Ask the Wind

The eye and ear are endlessly ravished in this film. Composed as a rhapsody on the exquisite Japanese landscape in the Southwestern part of the country, this film is at turns poetic and violent. Music is at the heart of this piece, a portrait of musicians who have carved a niche in the lush Japanese countryside. Music and landscape thus become inextricably entwined. As befits the subject-matter, the framing of each shot is dictated by the music and the landscape rather than accepted practices of camera technique. ASK the Wing film is a wonderful evocation of place and time.