Dear Friends,
By Kaori Ishii
It is with great pleasure that I announce to you that my first film, Chain of Life – The Artistry of Mokuhanzome Kimono, is being screened in the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival in Hot Springs, Arkansas on October 24 at 7:10 p.m. and October 27 at 2:40 p.m.
This is a film which shows the life and beauty of a traditional Japanese artisan who has continued to pursue an ancient fabric printing technique his whole life.
The dyeing technique which originally came from India, is considered to be the oldest in Japan, and is currently on the verge of extinction.
Such rarity is what makes the precision of this technique and depth of its artwork incomparable to others.
Chain of Life - The Artistry of Mokuhanzome Kimono
In place like nowhere else,
There is a person who is captivated
By something that everyone else has let go off.
He is called an artisan.
This movie examines the hands of the artisan who uses cherry blossom wood stamps to transform a solid piece of fabric into a kimono. Through this process, we encountered the life of an artisan.
The artisan encountered a small piece of fabric when he was an apprentice of Edo komon paper pattern dyeing, a popular dyeing technique in Japan.
However, this piece of fabric used the oldest dyeing technique in history, called Mokuhanzome wood print dyeing.
Although this technique had once almost become extinct, in the artisan's eyes, it appeared as something entirely new.
And that was where his exploration of the technique began. The road to approach a technique, which had almost become extinct, was long, lonesome, and tough.
Still, the artisan took this road - step by step, slowly but surely. And still to this date, the artisan continues his journey.
