Yuri Obitani
Directing
Biography
Yuri OBITANI, born in Kamakura in 1964, is now a composer and filmmaker. In his current projects, he explores the relationships between sound, visuality, kinetics and linguistics.
Known For
A somewhat perverted man who has a peculiar interest in hair starts dating a female artist who opens her own exhibition of pubic hair gathered from men she had slept with. Their abnormal relationship is established by exchanging visual letters shot on 8mm.
The Hair Opera

"Over 8" is a joint project from a Shimokitazawa theater and young directors to create new wave films. Their latest is an omnibus film on the theme of "nakedness," directed by five up-and-coming directors. The producer is Shu Kageyama, who has worked with directors Shozin Fukui and Hideaki Anno on their films as one of the main crew members. Truth, emotional problems, trauma, desire, minority....some things can only be fully revealed through "nakedness." Come and witness the freshly-told stories of five vividly different colors and styles, all about "nakedness."
Naked Over 8
Two disaffected hoodlums, one of them of Korean ancestry; his sister, her girlfriend, and a mad scooter girl. The failure of their relationships as a critique of modern Japan.
Fufu the Worldweary

A film correspondence between Yuri Obitani and Ming-Yu Lee, between Tokyo and Taipei, starting from 2019 to 2021. In the era of the pandemic, they communicate and understand each other through letter films.
Correspondence

The second episode from the "Mystic Tube" series ascertains the variations of "transitions of the reverberations as the sound sources are moved" with continuing the same basic simple plot of "pilgrims pass through a tunnel, playing music as they make their way to their destination". This episode is about the four pilgrims who are led into a high-key sunbeam. The drones and Mevrevic riff in three different folk flutes (Quena, Shinobue, Suling) are intoxicated under the interference of the fluorescences, still, the four continue with their pilgrimage.
Mystic Tube #2: Number of Fluorescents

Production and sale of Fujichrome RT200 sound film stock ended in 1999. It was the ultimate analogue technology allowing audio to be simultaneously recorded. As the director develops his film shot with expired RT200 stock, unique visuals and sounds begin to emerge.
Sound Hunting

Flower psychedelia accompanied by the droning cry of a young boy X as he drowns in tens of thousands of cosmos flowers swaying in the wind.
An Acid Field

Fragments of scenes from the lives of men and women who are tormented and bullied appear in this film. Using the film camera as a medium, the film attempts to objectify the never-ending time of their lives, but in fact the actions that unfold here are staged in order to generate a physical voice, and at times it seems that it is the landscape itself that witnesses their actions.
Benighted but Not Begun

An episode from the "Mystic Tube" series continues the same simple basic plot of “a pilgrim passes through a tunnel, playing music as he makes his way to his destination”. This work shares the same technique and form as AN ACID FIELD or WILD SHAMAN MAIDEN described above, but its theme is limited to “the changes in the echo of a sound as its mix in the dark as the harmonies of the drone made by a chanting pilgrim and its harmonic overtones evolve inside the 650meter tunnel with its reverberations that last more than 10 seconds.
Mystic Tube #1: Swinging, Escaping

An episode about a morbid man who is nervously frustrated by a small animal, supposedly a cat intruding his own property (land).
Your Intruder

An eight minute romp in the grass shot from a low angle and a subjective point of view as a small child or a stray dog, in which the main character young boy X who blows a melodica.
Wild Shaman Maiden

"I in-scene" met a boy again to smell the fragrance of the tide, and to count a wave. ...Features a meditative and obsessive drone just produced for no reward, in the name of the place by the ringing of dhonipattro (begging bowls) of two monks on a pilgrimage by the sea and a melodica boy.
Hora Paramita

Speaking of French cinema, we can only see Un homme et une femme or Les 400 coups but what is 'French Cinema in general'. So I tried to make this film. What makes French cinema 'French Cinema'? What is France? France! That is not Italy. Much less Japan!!
French Cinema

Divergence between cameraman and sound man in tense street scene.