taylor price
Peter Solarz
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
Today's Document

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Origami Around
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Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
dirt enthusiast

pixel skylines
YOU ARE THE REASON

Kaledo Art
Acquired Stardust
occasionally subtle

JVL
wallacepolsom
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KIROKAZE

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣

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@n64q
Yeayuhhhh!!!
Born Free wins Best Doc Short at HRIFF 2015!!!
Q&A with Director SASHA GRANSJEAN
What was your inspiration for the film?
I have been living in Koreatown for over a decade and have noticed an exceptional amount of stores, places, and people here and there that live on amidst the chaos of this sprawling city like wormholes into another time. I wanted to tell a story using one of those wormholes.
How did the film get off the ground? What was the process of getting the film made?
I had seen the pet fish shop many times as it was in my neighborhood and I remember once or twice peering in and seeing Kyoto’s face looking back at me. One day, I went in and looked around, chatted him up a bit, and basically bought some garbage used tubing for air pumps that I wanted to use in a music video I was making at the time. We hit it off I guess, and I was left longing for a more in depth visual exploration of that environment. I believe I asked him if that would be okay and the time and he gave an emphatic, yes.
I asked my friend and photographer, CHIKA OKAZUMI, to join me so that we could shoot some video of the fish tanks and all the things strewn around that had been there since the 70s, easy. I originally had an idea for a kind of magical realism love story of sorts that involved people coming into that shop and having their lives altered by the fish they bought. That story was never finished and in filming around his shop we ended up interviewing him and feeling compelled to visit him again, eventually becoming friends.
When he was being evicted he called me up to tell me that it was going to happen and that I should come with my cameras, I didn’t entirely believe him at that time because it seemed like he could have just have easily lived the rest of his life out there in that shop, forgotten from society.
Over the course of the two and a half years that we maintained a friendship, Kyoto told me a lot of the socialist ideas that he came to this country with in the 60s. A lot of them sounded more relevant today than they may have even done then. He despaired that his life was in vain and that he would never get a chance to tell those ideas to people so I thought that in making this film he could.
It took a lot of time to sort through the conversations we had and I honestly didn’t know if there would be a story at the end of the day so in editing I set out to just try and chronicle the journey as best as possible with what footage and audio dialogue I had and then I moved to visually stylizing and molding the ideas to feel as if they are being told to us (or the kid from the future played by TAKUTO KAWABE) from a sort of digital stream of this portion of his life.
What format did you shoot the film on?
The whole thing is shot on Canon DSLRs and is almost entirely handheld save for maybe a few shots like the one in the hospital bed where I had the camera clamped onto the cabinet on top of the TV.
What do you think the essence of the film and its characters are
about?
Pursuing your dreams and kindness to others.
Kimberly Culotta and Sasha Gransjean on set at 360 Studios for N6-4Q
A Film by SASHA GRANSJEAN N6-4Q: Born Free Starring TAKUTO KAWABE
2015 Slamdance Film Festival – Documentary Shorts Competition
2015 Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival - Doc Shorts Competition
12 minutes Not Yet Rated by the MPAA [email protected] N64Q: Born Free
Cast and Crew
Introducing
TAKUTO KAWABE
Camera
CHIKA OKAZUMI
KIMBERLY CULOTTA
SASHA GRANSJEAN
1st AD
ROBERT JAMES
SFX Make-up
PATRICIA WANG
Costume Design
MARYLOU LIM
LED Lighting Systems
GRAHAM MONAHAN
Production Team
JOURDAN ALEXANDRE GALLEMORE
MICHAEL RIEGLE
KELLY WITHERS
SEAN ROBERTSON
BLEWFOOT
BIANCA FERRO
Visual FX
SOPHIE WANG
SASHA GRANSJEAN
Title Design
HUGO GERMAIN
Catering Services
JUVENAL RODRIGUEZ
Music
“Inertia”
The A.M Experiment
Written and Produced by Marcus Liebhart
“Tectonic”
Micah Frank
Written and Produced by Micah Frank
"2. O nox dulcis, quies serena”
Performed by Julia Lezhneva, Il Giardino Armonico, Giovanni Antonini
Courtesy of Decca Music Group Limited under license from Universal Music Enterprises
Special Thanks
PATRICIA VELEZ CARDOZO
JESSE KIM
PATRICK SCOTT
NIKOS BELLAS
360 STUDIOS
RIE ASANO
MARA TRIFU
KATHERINE ANDERSON
Filmed On Location in Los Angeles, CA, Tokyo, Japan, & at 360 Studios.
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1st poster mockup for N6-4Q: Born Free
Synopsis for N6-4q: Born Free
After spending almost half a century in Los Angeles, originally in search of revolution, ultimately the owner of a pet fish store, Kyoto is forced by financial situations and health issues to return to his home country, Japan. Kyoto has uploaded his story into the collective consciousness to be seen by his future self who is using the lens of technology to learn from his past. In this, his story ends up a vehicle for a message, driven by an intimate personal portrait.
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