About forty years ago I was just starting out as a lecturer at the Swinburne Film and TV School. I was approached by Solrun Hoaas, one of the Post. Grad students I met there and she asked me if I would look at and comment on some films which she had made prior to enrolling.
“Effacement” is one of those short films.
It's a film which entranced me. What is it with words? I was fascinated by this minimal poetic film which was made by woman who considered herself to be a "beginner" who thought she needed to enrol in our film school to learn more about filmmaking.
Solrun died in 2009. She and I were friendly but we were never what you would call close friends. She had the most engaging gentle smile and a wonderful quiet repose. This very short film she made so long ago reflects all the qualities I found in her whenever we met.
At the time Solrun showed me this film I had very little experience of Japanese theatre traditions except through films I had seen at the Melbourne Film Festival or at the National Film Theatre screenings. One very fine film I had seen was Ichikawa’s “An Actor's Revenge”. There were other wonderful Japanese films from that time such as “Rashomon”, Woman of the Dunes”, "The Face of Another”, “Tokyo Story”... so many films which were a huge cultural blast for me.
Of course all the Japanese films I had seen until then were feature length films. I had not seen many short films from Japan. Then almost 20 years later Solrun showed me her beautiful contemplative film “Effacement” about a Japanese Noh mask maker, Taniguchi Akiko, at work on her masks in her Tokyo studio.
She carves the mask, paints it and moves it in the pace of an actor's movements on the traditional Noh stage.
The film emphasises the relationship between the mask maker and her mask. It experiments with the visual and dramatic potential in Noh and in the mask, moving toward abstraction as the mask appears and reappears in the reflection of a tree, its original substance.
The soundtrack is filled with wood sounds - tools against wood, and the percussion of wooden clappers.
If you would like to know more about Solrun and her films, Bill Mousoulis has a detailed entry on her life and work here:
http://www.innersense.com.au/mif/hoaas.html
My friend Andrew Pike who runs Ronin Films has all of Solrun’s filmwork in his extensive collection:
https://www.roninfilms.com.au/aboutus.html
You can also find Solrun's life story on Ronin's biographical page:
https://www.roninfilms.com.au/person/350/solrun-hoaas.html
PT
Nice piece, Peter. I knew Solrun a little, similar to yourself I guess, and was shocked when I learnt she had suddenly died. The last time I saw her (I think), she dropped by my place unexpectedly, she didn't stay, she just wanted to gift me a little sculpture. A sweet person. I've seen this short, and I've seen her narrative feature AYA, but I haven't actually seen the whole stream of documentaries she made.
ReplyDeleteShe was a very quiet person Bill, deeply intelligent, and I think in "Effacement" you can see she was extremely intuitive. Maybe our post will lead others to catch up with some of her work. It's quite a varied oevre. What astonished me so much about "Effacement" was that Solrun was so perceptive of the tradition or the mask maker and at the same time she created such an evocative work, despite it being such an early piece in her filmmaking life.
ReplyDeleteBecause she died suddenly, I HOPE there is some control of her estate. With older films, I really wish filmmakers would allow them to be seen for free, but I also understand that a company like Ronin does need titles like hers, to distribute adequately to educational contexts, etc.
ReplyDeleteI don't know anything about her estate or how she may have managed what happens to her film-work Bill, I guess it is similar for all of us. Most of my films are with Kriszta and Artfilms but I have made no provision for them at all, so I'm the wrong person to engage in this discussion. Maybe this is a discussion some of us need to engage in? I'm incredibly glad to have my films with Artfilms, and also in the NFSA.
ReplyDeleteYes, one of the things that Chris Luscri and I want to look into. But it's such a huge job. And we want to help get more films scanned to digital, etc. As for myself as a filmmaker - I'm taking no chances - all my work is on Vimeo, for free, and with the download button enabled, so hopefully some people will be downloading some of the work, and it lives on for the years ahead !
ReplyDelete