SATO SHIMAKO (K-20): JAPANESE ACTION WOMAN DIRECTOR

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On April 27 th, just before the screening of “ K-20: The Legend of the Mask”, a “masked action movie” starring Takeshi Kaneshiro (“ Red Cliff”) and Toru Nakamura (“ 2009 Lost Memories”)......Sabrina Baracetti, the president of the Far East Film Festival, introduced the film director Sato Shimako (who came on stage with her producer Abe Shuji), as the Japanese Kathrynn Bigelow, since she’s the first woman director to make such a big budget action movie in Japan.

 Sato Shimako and Sabrina Baracetti (April 28th, 2009)

Luckily, I was asked by the German distribution company of “ K-20” to shoot some DVD extra materials for them in Udine, so the day after the screening, I attended the official press conference with the director and producer of the movie.

But it was a group interview (and 45 minutes only instead of the usual 2 hours) and since I was one of the few English speakers, they gave the priority to the Italian press, and I could ask only a couple of questions at the end.

Sato Shimako and Abe Shuji (April 28th, 2009)Hopefully, I had the chance to discuss with Sato Shimako later on, and she accepted to have a solo interview with me in the afternoon. And I finally got 45 more minutes with her in English. Yeah[if gte mso 9]> Normal/w:View 0/w:Zoom 21/w:HyphenationZone false/w:SaveIfXMLInvalid false/w:IgnoreMixedContent false/w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText /w:Compatibility MicrosoftInternetExplorer4/w:BrowserLevel /w:WordDocument <![endif][if gte mso 9]> /w:LatentStyles <![endif][if gte mso 10]> <![endif]Frédéric Ambroisine (April 29 th, 2009)