The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin)

C. W. Winter, Anders Edström, USA/S/J/GB 2020, 480 min, OmeU 

‘The Works and Days’ by Anders Edström and C. W. Winter is a 480-minute film shot in 27 weeks, over a 14-month period, in a small mountain village in Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. The numbers and dates alone are not enough to indicate what kind of singular cinematographic offering it is. The title of the film refers to Hesiod’s epic didactic poem “Works and Days,” written circa 700 B.C.: “The first rule in agriculture is that you should never hope for an easy way. The land demands your effort.”
Thus, the film describes the seasons in agriculture, sowing, tending and harvesting as the cycle of human existence and establishes a complex space of exchange: of locals and guests, document and fiction, photography and cinema, image and non-image, sound and music. »The Works and Days« is a film that negotiates the perpetually new envisioning, experiencing, describing and understanding of landscape and the constant passing of time. (bs)
“In a way, the film is also a love letter to cinemas. To the time one spends in them, to the memories one builds in them. Of collective experiences one has and communities one forms. Of the realization that there are much better chairs and much better protagonists in the film world than in the art world, for example. And the desire to use all these factors to create an extended experience. A film that you can kind of live in for a day.” (C. W. Winter)

We will screen the film with two fifteen-minute intermissions and one forty-five-minute intermission. Before the start of both screenings, in collaboration with the restaurants »Hokkai« and »Ume No Hana«, we offer to pre-order Japanese food for the long break.