FLATLINE CITY水平都市 2024

I still vividly remember running through the streets of Tokyo, all alone and anxious.

I used to go to the movies, exhibitions, clubs, and music venues alone for the longest time. Looking around, I'd see adults greeting each other cordially, but after whatever I wanted to see or watch was over, I'd avert my gaze and go home feeling out of place. Even at home, I felt so uncomfortable that it almost drove me mad, but I couldn't contain my excitement after I returned. I wanted to talk about what I had just seen and hear everyone else's thoughts. I learned that despite seeming like there is one, there's no such thing as a path I can take by myself with no one else. I had grown bored of reading books, watching films, and dancing at clubs—because I had nowhere to return to—all alone. I wanted to engage in dialogue with people and ask them, "Hey, what do you think of this?" I wanted to say "Cheers" over tequila with them. My throat was always dry because I hated my voice, which was on the verge of spilling out of my mouth, and my reserved personality.

One day, I began thinking I'd be allowed to linger in spaces if I made something of my own. But I had no idea how to make or release a work. I believed adults and teachers were the enemy, and I obviously didn't have any friends who were artists.

More than a decade has passed since my days as a teenager. I've slowly gotten more friends and acquaintances, and whenever I'm running around the streets of Tokyo, I can now cordially say hello to different people. (Although I can greet people now, I can no longer fall in love with strangers). (We can talk about love another time). Whenever I pour my heart into making a film, people I've yet to meet and don't know sometimes come to see it. A particular adult I looked up to has also come. The past ten years have felt like a dizzyingly long time. A part of me feels like I spent most of that time on failure and despair. I sort of miss university, a place of learning and dialogue that I found so tedious at the time.

I thought I had known this, but the act of making a film, pondering about things, and focusing on events happening in society is an incredibly lonely and time-consuming process. The feeling that although it seems like there is one, there's no such thing as a path I can take all alone comes back to me after all this time. If I have to live in a society teeming with the possibility of getting hurt the moment I step into the city, I at least want to talk with you.

This festival is for those who don't have a place of belonging at school, a spot of respite for those who are so exhausted they can't even think properly anymore, a space that affirms the lives of hurt people, a university for those who are afraid and lost. To take it one step further: a place where sweaty, crazed dancing coexists with conversations about Susan Sontag (I wonder why I bring up her name).

With suffocating levels of sadness and suffering, the unfairness of the world that makes one go, "Why do horrible things happen?" and personal stories and emotions surrounding different parts of oneself as the trigger, we stare at society itself, which gives shape to such things, and connect the individual to society... is what I'd say if I were trying to sound cool. Simply put, surviving, watching and listening, dancing, talking, and expressing one's existence are acts of resistance against our society. I believe we're the ones who can carve out a space where we can think and resist together precisely because we're lonely, struggling, and making mistake after mistake in this massive city overtaken by capitalism.