of the perfect couple, Etic and Emic, living their happy life of symbiosis. Two parts of the same whole. Their names derive from Anthropology and other social sciences, and are terms for two observable streams of information concerning the human behaviour. Emic being the "native", or he who is involved as a participating member in a culture, and Etic is the foreign observer, he who observes and is capable of telling the story to the world. (Roughly...)


Companies involved in this production


Connected mandy members:

Fleur Poad
Actor
Emic