NOBU, a short film.

NOBU is about former karate world champion and Japanese immigrant Nobuaki Konno (1953). In this short film, his daughter and fashion designer, Lisa Konno, askes him about cultural differences, love, friendship and solitude whilst he wears a collection she made inspired by him.

NOBU arose from conversations about engagement in art.
Lisa and I were surprised about how social involvement in stories is almost automatically linked to melancholy. In addition, fashion films often have a tendency not to tell a single story at all, but rather to be a collection of moving images; often with young models looking angrily in the camera.
With NOBU we tried to thematize integration without losing the light-footed tone that fits our main character.

Furthermore my aim was to make an other unusual combination:
aesthetics and humour.
I wanted to capture the complexity of migration in a portrait of a migrant who has never experienced migration as complex.

click to see teaser

NOBU premiered in october 2018 on the Dutch Design Week and was on screen in Foam during their Structures of Identity exhibition. Tropenmuseum Amsterdam showed NOBU at Museumnacht, as well as during the Cool Japan Week. NOBU was nominated for best documentary at Flatpack Festival Birmigham, Lille International Film Festival, Szczecin Film Festival and Eindhovens Film Festival. It won the Audiance Award at Rialto for Short and Rotterdams Open Doek Film Festival. NOBU will have it’s Japanese premiere at Sapporo Film Festival.

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