8000 MILES (Japan, 2009)
Directed by: Yu Irie
Starring: Ryusuke Komakine, Mihiro, Shingo Mizusawa, Eita Okuno
Forget Compton or the Bronx - suburbia is the harshest 'hood of all. Middle-class ennui tastes the same the world over, and in his dead-end existence in sleepy old Saitama Prefecture, wannabe rapper "Ikku" is suffocating on the entropic everyday. Forming hip-hop collective "SHO-GUNG," Ikku and friends are taking their not-so-rough-and-tumble streets by storm, broadcasting their hardcore message from Saitama to the world, soul to soul! When they figure out exactly what that message is, they'll let you know. But in the meantime, "SHO-GUNG gotta blast!" NYAFF special guest Yu Irie's jishu eiga ("self-made," independently financed film) 8000 MILES was a major hit in Japan and it's a deadpan, desperate rebel-without-a-clue yell into a cheap plastic cup - it's a story about people aching to go somewhere and be something, yet lacking any rudimentary knowledge of "where" or "who." Self-proclaimed NEET ("Not Engaged in Employment, Education or Training") Ikku saunters across town, hiding behind his tinted shades and swaddled in gangsta swag, a big kid playing at the big time. His friends talk a good game, but their thug life pretensions give way to meandering rehearsals and real-life distractions. Facing tough questions after a tragically hilarious set at a municipal government meeting where half their crew didn't even bother to show, Ikku and Co. are forced to admit they have only the vaguest of future plans, and no idea of how or when they might grow up to function in a society that shows little interest in them. The feeling is mutual, but all these kids have to vent their frustrations are a series of inarticulate rhymes, rap as both petulant offense and desperate defense for a cluster of scared children. Made on a shoestring budget with a largely amateur cast and crew, 8000 MILES opened in a single theater then exploded across Japan, maxing out attendance records and winning the Grand Prize for Off-Theater Competition at the Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival, where it won funding for the upcoming sequel, 8000 MILES 2, starring Sakura Ando of LOVE EXPOSURE. Alternating between droll hilarity and heartbreak, the film is a painfully awkward glimpse at adrift, disaffected youth, their every idiosyncracy bathed in Irie's harsh natural light. The climax, an anguished duel of rhyme between two long-lost friends, would be funny if it wasn't so very sad, as these junior wordsmiths wrestle for hope amidst the ashes of their adolescent dreams.
8000 MILES 2: Girl Rappers (Japan, 2010)
Directed by: Yu Irie
Starring: Maho Yamada, Sakura Ando, Fumi Sakurai, Mayumi Kato, Ryusuke Komakine, Ryo Iwamatsu
What a difference a vagina makes. After 8000 MILES became the biggest Japanese sleeper hit of 2009, director Yu Irie decided to revisit the same topic. Only this time, he set his movie in Gunma Prefecture, next door to Saitama, and he made his aspiring rappers women. And with that simple change of gender, his story of wannabe gangstas using their rhyming skills to beat back the world, assumed heroic, heartbreaking proportions.
Ayumu (Maho Yamada) works all day in her family's konjack factory (a kind of vegetarian gelatin). The high point of her life was performing in an all-girl hip hop act, B-Hack, in high school, but now she's 27 and way too old for that kind of foolishness. Then she runs into Ikku and Tom (from 8000 MILES) come to pay their respects to the legendary dead Gunma DJ, Mr. TKD, and suddenly she's getting the band back together. Mittsu (Sakura Ando, LOVE EXPOSURE) is being crushed beneath her runaway mother's mountain of debts. Mamie (Kumiko Masuda) has become a local massage girl, working in Soapland the neighborhood house of ill repute. Beyonce (Fumi Sakurai) is trying to join the mainstream now that her dad is running for mayor. But Ayumu won't be denied and she reunites them through sheer force of will. They possess an unreleased track from Mr. TKD and she's determined to ride it all the way to the top.
Unlike the boys of 8000 MILES, the hip hop heroines of 8000 MILES 2 have more to lose. They're more entangled with their families, they have boyfriends who are embarrassed by their rap aspirations and they're constantly being told to sit down, shut up and act more ladylike. Women are more vulnerable than men - they make less money, there's the possibility of pregnancy, they're not taken as seriously - and so the stakes are sky high here. When 8000 MILES 2 comes to an end, it comes down hard, closing on one of the most devastating eight minute takes ever filmed as B-Hack wields its rhyming skills in a final, desperate attempt to save their own souls.
“Hip Hop is the courage to spit it out/Step on the world that crushes your dreams.” We all were supposed to grow up to be cooler adults than we are. Somewhere along the way life took over and before you know it we're knocked up, carrying debts, stuck in lame jobs, shadows of who thought we'd be. Life happens, and along the way you lose some people: they die, they drop out, they move away, they stop trying. But then one day you look around and see that some are still standing with you. That’s your crew. They’ve got your back.