Pompo the Cinephile

Pompo is a small producer who turns out cheap action and erotic pictures and never runs past ninety minutes. Her assistant Gene is a socially useless young man who has done nothing but watch films. One day Pompo hands him a script and offers him the director's chair. Takayuki Hirao made it from a manga and moves the subject into the editing room: a film is really made not on set but at the bench. The story uses cutting rhythm as its own form too, with scenes deliberately short and broken. Its thesis is explicit and contestable: to make good films you must give up your life. The film itself comes in under ninety minutes, which is not a joke but the application of the argument. Who it is for: viewers who like cinema about cinema and animation. Who it is not for: anyone who will find what the film says about working conditions troubling.