| Gakuryū Ishii | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 15, 1957 Fukuoka, Japan |
| Other names | Sōgo Ishii |
| Occupation | Film director |
| Website | |
| http://www.ishiisogo-gakuryu.com | |
Gakuryū Ishii (石井 岳龍 Ishii Gakuryū, born January 15, 1957), formerly Sōgo Ishii (石井 聰互 Ishii Sōgo) is a Japanese filmmaker known for his striking visuals and sometimes outlandish subject matter.
Ishii was born in Fukuoka City, Fukuoka Prefecture, and is a graduate of Fukuoka Prefectural Fukuoka High School and Nihon University College of Art.
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Soon after entering university in 1976, he made his first 8 mm film with the aid of friends, a short work titled Panic in High School (高校大パニック). The film, about a student rebellion when a school's administration refuses to acknowledge complicity for a student's suicide, garnered him attention outside of school and was released theatrically.
For his graduation project, he filmed Crazy Thunder Road (狂い咲きサンダーロード) (1980), again directed with friends of his who were in biker gangs. This film was a based on the Bōsōzoku aesthetic, and enthralled film studio Toho such that they struck 35 mm prints of the 16 mm film and released it theatrically. It was widely considered controversial, and the Japanese film board Eirin condemned it for presenting violence sympathetically.
In 1982, he directed Burst City (爆裂都市), a stylish action film about a wild gang of quasi-mutant bikers who ride into a town staging protests against the construction of a nearby nuclear reactor plant. The film starred members of Japanese punk bands The Roosters, The Rockers, The Stalin and Inu, among others. He became a favorite among rebel and punk cineastes in Japan. The film is also credited as a precursor to the underground Japanese Cyberpunk movement that emerged later in the decade.[1]
In 1984, Ishii directed his most widely-acclaimed movie to that point, The Crazy Family (逆噴射家族), the title of which literally translates to The Back-Firing Family (or more crudely, "the fucked-up family"). A savage satire of Japanese family life, it depicted an average household (mother, father, son, daughter, and later grandfather) moving into a new Tokyo home, only to have their perfect life collapse due to pressures from within and without. The daughter obsesses over her singing career; the nominally-demure wife does table-dances for the guests; the son stabs himself to stay awake during his exam-cram sessions; the father digs a giant hole in the living room floor, finds termites, buys ant poison and tries to kill everyone en masse. The film garnered the Grand Prix at the Saruso Film Festival.
For the next ten years Ishii made few films, other than various shorts and the Einstürzende Neubauten concert film Halber Mensch. In 1994 he returned with his first feature-length film in ten years, Angel Dust (エンジェル・ダスト), about a female psychological profiler trying to find a serial killer who murders a young woman every Monday at six P.M. on the Yamanote commuter line.
In 1995 Ishii made August in the Water (水の中の八月), which dealt with a teenage girl gaining supernatural powers after a mishap and using same to better understand her purpose in life. In a similarly mystical vein was 1997's Labyrinth of Dreams (ユメノ銀河), wherein a bus conductor discovers that her driver may in fact be a serial murderer.
In 2000 Ishii made Gojoe: Spirit War Chronicle (五条霊戦記), a samurai epic that combined both his original hyperkinetic filmmaking approach (violence, wild editing and camera movements) with his newer, more stately concerns (man's place in the universe). A spectacularly-photographed, revisionist retelling of the legends of Saito Musashibo Benkei and Yoshitsune, it recast the two as mortal enemies destined to clash on the bridge named Gojoe. The swordplay, choreographed by a member of the Chinese opera, brought to mind ballet fused with conventional chanbara fighting styles. Opinions over the film were divided in Japan: some lambasted it for being a trashing of conventional myth, while others praised it for being an imaginative re-envisioning and retelling of a well-worn story.
Ishii also directed Electric Dragon 80.000 V in the same year, a low-budget, black-and-white 50 minute short about two superheroes, "Dragon Eye Morrison" and "Electric Buddha", who clash in nighttime Tokyo. The film starred two actors who also appeared in Gojoe: Spirit War Chronicle, Tadanobu Asano and Masatoshi Nagase.
In 2003 Ishii released Dead End Run, a collection of three short films each revolving around the concept of reaching a "dead end." Asano and Nagase again starred.
In a blog entry dated January 17th 2010[2], Ishii announced that he had changed his pseudonym from Sōgo Ishii to Gakuryū Ishii. He had decided to change it in 2001, and intended to reveal it with the announcement of his next feature-length film following Gojoe: Spirit War Chronicle. Unfortunately he was subsequently unable to make another feature, and the opportunity escaped him. Later in 2010, production was announced for a new feature entitled "Ikite iru Mono wa Inai no ka", at which time he also publicly revealed his name change. The kanji character for "gaku" means "mountain," and the character for "ryu" means "dragon." This is the inspiration for the name of his new production company, Dragon Mountain.
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