Keiichi Kobayashi
About the Pink Sky, Keiichi Kobayashi (2012)
Keiichi Kobayashi is a Japanese screenwriter, cinematographer, director, and editor. About the Pink Sky, his debut feature, premiered at Sundance and won Japanese Eyes: Best Film at the Tokyo International Film Festival.
In an exclusive interview with Filmatique, Kobayashi discusses the timelessness of youth, homosexuality in Japan and his next projects.
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About the Pink Sky, Keiichi Kobayashi (2012)
FILMATIQUE: About the Pink Sky offers a unique glimpse into adolescent day-to-day life in Japan, with some particular twists. What was your source of inspiration for the story?
KEIICHI KOBAYASHI: I tried to think of what an unusual day in an ordinary adolescent life could be like. I thought that if I portrayed a day in the life of the protagonist who is quite a unique character, it could lead me to an interesting story.
FLMTQ: While retaining some adventure elements, About the Pink Sky is also a sort of a treatise on feminine friendship. What aspects in particular did you hope to capture? How did you strive for the verisimilitude of a young girl's life on screen?
KK: I wanted to capture the feelings of naivety, optimism and fearlessness everybody has during their adolescence. When people become adults, they tend to say they don't understand the younger generation, when they've actually been through that period themselves. I think it's a shame that when people grow up, they just forget the feeling of how they were or felt back then.
I think I strived for the verisimilitude of a young girl's life by simply putting myself in the skin of a teenage girl, by thinking of how I used to be as a teenager.
FLMTQ: One of the most impressive qualities of the film is how natural the rapport between the adolescent characters feels. What was your process of casting these young actors?
KK: I casted them through auditions. I wanted to give an opportunity to teenagers, and chose to pick young talented people who had never acted before.
About the Pink Sky, Keiichi Kobayashi (2012)
FLMTQ: Was your decision to shoot black and white a stylistic choice or a narrative choice, to add a quality of timelessness to this contemporary story?
KK: I chose to shoot in black and white to add a quality of timelessness. I believe that what people from my generation were thinking about or feeling when they were younger, isn't very different from today's teenagers. I wanted to show this not through family relationships, but simply by representing teenagers in their daily lives and their friendship.
FLMTQ: We meet a character during our journey who is simultaneously gay, and hidden from public view. Was this correlation intentional? What are the attitudes toward homosexuality in Japan?
KK: The correlation was intentional. I think it's a reality Japanese high school girls don’t have the opportunity to face very often, because in Japanese society being gay is still very taboo. Unfortunately, the LGBT community is still facing discrimination in Japan.
However, gay romance is intriguing to a lot of Japanese women. There's this manga genre called Boys Love which is a very successful in Japan.
About the Pink Sky, Keiichi Kobayashi (2012)