Portraits in Blue: Identity and nostalgia in Naomi Kawase’s Ten, Mitake (1995), and Jenni Olson’s Blue Diary (1997)
Abstract
From the perspective of nostalgia and forms of imprinting identity through the cinematic apparatus, this article – as a contribution to the Film Studies discipline – suggests an encounter between two short films: Ten, Mitake (1995) and Blue Diary (1997), directed by Naomi Kawase and Jenni Olson, respectively. Products of distinct cultural backdrops, both works are essay films from the same period: the dawn of the twentieth century. The colour blue, which commands the visual, textual and symbolic identities of the two films, comes up as a conversation point, a bridge and a sensory trigger. Visually expressive in Ten, Mitake’s compositions, while suppressed in Blue Diary, blue reflects moods and creates a path for the interpretation of these two intimate artistic objects, like a doorway to their private universes.
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Filmografia
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