ZI is a movie I needed to make in the way we made it. It is the kind of film that made me love films, not as a product or some vehicle for storytelling, but as a way to experience time and being.

 

When I was younger, movies were a thrilling way to distract myself from the weight of existence — that feeling I would have when things were too quiet. Some called this feeling “boredom” but for me it was more haunting, more dreadful. I loved movies because they allowed me to escape the spectre of nothingness that I felt in the mundane. They were an antidote to the ordinary.

 

Later in my life I encountered films from other parts of the world that would have a profoundly different effect on me. They would not offer escape but rather a deeper sense of what I was trying to escape. A feeling of time and existence. Film as a sensory form of engagement where content seemed secondary, too slight and loosely constructed to be worthy of attention.

 

What to make of this kind of cinema? It was like tasting a foreign dish for the first time. It was unfamiliar, a little off-putting and bland. However, I couldn’t deny the lingering sensation that stayed with me. Did I even like it? Was it good? I didn’t know. But the depth of aftertaste brought me back again and again until it became the cinema that I craved. In these films, form was not subservient to content. Indeed, it was a form that gave pleasure and meaning. 

 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve rewatched Sans Soleil and Hiroshima Mon Amour simply for the pleasure of their construct. Every cut mesmerizes. The relationship between image and time. The discontinuity that coheres. The rhythm and asynchronicity of modern life. It is the same reason I rewatch Ozu although his films could not be any more different than Marker and Resnais.

 

The construct of these films are not merely pleasurable but also deeply moving. Not intellectually but experientially. And existentially. There is something fundamental about cinema as a temporal form that resonates deeply in these films. For me, cinema is a medium of time, not merely a delivery system for storytelling but a medium capable of engaging us intrinsically as temporal beings. I don’t think it’s too much to say that this kind of cinema changed me forever. zi is my past catching up to my future. It is a pursuit, a desire, a need.

 

*On the music of Ryuichi Sakamoto: I had the privilege of working with Sakamoto-san on a previous film (After Yang). His music has had a profound impact on me but also his life as an artist. After his passing, I felt his absence deeply. zi is dedicated to his memory. My desire was to incarnate the emotion and feeling of some of his lesser known experimental work that he was making after his diagnosis. The film itself explores themes in his music during this period.