REVIEWS

“Distinctive and beautiful”

-Nigel M. Smith, Indiewire

“Exploring with rigorous formal composure the ‘strains, pleasures and choreography’ of groups tourism in Peru, documentary filmmaker Kimi Takesue has created a unique ethnography of Andean culture: both its commodification for the exotic seeking traveler, and the sublime elements that effectively inspire pilgrimages of universal beauty.

Tension arises in the film’s still tableaux, in which vast landscapes are dotted by migratory patters of curious, bored and intrepid wanderers. A sense of gentle circumspection, rather than cynicism attends Takesue’s radically observational mode of filmmaking, a protracted gaze in which time and place assume precedence.”

-Jay Kuehner, Northwest Film Forum

“Andean tourism is going through a great moment and Takesue’s film arrives with great timing, far from the imprudent celebration of “the exotic”. By closely observing (with a potent pictorial sense of the landscape) the pleasures as well as the setbacks of groups tourism in Peru, it invites us to analyze the two sides of the phenomenon: the transformation of the region’s culture into a fashionable commodity for Western consumption, and the most genuine and universal quest for new experiences.”

-Francisco Perez Laguna, Mar del Plata Film Festival

“In the splendid landscapes of the Peruvian Andes, the traditional way of life of the indigenous populations becomes object of consumption against the wave of foreign tourists. In long static shots of genuine formal beauty….[and] under her lucid camera, cultural elements, from llamas to souvenirs, from dances to meals, from ruins to performance are intended for the entertainment of visitors and formatted, packaged and coined accordingly. The immensity of the Andean scenery remains spectacular and
immeasurable under the eye of the filmmaker.”

-Film-Documentaire. Fr

“Looking for Adventure also critiques industrialization—specifically, the tourist industry. U.S.-born Kimi Takesue’s film, shot on a two-week trip to Peru with her mother, features a wide variety of foreign visitors, including Americans, Brazilians, and Japanese people, whose words tend to merge into a great babble. The tourists are presented across a series of tableaux involving visits to urban centers, historical sites, mountains, and large bodies of water, all led by colorfully costumed (and similarly babbling) local guides. The newcomers dive into pointing and asking questions about what they see, as well as into taking pictures and eating; at other points, they look bored or even asleep, as though waiting for someone to tell them when the next adventure should begin.

The film’s title should therefore likely be seen as playfully ironic, especially when tourists photograph themselves in restaurant mirrors. Takesue includes herself within the joke. The fixed, distant setup of many of the shots is so formal as to announce the offscreen presence of the filmmaker (who will appear in person at the Moving Image screening). She is also a tourist, with the people in front of her serving as her guides, and her way of calling attention to herself behind her camera pokes fun at any tourist’s desire to go native.

Takesue has previously employed this method of making a game between herself and the strangers she’s filming in several works, including her 2010 feature Where Are You Taking Me?, which began with a Rotterdam commission to make a work for a program of films about Africa. Takesue filmed several scenes taking place in Uganda across settings that included a weightlifting competition, a wedding party, a kickboxing class, and a Bruce Lee movie screening with an announcer’s running commentary.  Whenever local people in the film stop to stare at her camera, let alone speak into it, Takesue appears at least as foreign to them as they might be to her. The foreigners, both onscreen and offscreen, form a collaboration that makes the film.”

-Aaron Cutler, Reverse Shot

“Amazing....it has all the parody of tourism at the ancient sites of Peru (on one side tourists in fluorescent dress, on the other native people who grin to stick to the expected shots). Except it’s not a parody. It’s just the reality filmed without comment but with a sacred look. ” (translated)

-Catherine Magnin, 20 Minutes, France