Tasogare (2016)

 

"The film passes like a series of meditative breaths, each sequence drawing us into a world where adventurous music and traditional worship can coexist in tranquility." - Tiny Mix Tapes

 

Artist Lia Mice travels to Tokyo to discover why the Buddhist monks at Komyo-Ji Temple host an experimental music festival at twilight.

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Several times a year the Komyo-Ji Temple resident monks host TASOGARE Festival - a one-day event of experimental and electronic music. The headlining act: chanting with the monks. 

For the 30th edition of TASOGARE Festival, London-based electronic artist Lia Mice returns to Tokyo for her 3rd performance at TASOGARE Festival. Fascinated with the old-time Japanese yokai ghost/folk stories that inspired the festival’s name (tasogare is an old Japanese word that has a double meaning: 'twilight' and ‘who are you?’), Lia explores the origins of this obscure and unique event; the monks’ relationship with electronic and experimental music; and the musical nature of the Shin-Buddhism chant-based meditation. Set under the soft indigo light of the Tokyo twilight, TASOGARE is at once a post-modern observational ethnography and an impressionistic eulogy to the spaces in between.

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Credits:

All roles by Lia Mice except translation by Masami Shibamoto, Makiko Jane Takahashi & Shoukei Matsumoto. Filmed on location at Komyo-Ji Temple, Tokyo, 9 April 2016 and Honshu, Japan, 23-13 April 2016.