Sion Sono's films at Five Flavours At Home!
Fishy religious sects? Girls in school uniforms fluent in karate? An acute analysis of the decay of social bonds after the Fukushima disaster? Obedient wives discovering the world of dark eroticism? This is just a tiny piece of what the fantastic scripts by Sion Sono – a director, musician, painter, poet, and an ardent cinephile – have to offer.
The program will be available from May 20 till July 7. You can also watch films from Five Flavours At Home permanent library!
The Five Flavours At Home program is an invitation to the unique world of a filmmaker who is always full of surprises. Rebellious and controversial, he loves putting the cat among the pigeons, showing difficult, embarrassing aspects of the Japanese society. A man of unfettered imagination, he creates stories balancing on the verge of kitsch and the sublime, gentle reflection and hysteric emotional escalation. He is filled by a burning need to create – he made films big-budget films and productions with no financing at all (and no permits, shot in public spaces guerrilla-style).
Buy a Pass for the Sion Sono program
Buy a gift voucher for the Sion Sono program
During a live meeting with Five Flavours programmers on May 20, we were talking about Sion Sono's films, his constant presence in the Festival program, and we've shared the personal recommendations from our programming team!
Sion Sono program
The program begins with two of the director's early films – the breakthrough "Suicide Club" and the anarchist "Bad Film" (finished a while after the shooting was completed). Using pop cultural cliches, they create subversive, unforgiving insights into the problems of Japan at the turn of the 20th century, and present a unique testimony to the atmosphere of the late 1990s. The masterful hate trilogy, "Love Exposure," "Cold Fish," and "Guilty of Romance," on the other hand, is a set of formally evolved, mature oeuvres, combining a wide range of aesthetics. Shocking, insane, but also meticulously thought-out, they draw on classic cinema and literature, as well as lurid press reports and erotic cinema cliches.
The program culminates in two films closely related to the Fukushima disaster. Filmed right after the events of March 2011, "Himizu," is a portrait of a young generation coping with the feeling of alienation and abandonment, filled with dark energy and resistance to the world's injustices. "The Whispering Star," made a few years later, is a minimalist science-fiction film, a subtle tale of elusive memory, passing, and the small every-day rituals that keep the life on the deserted planet going.
Completing the program is a documentary about the director – his working process, the various fields he is active in, his art inseparably intertwined with life, and the sources of inspiration fueling the new projects of the extremely industrious auteur.
Permanent library
The Five Flavours At Home includes a permanent library of films available year-long. Its newest addition is Yi Ok-seop's "Maggie" – one of the audience's favorites of the "Women of Korea" program, which uses an intriguing perspective and a phenomenal visual talent to portray the challenges face by the Korean millenials.
You can buy Accesses for single films or a Pass for all the films of the current Sion Sono program and the permanent library.
How to watch?
The films will be available at piecsmakow.pl/wdomu from Thursday, May 20, 10 a.m., till Wednesday, July 7, 11:29 p.m.
All films are presented with Polish and English subtitles and are only available in Poland. Each film is introduced by a Five Flavours expert.
FAQ – all you need to know about screening the films and using the platform
We also invite you to talk about the films in our Pięć Smaków - kino Azji Facebook group where viewers exchange their opinions and recommendations, and the organizers of Five Flavours provide contexts and additional information about the presented films!
