Offscreen Notes
Tomoya Sato on DVD
This extremely independent DVD label has put out three interesting medium length films by Japanese director Tomoya Sato, L’Ilya (16mm, 2000, 39 min.), Shita??/??A Deadly Silence (HD, 2004, 38 min.), and Marehito (16mm, 2005, 30 min.). Each film comes attractively packaged in a slim jewel case with tasteful cover art and sold individually. Although the films are less than feature length each DVD is accompanied by a nice selection of special features including other short films, interviews, trailers, and poster art. L’Ilya was reviewed as part of the Fantasia Small Gauge Trauma DVD. Crippled Brothers also has a fourth film in its catalogue, the unique stop motion animation fantasy/science-fiction film Mecanix, which is a cross between silent cinema fantasy (Georges Méliès and Lang’s Metropolis come to mind) and modern Kafkaesque surrealism (the claustrophobic worlds of Eraserhead, the Quay Brothers, and Jan Svankmajer are invoked).
