MAM Screen 007: Yamamoto Atsushi

In his career to date, Yamamoto Atsushi (b. 1980) has made an incredible 174 films, from documentaries to works of fiction and experimental comedy skit-like shorts.
Many of Yamamoto’s works are set in new towns and similar anonymous suburban locations and feature the artist himself playing roles such as an idle youth or casual laborer, in the process channeling Yamamoto’s own upbringing in an ordinary household on the outskirts of Tokyo. His latest work meanwhile, THE PAST AND THE FUTURE IN THE PRESENT , is a highly personal documentary piece in which Yamamoto visits an old girlfriend during his wife’s pregnancy, and finds himself engaging with past, present and future. Both types of work portray Yamamoto’s earnest attempts to address the reality before him. For this screening, we have combined early short films by Yamamoto with a more recent full-length feature, in a program offering a close-up look at the diverse delights of the artist’s film oeuvre.