Mountain Plain Mountain
▲ ▲
A film by Daniel Jacoby & Yu Araki
21 minutes | 1.78:1 | Colour | Stereo | Spain, Japan, Netherlands
Screenings
Jan 2018 ⟶ IFFR International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rotterdam NL ★
Feb 2018 ⟶ Yebisu Intl. Festival for Art & Alternative Visions, TOP Museum, Tokyo JP
Mar 2018 ⟶ International Film Festival of Uruguay, Montevideo UY
Apr 2018 ⟶ Go Short International Short Film Festival, Nijmegen NL
Apr 2018 ⟶ Les Rencontres Internationales, Paris FR
Apr 2018 ⟶ EMAF European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück DE
May 2018 ⟶ Jeonju Intl. Film Festival, Jeonju KR
May 2018 ⟶ Oberhausen Kurzfilmtage, Oberhausen DE
May 2018 ⟶ Videoex, Zurich CH ★
Jun 2018 ⟶ Lima Independiente, Lima PE
Jun 2018 ⟶ Internationales Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, Hamburg DE
Jun 2018 ⟶ Filmadrid, Madrid ES ★
Aug 2018 ⟶ NEMAF Seoul International NewMedia Festival, Seoul KR
Sep 2018 ⟶ BISFF Beijing Intl. Short Film Festival, Beijing CN
Sep 2018 ⟶ MIEFF Moscow Intl. Experimental Film Festival, Moscow RU
Oct 2018 ⟶ Curtocircuito, Santiago de Compostela ES ★
Oct 2018 ⟶ Bosphorus Film Festival, Istanbul TR
Oct 2018 ⟶ Uppsala Intl. Short Film Festival, Uppsala SE
Nov 2018 ⟶ L'Alternativa CCCB, Barcelona ES
Nov 2018 ⟶ Kasseler Dokfest, Kassel DE
Jun 2019 ⟶ Sheffield DocFest, Sheffield UK
Awards
Oct 2018 ⟶ Special Mention Short Film Competition @ Curtocircuito, Santiago de Compostela ES
Jun 2018 ⟶ Special Mention Vanguardias Competition @ Filmadrid, Madrid ES
May 2018 ⟶ International Competition Winner @ Videoex, Zurich CH
Jan 2018 ⟶ Ammodo Tiger Short Film Award @ IFFR, Rotterdam NL
Distribution
LIMA Media Art Platform, Amsterdam NL
Hamaca, Barcelona ES
Short synopsis
Mountain Plain Mountain was shot it in Obihiro, Japan, at the last standing venue to host a rare kind of draft horse races known as Ban'ei. Putting together a mix of motionless, contemplative shots and hard-edge, rhythmical, gibberish-rich montages, the slowness of these bizarre races is twisted to its limit. The overall timeline, thus, mimics the track's topography poetically described by a veteran trainer as "a small and a big mountain."
Long synopsis
A veteran trainer once put it this way:
There's a small mountain.
And there's big mountain.
What happens between the two will determine who will succeed.
The short experimental film Mountain Plain Mountain was shot it in Obihiro, Japan, at the last standing venue to host a rare kind of draft horse races known as Ban'ei. Putting together a mix of motionless, contemplative shots and hard-edge, rhythmical, gibberish-rich montages, the slowness of these bizarre races is twisted to its limit. The overall timeline, thus, mimics the track's topography poetically described by the veteran trainer.
A few days before the grand opening of the racing season, we embarked in a journey to the now-iconic Tokachi horse racing track with just a limited understanding of the bare bones of this traditional sport. Aware of the brutality exercised onto the robust horses, our focus quickly drifted apart from the widely portrayed subject matter, and towards the intricate web of dependencies that we noticed quietly unfold.
Mountain Plain Mountain depicts this farmers passion by shedding light onto of the surrounding action: betting sales staff, photo-finish technicians, scoreboard operators, elderly gamblers. A predominant state of silent, almost meditative concentration fills the venue while each one performs their routine tasks, but it's these secondary characters that make watching eight horses go in a straight line overcoming two sand ramps an uncannily choreographed play.
To disrupt the viewer's expectation of objectivity in what could be seen as a documentary, we carefully infiltrated performative elements into the narrative. Both a veteran trainer and an active jockey collaborated with us in finding ways to illustrate the technique, language and gymnastics of this sport in raw form: without even a horse.
About the filmmakers
Daniel Jacoby (1985, Lima, Peru) and Yu Araki (1985, Yamagata, Japan) met in 2010 during a residency at Tokyo Wonder Site (Tokyo). Both their works have been highly influenced by their journeys. Fiction is often used by them as a tool to comprehend the puzzling cultural and socio-political differences across destinations. Their first film made as a duo is Mountain Plain Mountain.
Daniel Jacoby (http://danieljacoby.com/)
Graduated in fine arts from the University of Barcelona and furthered his education at the Städelschule in Frankfurt. Recent exhibitions include venues like Fundació Joan Miró (Barcelona), CRAC Alsace (Altkirch), EYE Film Institute (Amsterdam), The Banff Centre (Alberta), Kunsthal Chalottenborg (Copenhagen), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof (Hamburg), 1646 (The Hague), Trafó (Budapest), and the 11th Cuenca Biennial (Ecuador). His films have been programmed in festivals such as 25FPS (Zagreb), BIM (Buenos Aires), MIEFF (Moscow), Go Short (Nijmegen), Sheffield Fringe (UK), Videobrasil (Sao Paulo), Les Rencontres Internationales (Paris), and Cairo Video Festival (Cairo). His film Jagata won the National Competition at Lima Independiente (Peru) in 2016. Daniel has participated in residency programs at Delfina Foundation (London), Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht), Casino Luxembourg (Luxembourg), Tokyo Wonder Site (Tokyo), among other places.
Filmography: Jagata (2016), Ahold of Get the Things To (2014), Cuculí (2011), Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot (2010).
Yu Araki (http://yuaraki.com/)
Araki received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture from Washington University in St. Louis, U.S.A. in 2007, and completed his Master of Film and New Media Studies from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2010. In 2013, he was selected to participate in Tacita Dean Workshop hosted by Fundación Botín in Santander, Spain. His films have been programmed in international festivals such as NIFF (Thailand), BFI London Film Festival (U.K.), The Weight of Mountains (Iceland), International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (Germany), Dong Fang (Italy), and MIFF (Russia). Recent exhibitions and screenings include Okayama Art Summit (Okayama, Japan), Yokoha- ma Museum of Art (Yokohama, Japan), The Benaki Museum (Athens, Greece), JIKKA (Tokyo, Japan), The Container (Tokyo, Japan), Washingtown (Mito, Japan), ZKM (Karlsruhe, Germany), CAST (Tasmania, Australia), Tate Modern (London, U.K.), A*DESK (Barcelona, Spain), no.w.here (London, U.K.), Alternative Space LOOP (Seoul, South Korea), and Para/Site Art Space (Hong Kong). Araki has participated in residency programs at SNEHTA (Greece), Nes Artist Residency (Iceland), and Tokyo Wonder Site Aoyama (Japan), among other places. He lives and works in Tokyo, Japan.
Filmography: Bivalvia: Act I (2017), Wrong Revision (2016), Olafur (2014), Road Movie (2014), Angelo Lives (2014), 971 Horses + 4 Zebras (2007).
Press
Documentary Review: Mountain Plain Mountain, by Alexander Knoth on Asian Movie Pulse
Top 5 Shorts of 2018, selected by Maike Mia Höhne and Sven Schwarz on Kinoscope
Japanese experimental documentary now, by Matt Turner on BFI's Sight & Sound
Winners Ammodo Tiger Short Competition, on IFFR's News
with
Yoshiyuki Hattori
Kurando Funayama
Tetsuya Sato
a film by
Daniel Jacoby & Yu Araki
music
Liisa Hirsch
vocals
Matsuritaro
color grade
Ludovic Roussaux
at Okay Studio
audio mix
Takashi Kataoka
camera, sound, edit
Yu Araki
Daniel Jacoby
commissioned by
Fundació Joan Miró
with the support of
Arts Council Tokyo
Mondriaan Fund
additional support
Jan van Eyck Academie
special thanks
Serafín Álvarez
Kaoru Chiba
Hitoshi Furudate
Ryuji Goda
Mitsushige Hayashi
Takeshi Inomata
Maki Ishida
Tomoyuki Ishida
Shinobu Ito
Takuma Kajiwara
King
Yuka Kokubo
Tamara Kuselman
Hideki Matsumoto
Jamie Mccubbin
Milky
Martina Millà
Stuart Munro
Kota Nagasawa
Yasuo Nambo
Marjolein van der Loo
Mami Odai
Yusuke Ohki
Ayumi Ohmuku
Nobuo Ono
Gerard Ortín
Kiri Takahashi
Mitsuhiro Takasaka
Yuki, Keiko & Mine Takano
Kenta Tanabe
Chikashi Tazawa
Hiromichi Terashima
Naoko Tokuda
Chiaki Sakaguchi
Takashi Serizawa
Kuniya Suzuki
Wolfgang Winter
Shoji Yoneyama
Takayoshi Yoshida
and our families
shot at
Ban’ei Tokachi
Obihiro, Japan
2017
