It’s an exhibition of tremendous nostalgia. It is titled: Ōmecittà. It takes place from May 1 to 5 in the wonderful Kawakita Film Museum of Kamakura, a place which has hosted the greatest Japanese and foreign directors and actors. The images are from Chantal Stoman. She attached this text to us. – JJN
March 2017
Despite its poetic name, Ome “the blue plum” is a small, somewhat dreary town in the outer suburbs of Tokyo.
Far, far from Hollywood studios. And yet, in Ome, cinema is everywhere. From street to street, on shop fronts, building pediments, parking gates, the city is covered with painted panels representing cinema posters. The inhabitants wander between Lawrence of Arabia, East of Eden, La Strada, Bonnie and Clyde… On the walls of buildings or houses are dozens of film posters.
A magnificent journey into a glorious past that reveals a city that was long a paradise for Japanese movie buffs. After the war, Ome had three cinemas specializing in showing films from around the world. Then, in the 1970s, attendance declined and the cinemas eventually closed their doors, leaving as the only evidence of the city’s cinephilia hundreds of film posters, all painted by Bankan, a local artist. In the 1990s, when the cinema had disappeared from Ome, the town decided to revive this past by exhibiting on the walls of the facades of the main street these original works which had been preserved by the painter. Omecitta is the story of my encounter with a dazzling city, unknown to the Japanese. An intimate narration with Cinecittà Japanese. A dive into the history of the very special relationship between Japan and the West. That of an exceptional relationship with art and abroad. That, unfortunately so universal, of a decline, of a relationship with the past and with memory.
October 2019
For more than ten years, my photographic work has been closely linked to Japan. Fascinated by the archipelago, inspired by its mysterious and disturbing culture, it was the connections I made there that led me to this captivating little town, ignored by everyone.
This October morning in Paris, busy selecting photos for my next book Chantal Stoman: Ōmecitta, I receive a call from Ome who tells me that a typhoon has just caused terrible damage and destroyed almost all of the billboards in the city. Upset by this news, I realize that all this memory is disappearing. What I feared so much has just happened. I immediately think of Bankan. To his paintings drowned in rainwater, carried away in silence and oblivion.
At this moment, I look at my photos, and I realize the testimony that this project represents. Through the image, comes the questioning of the fragile border between reality and its representation. Photography rests here in this dialectic between what is made visible and what this visible testifies to the absence. The film of my memories of Omecitta takes place in my head: An encounter with a city ignored by everyone, which has never exploited this exceptional characteristic to attract tourists. In a few months, I had the privilege of becoming the sole witness to a story that I had only just discovered, and that I was preparing to expose to the world.
Chantal Stoman
Kawakita Film Museum
2 Chome-2-2-12 Yukinoshita
Kamakura, Kanagawa 248-0005, Japan
https://kamakura-kawakita.org/en/
