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Tokyo International Film Festival 2024: Tsuta Tetsuichiro on Black Ox
Lee Kang-sheng and Fukuyo the ox in Black Ox Telling the story of a small, subsistence farming mountain community whose few remaining members keep drifting away to nearby cities, Tsuta Tetsuichiro’s second feature, 2013’s The Tale of Iya, drew upon his background growing up in rural Japan. “I was actually born near there,” he explained. “As I observed the lifestyle of the people of Iya, the idea came to me naturally to make a film set there.” After shooting his first feature on 16mm film in black-and-white, Tetsuichiro upgraded to 35m color for Iya, whose physicality throughout the seasons overwhelms with brutally immersive snowstorms and epic mountain panoramas.
For his third feature Black Ox, which premiered at this year’s Tokyo International Film Festival, Tetsuichiro offers another physically impressive production about agrarian life, opening with a shell-shocked Lee Kang-sheng wandering down a mountain as a seemingly massive fire is dying down. Primarily shot on black-and-white 35mm in academy ratio, Ox takes its title and slightly tweaked chapter titles from a Zen parable composed of ten images and poems which provide the narrative skeleton as Lee’s silent 19th-century protagonist finds an ox, tames him and they literally plow through extremely/impressively rainy conditions. Throughout, Lee leaps across boulders, dives into a still lake and generally gives his body a workout in another silent performance that’s entirely different in speed and scale from his similarly oft-wordless turns for lifelong collaborator Tsai Ming-liang. For Ox’s final, post-human stretch, the frame expands to 70mm color widescreen, becoming the first Japanese feature to be shot even in part on the format, as well as one of the last to feature a sparse score by Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Following the film’s premiere at the Tokyo International Film Festival, I spoke with Tesuichiro with the help of translator Yamanouchi Etsuko.
Filmmaker: It seems you have a production company that you founded that makes content, and that has also done some distribution. I’m curious how all of that works together
Tetsuichiro: I founded my own production company when I made Tale of Iya. For that film, we could get some subsidy from the municipal government of Miyoshi, and in order to receive the subsidy, they wanted some kind of company name as the recipient. So, instead of making a production committee, I decided to create a company. As for the distribution part, when I made Tale of Iya, I learned how to do it from scratch from all kinds of people around me. Once I learned the basics, I distributed a film by the director Fukunaga Takeshi, whose latest one, Ainu Puri, is being screened in Japan Cinema Now at this Tokyo Film Festival. And Eric Nyari, one of the producers of that film, also produced Amir Naderi’s Monte, which is an excellent film, so I also distributed that here.
Filmmaker: My understanding is that on Tale of Iya, you developed the 35mm yourself, so I was curious where one does that and why you chose to do it yourself. On this film, you entrusted the development to actually two different labs.
Tetsuichiro: Actually, I didn’t develop it myself, Toei Labo Tech did. They no longer do that. Probably you’re referring to the film I made as a university student called Island of Dreams. That was 16mm black-and-white film, and that I developed myself. This time I used 35mm black-and-white film, which was developed at Imagica in Japan. I also used 70mm color film developed at Fotokem. It was shown as a DCP; to screen a 70mm print, you have to give one week to the National Film Archive Center to get set up for that.
Filmmaker: My understanding is that black-and-white film is more expensive than color film. Is that something you had to have a discussion about?
Tetsuichiro: Before, black-and-white used to be cheaper; now, it’s reversed for some reason, but the difference is very little. But what’s extremely expensive is to use 70mm film, and black-and-white 70mm film is not sold. [I used 70mm] to depict the world without human beings that had completely changed; maybe there are no humans anymore. So, to show that complete change, I wanted to use different types of grain [and heighten] the difference of scale by using 70mm film.
Filmmaker: I want to talk about some of the physical aspects of the filmmaking, which seems like it could difficult for both the performers and you, beginning with the fire at the beginning of the film.
Tetsuichiro: In the very first scene, we weren’t building huge fires, just campfires here and there, so it wasn’t anything very dangerous. As for the scene where there is a fire on the mountain, it was an actual event conducted in that area for farming, and I took advantage of that and filmed it.
Filmmaker: Proceeding through the elements: when Lee jumps into a lake and stays there for a long time, it looks cold and unpleasant, and maybe not the kind of thing every performer would do. Also, he moves so much faster in this movie than he normally does, so I wonder how you worked with him on movement in general.
Tetsuichiro: It was a bit cold, but it was June so it wasn’t freezing. Of course, if you stayed in the lake for a long time, you would get cold. Staff members were checking the temperature, and we made sure Lee’s physical condition was fine. As for his moving faster than usual, I wasn’t particularly aware of that. It wasn’t so much intended, but it was [a result of ] work with the cow. They had to collaborate with each other, so it became that speed. In any case, this is a film where the protagonist runs around all over the natural environment, whereas in Tsai’s or in most other fictional films, people carry out a story through lines, which is not the case in my films. So, that came about naturally.
Filmmaker: There’s an ox plowing consultant listed on the film, so I’m wondering about that person’s role and to what extent you can actually direct an ox to do anything beyond what it’s used to doing.
Tetsuichiro: You couldn’t just think of an idea and direct an ox or cow to move accordingly. However, if you give them a chance to practice and learn something, they do. For example, Fukuyo [the film’s credited ox performer] learned how to do plowing by taking three months. You also saw Fukuyo with Lee riding on her; after some practice, she learned that. They’re clever.
Filmmaker: I don’t know if you shot the film all in one scheduling segment, which I presume you had to do with Lee’s schedule. But you’re moving through the seasons, there’s rain and there’s snow. If any part of it was fake, which part?
Tetsuichiro: I wish I could say it was all real. However, the rain wasn’t. But instead of using your regular rainmaker that is used by studios, we got cooperation from the fire department of the area, and they used a hose and river water to rain on us. The snow we see had already fallen, that is real. You see lots of fog, and that was all created by us.
Filmmaker: In the terms of the Buddhist aspects of the film, there’s a monastery that are credited as helping with making it I also wanted to ask if he had any discussions with Lee about those aspects of it, because Lee is intensely familiar with Buddhism after playing a monk for Tsai Ming-liang all the time.
Tetsuichiro: Part of Myoshinji temple in Kyoto, which belongs to the Rinzai zen sect of Buddhism, is called Taizo-in, where monks in training spend their time. This temple has these ten ox-herding pictures. That’s where these pictures were born, and we got their cooperation. The vice director of that training center for that temple is Matsuyama Daiko. He’s been giving us a lot of support and taught us a lot about Zen Buddhism. Lee spent some time at that training center and learned about sitting, za-zen. However, Lee and I did not have any particular discussions about Buddhism or Zen.
