profile
sakai akira
◆Born March 17, 1974 in Sugamo, Tokyo, where is famous for the so-called shopping paradise street, specifically for old women. As a grandchild of local politician, neighbors treated me as Young Master. The only negative memory at the time was the atopic symptom I suffered. This forced me to take food elimination therapy.
◆Moved to Chiba Prefecture at the age of 6.
Full of unhappy memories. Bad grades, no friends.
I had an car accident while playing kick-the-can on the street and stayed bed for three month. This hard experience for a child enlightened me somehow. Around that time I was very quiet child as I am now. This worried my parents. They took me to a school councilor (or some kind of child specialist perhaps, though I don't remember well now). One happy memory: I was chosen to be the captain of a local football team. Furthermore, I was chosen to play as a member of the local representative team.
◆Junior High School Days
After all, I neither could run fast nor fight well during the game. So I gave up my dream to be a football player, and joined the music society. I was primitively thrilled with the PV of the Beatle's [Help]. As to my grade concerned, it was so horrible that I once thought I would not even go on to high school. Since then, I was absorbed in reading DAZAI Osamu, MISHIMA Yukiom MURAKAMI Haruki and other writers. The music I loved was New Romantic Music. Another historic event in those days was that I asked a girl for a date for the first time.
◆High School Days
I was not a good football player. But that doesnﾕt mean I don't like sport. So, I started to play tennis, running every day(!). At the same time, I read a lot of books like KAWABATA Yasunari, MURAKAMI Ryu, Schopenhauer, Constant and more and more. Sport and books meant so much to me, though the classes not so. So I skipped them quite often. This might be related to the fact that I fell in love in vain My poor young Akira!
◆Once I went to the Tokyo International Film Festival with a friend and saw Carne. This impressed somehow and gave me an idea that film is great, but it is still something to see, rather than to create.
◆University Days
I graduated high school safely, but could not enter university safely. After spending a ﾒleisureﾓ time, I entered the university in Takada-no-baba, majoring in Western Philosophy.
◆At the university, I joined the cinema circle, got to know how to use a manual camera (a single-lens reflex), fell in love, and was dumped again. Like many students, I tried many things. I left my parents and lived with my sister to gain sort of independence. My intellectual curiosities aroused and I enjoyed the classes and several kinds of part-time jobs. I also started to help the cinema shooting that a friend of mine did. Above all, my enthusiasms went to three things. First it went forward books; I read so many books on philosophy, novels, cinema, music, arts, Japanese [anime] and so on. I did as much as I could. Another enthusiasm was French. I went to l'institut franco-japonais de Tokyo as well as Athenee Francais. The third one went toward alcohol and cigarette.
◆As the graduate approached, I had second thought and went back to my parent's house to save money for shooting my first 8 mm film. While working part-time at an advertising agency, I was considering if I should go to the graduate school.
◆Unable to decide what to do, I used the money to leave for Paris. During my stay there, I went to the cinema almost every day. The same picturesque view as the films I'd seen impressed me very much. Almost every place reminds me of them, although this stay in Paris had changed nothing in my life. I devoted myself to an 8 mm film production. I made so much effort at it that I missed not only the job-interviewing seasons but also the graduation itself.
A year later I graduated. The film was completed. But I had no hope and drunk a lot.
◆After the Graduation
I made several short films in DV. Afterwards, I made several trips to touristic places I never went. I also went to Fuji Rock Festival as a guard, which was my another part time job. The music there impressed me so much. That was the time when caffeine, rather than alcohol, became more important for me.
◆The DV became standardized enough, so several friends and I regularly set up the screen tour of our DVs. After the bankruptcy of the company I worked, I had no money and had to stay inside the house for a while. I tried the commercial film field several times and then a publisher. Although some film I made beforehand was invited to the film festival, unfortunately there's nothing new anymore. That was the time when I undertook this Website.
Translated by Noriko MATSUNAGA
