Since his 1999 debut "Anyon Kimuchi (Annyong Kimchi)," a documentary about his zainichi (ethnic Korean) family, Tetsuaki Matsue has been interested in those on the margins of Japanese society — though he is hardly the director-as-crusader.
Instead, as he showed in "Raibu Tepu (Live Tape)," winner of the Best Film prize in the Japanese Eyes section at the 2009 Tokyo International Film Festival, he can be something of a coconspirator and confessor. Following Bob Dylan-esque singer-songwriter Kenta Maeno as he busked through the crowded streets of Tokyo's Kichijoji neighborhood, Matsue conducted a running dialogue with his subject on his work and life that began as drolly funny but became surprisingly moving, as Maeno revealed his conflicted feelings toward his father and his doubts about the future.
The subject of Matsue's new "Furasshubakku Memorizu 3D (Flashback Memories 3D)," however, was "totally different (from Maeno)," Matsue says in an interview at the office of production company Space Shower Networks. Hiroki Morimoto, a didgeridoo player better known as Goma whose struggle with memory loss is the film's focus, "sees the world from a different place," Matsue explains. "He exists on a totally different plane from me."