KOKOKARA

Art Short Film (2025)
Tomoko Mukaiyama

“KOKOKARA (from here)” is a short film, just under twenty minutes, led by fragile melodies, moments of nostalgia, and sudden, thunderous bursts from Maxim Shalygin’s piano piece 9 Preludes.
The movie is set on the remote island of Aogashima, on a strangely hot day in January (about 20 °C). But don’t picture a perfect, tropical paradise. This island is battered by strong winds and lined with sharp cliffs. The landscape is wild and untamed. We filmed in a dense, jungle-like forest, home to amazing rare plant species.
So why this island, you might wonder? The answer has to do with a place I found there called hingya, where volcanic steam and gas come straight from the ground. I became obsessed with the idea of the island as a portal, a crack in the earth where the world of the living and the dead would stay connected.
In KOKOKARA, the fire of Oto Matsuri (Fire Festival) in Kumano, a 1,400-year-old ritual held every February 6 in my hometown open only to men, appears as an anchor connecting past and present, sacred and profane, female and male.
The fire in the movie can at first be seen as a way to cross into the otherworld, a ritual of burning and purification. But slowly, it starts to overlap with another kind of fire: the flames of violence, ethnic cleansing, and cities burning in war. KOKOKARA shows how violence hidden inside art and artistic practice spills into real-world horrors, the absurd things we keep calling “tradition,” and the ongoing genocide in Palestine. In this space between news and fiction, the line between visual beauty and ethical issues is left open, raw, exposed, and unresolved.

Credits

Concept / Direction / Performance: Tomoko Mukaiyama
Music: Maxim Shalygin “9 Preludes” (2005), Tomoko Mukaiyama
Cinematography: Yoshio Kitagawa
Camera Assistants: Mirai Osawa, Takashi Tamura
Recording: Yuki Yaei
Wig Design: Yasuhito Shoji
Editing: Coen Hagenaars
Post-production: Neda Gueorguieva
Technical Director: Yutaka Endo (Luftzug)
Supervisor: Reinier van Brummelen
Equipment Support: NIKON CORPORATION, CUBE Film Inc.

PR Coordinator: Sawako Fukai
Production Managers: Yayoi Manabe, Tomoko Yanagisawa
Production Assistant: Yuri Tatsumi

Planning & Production: Multus, Morioka Shoten Co., Ltd.
Co-production: Tomoko Mukaiyama Foundation
Supported by: Arts Council Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture, Fonds Podiumkunsten, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst
Special Thanks To: Akira Fukada, SONA Inc., Satoshi Arai, Masao Aonuma, Haretoke Inc., Donemus

Footage excerpt courtesy of The Guardian / Copyright Guardian News & Media Ltd 2025

Premiere | Distribution

1- 13 July 2025, on Tomoko Mukaiyama YouTube Channel