INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR

Interview with Kimi Takesue 

By Aaron Cutler  

January 7, 2014 

Why did you make LOOKING FOR ADVENTURE? What inspired the film? How did you film it?

I went on a two-week group tour to Peru with my mother to celebrate a birthday. Both of us have traveled extensively independently but, due to limited time, we decided to try a group tour that billed itself as “stepping off the beaten path”. 

I brought along a camera but I had no particular agenda or intention of filming specific subject matter. I often work in a loose, collage-like form, collecting images as I go. For me, it’s exciting to respond to a place spontaneously, without preconceived ideas, and to discover what unfolds. Working in an observational mode, I find myself drawn to small, intimate details that cumulatively offer a sensory experience of place. Later, I edit the footage and discover the underlying themes and connective threads. 

That being said, thematically I find myself continually returning to the complex subject of the 

“cross cultural encounter”. I’ve made several observational documentaries that explore the rhythms of foreign travel and the nuances of “looking” cross-culturally. 

How did you select the people (both tourists and native Peruvians) that appear in the film? What interactions and discussions about the film did you have with them?

In many ways LOOKING FOR ADVENTURE is structured by the parameters of a group tour. There was very little “free” time on the tour; there were few opportunities to explore beyond the prescribed tour and thus my interactions were defined by the boundaries of the tour. In a way the limitations of the experience became interesting to me. Often, as filmmakers, we are searching for intensity and depth of experience—in this case I was intrigued by the superficiality of the experience and its specific nuances. My interactions with local Peruvians were limited and mostly revolved around commerce—and the buying and selling of tourist goods. 

Since I didn’t begin with a specific agenda for the film, the discussion around filming was very basic. I explained to my fellow tourists that I was a filmmaker and asked if it was OK to film observational footage of the tour. I let them know that I might make a piece at some point in the future. 

In terms of the Peruvians, most of the filming either takes place in public spaces or along the prescribed tourist path. In a sense, photography/filming are normalized and expected along the tourist trail, since documentation is such a central part of a tourist’s expectation. In many regards I pushed the boundary of consent. If anyone indicated they did not want to be filmed I did not film, however, I was interested in strained moments of cross-cultural interaction. There were many awkward moments of forced engagement. In this context, I wanted to show the distance that existed between Peruvians and myself, and challenge the idealized notion that travel guarantees dialogue between cultures. 

How did you decide upon your role in the film? 

There are a number of tensions and contradictions at play within the film. As the maker, I am positioned as an observer and participant simultaneously. I offer a critical glimpse of group tourism and, yet, I am also a tourist and therefore implicated, as well. I am both inside and outside of the experience. While I am only physically present in the film once (huddled in a tent drinking tea during the trek) I recognize myself in all of the situations.  

While on the tour I began observing the physical choreography of tourism and how bodies move through various landscapes on a predetermined path. I was interested in the contradictory desires that we shared as tourists---we sought an “authentic” experience of local culture and yet it was generally simulated or performed for us in order to fit within the convenient framework of our tour.  

How did you create the sound mixture? What were your desires and goals with it, if you have any? 

The overall stylistic approach to LOOKING FOR ADVENTURE is minimalist and naturalistic. There is very little manipulation in the post-production phase in terms of audio or picture—I remain very true to the actual sounds recorded with picture. Yet, visually, I am interested in the interplay between naturalism and stylization. LOOKING FOR ADVENTURE is constructed from documentary footage and thus anchored in the “real world.” However, the piece is organized in a series of long, formally composed, observational tableaux where action unfolds within a static frame. By “framing” ordinary situations in a composed, stylized way, interesting visual and thematic tensions are created for the viewers who sometimes question if what they see is “real” or “staged.” 

The audio also re-creates the rhythms of cross-cultural travel.  When traveling you often move between moments of intense stimulation and moments of quiet reflection. By utilizing hard sound cuts, I emphasized the shifts between moments of stillness and activity, and the overall experience of dislocation. 

Did you intend for it to seem at any point as though you were mocking the people on screen (either tourists or native Peruvians)? Are you concerned that it might seem so? What do you hope for audiences to think about these people, if you hope for them to think anything?  

I did not want to make a mean-spirited film that took cheap jabs at the “ugly tourist”. It’s easy to distance oneself and somehow feel superior to the vulgar tourist, however, I am one of the tourists in the film and I recognize myself within these problematic relationships and dynamics. Ultimately, I hope that other people who have traveled as tourists might also see themselves and reflect on the complexity of the experience. 

Within the film, there is a certain level of critique--looking at the socio-economic inequities and the ways in which Peruvian “culture” is commodified and consumed by tourists. However, LOOKING FOR ADVENTURE also explores the universal and genuine desires that people have for new experiences and new encounters. Economics ultimately dictate who can travel globally but the desire for new adventure is wide and far-reaching.  Yet, when people are able to pursue their fantasies and travel across the globe there is often disappointment and an overall sense of emptiness. LOOKING FOR ADVENTURE explores these experiences of fatigue, dislocation, and lack of authentic connections. Encounters with locals are too short, staged, or commodified. The tourist often stays on the easy, prescribed path of the group tour, but longs for something deeper that goes unfulfilled. 

What experience do you hope for an audience to have with the film, if any? LOOKING FOR ADVENTURE is structured with a considerable amount of ambiguity and openness for interpretation. Ultimately, I hope the viewer is inspired to reflect on his/her own experience as a tourist. I try to structure work so it has multiple points of entry allowing the viewer the freedom to engage with the film on multiple levels—conceptually, aesthetically and emotionally. 

How do you believe that LOOKING FOR ADVENTURE relates to the broader shape of your filmmaking - what came prior to it, as well as what comes next? 

Whether working in documentary or narrative, I’m fascinated by cross-cultural encounters. I’m interested in the meeting point when people from very different worlds come together and search for communication and connection. However, my work often investigates forms of communication that occur outside of language. Like LOOKING FOR ADVENTURE, many of my films explore non-verbal communication expressed through body language and the gaze.  

To give you some examples of prior work, I recently made a documentary in Uganda, WHERE ARE YOU TAKING ME?, that comprises a series of observational vignettes which capture the nuances and rhythms of everyday life in Uganda. The film also explores the complex interplay between the observer and observed within a cross-cultural context.  

One of my recent narrative film’s, THAT WHICH ONCE WAS, is set in 2035 and explores the plight of an eight-year old boy, displaced by global warming, who fends for himself as an 

“environmental refugee”. Haunted by memories of flooding that left him homeless and orphaned, the boy forms an unexpected friendship with an Inuk ice carver, who helps him remember his past. 

I am currently working on a biographical piece entitled NINETY-FIVE AND SIX TO GO. Based on footage shot over a five-year period in Hawai’i, the film explores the life of my idiosyncratic Japanese-American grandfather—a hard working pragmatic post-office retiree whose artistic ambitions surfaced at the age of ninety. The film will chart the rhythms of my grandfather’s daily life and how, in the years before his recent death at the age of ninety-five, he became fixated on “re-writing” a cross-cultural feature “love story” of mine that has yet to be realized. The film explores issues of aging, resilience, and how many of us cope with and find creative solutions to disappointment, loss, and unrealized dreams.