Isamu Hirabayashi

A film about life, reproduction and death. Instead of turning it into a grim and serious affair, Hirabayashi churns out a dry, absurd and fragmented comedy that defies categorization. It's a film that reveals its secrets over time, it's certain to test your stamina, but it was like nothing I've seen before and it made me laugh out loud more than once. A superb first feature of Hirabayashi.

Song Story is a 12-short anthology split into two different releases. Each of the stories is based on Japanese pop songs, which means the directors had the liberty of making something a bit more creative. And that's exactly what they did. The quality of the shorts is relatively stable, but they are different enough from one another and none of them felt lazy or uninspired. Isamu Hirabayashi had the most abstract of the six shorts and display, which is why it's my uncontested favorite of the bunch, but all of the films here added something substantial to the film. A fun discovery.