KimiKat Productions Presents ONLOOKERS, a film by Kimi Takesue
Opens Friday, Feb. 16th, 2024 in U.S. theatres
Metrograph (New York exclusive) U.S. theatrical premiere
“Onlookers” will screen as part of the series Fire Over Water: Films of Transcendence January 26 – February 25, 2024 at Metrograph featuring films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Kim Ki-duk, Kimi Takesue and more.
Official Selection:
World Premiere – Slamdance Film Festival 2023, Breakouts Feature Honorable Mention Winner
International Premiere – Cinéma du Réel 2023
RIDM: Montreal International Documentary Film Festival 2023
DMZ International Documentary Film Festival 2023
San Diego Asian American Film Festival 2023
Krakow International Film Festival 2023
Prismatic Ground 2023
Cinéma du Réel 2023
Onlookers, a film by Kimi Takesue
USA | 2023 | 72 minutes
Official site: www.onlookersfilm.com
ONLOOKERS offers a visually striking, immersive meditation on travel and tourism in Laos, reflecting on how we all live as observers. Unfolding in painterly tableaux, ONLOOKERS explores the paradox of travel: Why do people fly thousands of miles from home to lounge in a Laotian guest house sipping smoothies while watching reruns of the TV show “Friends”? Why do we climb to the top of a colossal mountain just to snap selfies, rather than enjoy the extraordinary view? We are present, but absent. Looking, but not seeing. With wit and a gentle eye for social critique, ONLOOKERS observes Western backpackers and tour groups from East Asia descend upon Laos, a small country in Southeast Asia economically dependent on international tourism. ONLOOKERS invites audiences to reflect on their own modes of tourism, while asking the looming existential questions: Why do we travel? What do we seek?
A rich, meditative film about looking at people who have come to look, made up of painterly, precisely composed tableaux that both reveal the picturesque beauty of the local landscape and question the concept of the “picturesque,” all while revealing the persistence of colonial assumptions in contemporary package tourism.
“Revelatory… Onlookers provides a piercing and ironic examination of seemingly benevolent cultural consumption.” – Michael Sicinski, Film Comment
“A surprisingly funny observational documentary feature…is all about these times when eyes meet each other, or a lens, and that recognition causes one party to fall in or out of balance…But [Takesue's] not merely reversing too-common gazes or commenting on tourism's cannibalization of a place…Onlookers is instead the pithy result of her long look at a place and its tourism from untrodden angles. She is able to look at travel critically as well as see its potential.” -A.E. Hunt, Filmmaker
“Through a series of expertly framed static takes (and meticulous sound design), we're free to let our senses wander between the sometimes humorous, sometimes off putting, and always porous borders between seen and seer— and might just take pause to consider who could be observing us as we do.” -Inney Prakash, Prismatic Ground
Onlookers will also stream on Metrograph at Home (starting February 23, 2024) as part of Kimi Takesue Showcase, alongside the director's previous features 95 and 6 to Go (2016) and Where Are You Taking Me? (2010), both available online from February 16, 2024.
About the Filmmaker- Kimi Takesue
Director, Producer, Cinematographer, Sound Recordist, Editor
Kimi Takesue is an award-winning filmmaker working in documentary, experimental and narrative genres. Takesue's films have screened at more than 250 film festivals and museums internationally including Sundance, Locarno, Toronto, New Directors /New Films, SXSW, and MoMA and have aired on PBS, IFC, and the Sundance Channel. Takesue is the recipient of Guggenheim and Rockefeller Fellowships, as well as the “Breakthrough Award” from Chicken and Egg Pictures recognizing women who have made significant contributions to the documentary field. Takesue is Professor in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media at Rutgers University-Newark.
Takesue's feature documentary 95 AND 6 TO GO, a portrait of her Japanese American grandfather in Hawai'i, was nominated for the 2017 European Doc Alliance Award and screened at over twenty-five international film festivals, including CPH:DOX, Doclisboa, DOC NYC, and Dok Leipzig. The film won the Special Jury Prize for Best Documentary Film at Indie Memphis and the Los Angeles Asian Pacific International Film Festival. Takesue's critically acclaimed Ugandan feature documentary WHERE ARE YOU TAKING ME? was commissioned by the International Film Festival Rotterdam and premiered at the festival, followed by screenings at MoMA Documentary Fortnight and the Los Angeles Film Festival. Her films are distributed by Women Make Movies, New Day Films, and the Criterion Channel. https://www.kimitakesue.com/
Kimi Takesue Filmography
ONLOOKERS (2023)
95 AND 6 TO GO (2016)
LOOKING FOR ADVENTURE (2013)
THAT WHICH ONCE WAS (2011)
WHERE ARE YOU TAKING ME? (2010)
SUSPENDED (2009)
E=NYC2 (2005)
SUMMER OF THE SERPENT (2004)
HEAVEN'S CROSSROAD (2002)
ROSEWATER (1999)
BOUND (1995)
Onlookers Select Credits
Director and Producer: Kimi Takesue
Cinematography by: Kimi Takesue
Co-Producers: Richard Beenen, Sophie Luo
Consulting Producers: Sara Archambault, Karin Chien
Sound: Kimi Takesue
Edited by: Kimi Takesue
Colorist: Christopher DiBerardino
Supervising Sound Editor & Re-Recording Mixer: Tom Efinger
Sound Editor: Abigail Savage
Official site: www.onlookersfilm.com
Social Media
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram @onlookersfilm
Support & Funding From:
Bogliasco Foundation
Chicken and Egg Pictures
The Corporation of Yaddo
MacDowell
Marblehouse
New York State Council on the Arts
Rutgers University – Newark
Women Make Movies Production Assistance Program
