Since her debut in Tetsuya Nakashima’s acclaimed characteristic Confessions (2010) as a schoolgirl, Ai Hashimoto, 25, has constructed a powerful filmography, to say nothing of her tv work, modeling and singing profession (she’s signed to Sony Music).
The native of Kumamoto on Japan’s southern island of Kyushu has proven her versatility in showing in the whole lot from the horror of Sadako (2019) to the musical of Great World Finish (2015), by means of to the year-long historic drama Attain Past the Blue Sky, presently operating on public broadcaster NHK.
Whereas there have been ambassadors in years passed by on the Tokyo fest from the model-singer-actress mould who appeared to have little greater than a passing curiosity within the artwork of cinema, Hashimoto is clearly minimize from a unique fabric. Considerate and articulate, her love for movie is palpably real.
The Hollywood Reporter sat down with Hashimoto for a fast chat simply earlier than she stepped out onto the crimson carpet to ask concerning the that means of movie throughout the pandemic, gender equality within the Japanese trade and the place movies ought to actually be watched.
What does it imply to you to be the ambassador for the Tokyo competition this 12 months and what does cinema imply for you personally?
Over time, I’ve been fortunate sufficient for a lot of movies I’ve appeared in to have been screened on the competition, and I’ve been right here many occasions to observe movies as a member of the viewers, so it’s an occasion that I really feel an in depth connection to. So to lastly get the possibility to be the ambassador for the competition was fulfilling a giant want. Movies have helped me throughout tough occasions, and there have been durations once I skilled loneliness and I might go to the cinema on daily basis on my own. Movies actually have taught me loads of necessary issues about life.
How important is it for the movie trade for Tokyo to be internet hosting a competition throughout occasions like these?
It’s not solely movies, the entire leisure trade has been struggling over these almost two years. Little by little, it appears like we’re seeing the sunshine on the finish of the tunnel now, so to have the ability to maintain a competition, an occasion like this, actually does have that means for everybody concerned. It appears like a supply of hope. And looking out on the lineup, there are a great deal of attention-grabbing Japanese movies and abroad productions from administrators I’m not accustomed to. So it’s an exquisite factor that everybody, even people who find themselves not essentially movie lovers, can get entry to those motion pictures.
And the way did the pandemic affect your work and also you as a movie fan?
Though some productions had been delayed, folks did one way or the other hold making movies. Not one of the movies I used to be concerned in had been cancelled, which I feel displays how a lot ardour folks within the trade have for filmmaking. Nonetheless, the variety of movies from abroad being screened did fall and I couldn’t get to film theaters a lot. However with the discharge of each Japanese and overseas movies being delayed, it made me understand how necessary that occasion is. One thing that we took without any consideration – the opening of a movie – now felt form of miraculous. It made me assume extra deeply about what movies imply to us.
Tokyo not too long ago grew to become the primary movie competition in Asia to signal the Collectif 50/50 pledge. What are your ideas on that and the way the motion in the direction of gender equality is progressing within the Japanese leisure trade and the way a lot has it modified within the decade since your debut?
It has been a state of affairs the place fundamental rights that individuals ought to have possessed, they didn’t, together with as that pertains to gender. So the state of affairs is that lastly what ought to have been the pure state of affairs is turning into actuality. In a way, we’re simply getting in the direction of the beginning line, nevertheless it’s necessary that extra folks at the moment are acutely aware of those points and that is starting to occur. After all, that is very complicated and cuts throughout all areas of society and life, not simply the leisure enterprise.
There are a selection of influential and proficient creators corresponding to Shinji Aoyama and Hirokazu Kore-eda who’re very acutely aware about this and mirror that of their filmmaking and the issues they are saying. That’s actually heartwarming, that it’s not solely girls preventing for this however males supporting it as nicely.
I’ve felt modifications within the trade. As an actor, we are typically handled nicely, however once I take a look at the crew and different workers… there have at all times been extra males, and the proportion of movies that I’ve been in that had feminine administrators is extraordinarily low. I feel individuals are extra acutely aware about this and the atmosphere is getting higher, however there nonetheless stays loads of work to be accomplished.
How do you see the rise of streaming providers impacting Japan’s movie trade and would you contemplate a suggestion from one of many platforms?
Truly, I’m engaged on a manufacturing for certainly one of them now nevertheless it’s not introduced but so I can’t speak about it. I really feel like it’s the shift to a brand new period that we’re in. I see the deserves of having the ability to see loads of completely different motion pictures and it being straightforward on the pockets. It makes movies extra accessible; you possibly can watch them in your telephone on the prepare. After I began my profession, the movies I used to be in may solely be seen within the cinema, and I do really feel that they had been made to be watched that method. Should you see them on a telephone or perhaps a TV display screen at residence, some components of a movie can’t be one hundred pc skilled. Watching a movie in a cinema is an expertise that may have an effect in your life — it’s not simply taking in knowledge.
