KANZEON

Documentary – 2011

87 minutes

Colour

Date & Time: 6pm, Wednesday, Dec. 04th 2013

Venue: Nha San Collective,

             2nd Floor, Block A, 9 Tran Thanh Tong

Directors: Neil Cantwell & Tim Grabham (UK).

Taking its name from an alternative reading of the name for the Bodhisattva of Compassion,Kannon, KanZeOn, which can be translated as “she who hears the cries of the world” is anunorthodox but utterly magical meditation on sound and the ritual and philosophical role itplays in Japanese religion.

Filmed in Kyushu, the film looks at, and more importantly listens to, three very special Japanese musicians: Akinobu Tatsumi, a young Buddhist priest and custodian of a temple outside of Kumamoto City who moonlights as a hip-hop DJ while indulging his love of beatboxing in the remote forests; Eri Fujii, who has devoted her life to the mastery of the Sho, a rare and ancient Chinese bamboo wind instrument evoking the cry of the Phoenix, and Akihiro Iitomi, a master of Noh theatre and a Kotsuzumi drum player whose love of jazz almost matches that of his passion for Japan’s traditional performing arts.

As a documentary, KanZeOn does not seek to explain as much as to enlighten, taking the viewer on a hypnotic sensual journey from the timeless to the modern by way of a mystical parade of images that resonate seamlessly with the sounds.