utako koguchi: O-DE-KA-KE diary 1 & 2

The Sleeping Flower: "Close your eyes, Grandma! Close your eyes, please.” “Am I dying? I don’t want to be like a dead.” This is a talk between an old woman, the main role, and her grandchild (director herself) during shooting. A fictious funeral of the grandmother who will die some day is held. She is buried in white paper flowers with her eyes closed, but she is alive. However, her sleeping face seen in her daily life is the very image of death. A daily talk by three women from different generations, a grandchild, her grandmother and her mother develops from a trivial one to a serious theme of death in whispers. “Are you scared of death, Grandma?” “Never! I am just wondering why I live so long.” \ ( Utako Koguchi )

When I first saw O-DE-KA-KE DIARY, there was a very special energy (perhaps an Asian one?) that transformed my very being. Utako Koguchi plays herself—she walks through Tokyo in a light dress. She climbs trees, swims in rivers and streams, lies down between train tracks, and roams through the night. This strange, bright star moves through our world, seemingly invisible to her surroundings. She handed the camera to various friends to film her actions—vivid, moving images, as unbridled as she is, unbridled in her curiosity and desire for this world, and in her sadness as well. She roams through inner moods in outer worlds. Nature and civilization, day and night—life and death. A song and jubilation fill me, and at the same time, loneliness—there she runs and skips across this overexposed meadow through the damp, light-green grass—the day is very young, and she is as born anew. And so am I.
( Ute Aurand )

Using stop-motion animation, what Koguchi called 無理矢理アニメ (forced animation), twin sisters Lulu and Lala in 'A Dandelion (Rosaceae)' go through enchanting bodily transformations. The film is a playful and disorienting exploration of sexuality, gender ambiguity, and the chaos of desire, made in the shadow of the AIDS crisis. ( Cici Peng )

In 1993, Utako Koguchi filmed a second diary — this time, she herself walks through the city with the camera. Her paths, the streets and houses, the night and the morning, visits. Once again, there is that curiosity and the desire to see everything in detail, as if the camera’s eye could see more — all that which daily life tends to hide. And so I join her on her expeditions through the everyday, which become as thrilling as a dangerous journey.
At the place where a house previous stood, the front gate still stands locked with long grass growing behind it. It was not my house but contains much nostalgia, so I call the place “The Home of Grass”. By night I feel the earth of this place, I believe that the feelings and memories for my mother, my child that were to be, my boyfriend and all my loved ones are buried there. When the night falls, these concealed emotions rapidly expand and fill and tighten my heart. This movie is set on New Years Eve. A young woman lives in an apartment alone. And her spirit is leaving her body to visit a past boyfriend’s apartment.
( Ute Aurand / Utako Koguchi )