is a Japanese

film director A film director controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfilment of that vision. The director has a key role in choosing the cast members, p ...

and

actress An actor or actress is a person who portrays a Character (arts), character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek ...

. She was described in 2007 as one of the female Japanese directors who "have brought some needed originality and talent to contemporary Japanese cinema."

Life and career

Tomoko Matsunashi was born in

Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui h ...

, Japan on April 14, 1971. She says she was interested in the theatre and wanted to be an actor from the time she was in elementary school. She attended

Waseda University , abbreviated as , is a private university, private research university in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Founded in 1882 as the ''Tōkyō Senmon Gakkō'' by Ōkuma Shigenobu, the school was formally renamed Waseda University in 1902. The university has numerou ...

and although she studied business, she became part of an independent theatre group while at school. She also became interested in film at that time and after graduation appeared as an actress in a film directed by one of the group's members which won the audience award at the Pia Film Festival. When the director left the group, Matsunashi decided to make her own films though she had no formal training in cinema. Her first film, the 1995 short, ''To Be or Not to Be'', which she wrote, directed and acted in, won an Encouragement Prize in the Off Theater Competition at the 1996

Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival The , also sometimes called YIFFF, is held in a resort-like environment in the small town of Yūbari on the northernmost Japanese island of Hokkaidō. From 1990 to 1999, the festival was known as the Yubari International Fantastic Adventure Fil ...

. Matsunashi appeared as an actress in the March 1996 release ''Tokiwa: The Manga Apartment'' directed by

Jun Ichikawa was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. He was first a director of television commercials before adding filmmaking to his creative activities. His most famous film outside Japan was ''Tony Takitani'', an adaptation of a short story by Har ...

and was also in one of director

Noboru Iguchi (born June 28, 1969) is a Japanese film director, screenwriter and actor. He has worked as a director in adult video (AV) as well as in the horror and gore genres. Life and career Iguchi was born on June 28, 1969. In an interview he said he was ...

's early movies, ''Kurushime-san'', which was first released in 1997. Iguchi's film won the Encouragement Prize at the 1998

. In 1998 she was the companion and co-star of Katsuyuki Hirano in the second of his trilogy of bike-ride documentary movies ''Encyclopedia of a Drifter''. The third movie in his trilogy, ''Shiro - The White'' from 1999, involved a hazardous solo trip to northern

Hokkaido is Japan's second largest island and comprises the largest and northernmost prefecture, making up its own region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō from Honshu; the two islands are connected by the undersea railway Seikan Tunnel. The la ...

in a winter blizzard. Matsunashi also continued directing and another of her early films, ''Bitch Matilda'' (1998), garnered her a nomination for the New Director's Award from the

Directors Guild of Japan The is a trade union created to represent the interests of film directors in the film industry in Japan. It was founded in 1936, with Minoru Murata serving as the first president, and has continued to this day apart from a period between 1943 and ...

. Her next film, ''SABU, Goodbye to their Youth'' from 2000, was a mixture of science fiction and politics and was an early attempt by Matsunashi at a comic portrayal of young men from a woman's perspective. The film was shown theatrically in Osaka and Tokyo and at the TromaDance Film Festival in 2002. Matsunashi's next feature (from 2002) was ''Replicant Joe'', with another science fiction-fantasy theme where the title character becomes a robot with a rocket-launcher arm and a small woolen penis. International recognition came to Matsunashi with her 2005 film ''The Way of the Director'' which was shown at the

Fantasia Festival Fantasia International Film Festival (also known as Fantasia-fest, FanTasia, and Fant-Asia) is a film festival that has been based mainly in Montreal since its founding in 1996. Regularly held in July of each year, it is valued by both hardcore ...

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

in July 2005 and at the Camera Japan festival in

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"N ...

in June 2006. Matsunashi has said that all her films "are based on my own previous experiences with my ex-boyfriends" and ''The Way of the Director'' is centered around two characters Saito and Kitagawa who both aspire to be directors. Saito makes a name for herself in independent films but Kitagawa is persuaded by a friend to become a porn director though he still dreams of going legitimate. Meeting Saito again after ten years, Kitagawa gets the idea of filming a trek to northern Hokkaido in winter with Saito. When things go wrong and Saito dies, Kitagawa eats her flesh to survive but eventually succumbs as well. A friend rescues his film footage and Kitagawa finally becomes a mainstream director. In November 2007, Matsunashi announced the shooting of her next film, ''Happy Darts'', and asked Japanese darts fans to collaborate in its making. The comedy, released theatrically in Japan in November 2008, concerns an office lady whose humdrum life is changed when she attempts to win a national darts competition.

Filmography (Director)

Filmography sources: *1995 , 8mm, 28 min. *1996 ''Cherry Boys Legend'', 8mm, 55 min. *1997 ''Seventeen'', VTR, feature *1998 , released April 3, 1999 *2000 , released September 29, 2000 *2002 , released March 29, 2003 *2004 ''Teacher Emanuelle'', VTR, 33 min. *2005 ''Bitch Matilda 2'', VTR, 30 min. *2005 , released April 8, 2006 *2008 , released November 8, 2008 *2010 , released January 15, 2011 (omnibus work with 4 other directors)

References

External links

* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Matsunashi, Tomoko Japanese film directors Japanese screenwriters Japanese film actresses 1971 births Living people Japanese women film directors Japanese women screenwriters 20th-century Japanese actresses 21st-century Japanese actresses Waseda University alumni People from Hiroshima