Umi Ishihara is an artist and film maker based in London and Tokyo. Her primary focuses are in experimental narrative films and video installations.
Love and sadness intersect in The Pioneer, a sci-fi video installation set in an alternate Japan on the cusp of the summer Olympics. The film explores the universal experience of forgetting, juxtaposed against the individual plight of the narrator’s mother, whose condition has steadily declined over the years in an extended, increasingly despondent struggle with early-onset Alzheimer’s. The Pioneer is a love letter to this forgetful mother, a simultaneous symbol of infinite sadness and unparalleled beauty.
The Pioneer (trailer)
The Pioneer (excerpt)
The Garden Apartment
Love and sadness intersect in The Pioneer, a sci-fi video installation set in an alternate Japan on the cusp of the summer Olympics. The film explores the universal experience of forgetting, juxtaposed against the individual plight of the narrator’s mother, whose condition has steadily declined over the years in an extended, increasingly despondent struggle with early-onset Alzheimer’s. The Pioneer is a love letter to this forgetful mother, a simultaneous symbol of infinite sadness and unparalleled beauty.
The Pioneer (trailer)
The Pioneer (excerpt)
The Garden Apartment