GOSHOGAOKA (USA/1997/SHARON LOCKHART)

Challenging the tenets of the documentary, Sharon Lockhart’s hour-long film Goshogaoka portrays a routine performed by a girls’ high school basketball team. The film opens with the team running laps of their school hall-cum-gymnasium, introducing the stage space of this balletic piece as well as its ‘characters’. To a repetitive chant, the girls warm up their bodies with a series of exercises. The monotone of the chant serves to underline the functionality of the drills, with only minor slip-ups in keeping the rhythm together. The exercises progress for about forty minutes before the girls change into tracksuits to act out preparation for a match. The film comprises six still shots more or less equal in length, and the camera never moves from its fixed position, the closed red theatre curtains looming over like a spectator.

Though minimalist in terms of how it operates as a film, Goshogaoka appears to reference other borderline cinematic works, such as Frederick Wiseman’s documentary High School, or Matthew Barney’s Cremaster 1. Lockhart worked closely with ballet choreographer Stephen Galloway to produce a routine for the girls to perform that looked realistic but also benefitted the film’s aesthetics, and the effect is convincing. One interesting shot sees pairs of basketball players throwing the balls to one another, a practice which gradually falls out of rhythm and becomes a piece of visual syncopation. Beautifully composed with subtle yet sinister sound design, Goshogaoka is an unclassifiable piece of art, deceptive in its role but a nonetheless magnetising watch.

THE CALAMARI WRESTLER (JAPAN/2004/MINORU KAWASAKI)

Our lead character, succinctly summarised in the title, is a strong-willed squid who works his way to the top of the Japanese wrestling federation, utilising his physical invertebracy to his advantage. Men want to be him, women want to be with him... sort of. But there’s a sad turn to this whimsical story. The squid is actually a man, Kan-ichi, a former wrestler who has turned into the large mollusc as a side effect of a horrific terminal illness. After regaining the respect of Miyako, the woman who thought she’d lost him, he undergoes further adversity in the form of Miyako’s current lover Kôji, a jealous fellow wrestler who had always been in Kan-ichi’s shadow. To add insult to injury, Calamari is challenged to fight a squilla shrimp renowned for his boxing prowess.

There’s no real way of analysing this film without having a surreal sense of humour. Just a few minutes in, it’s already so strange you have no choice but to laugh. The costumes are wonderful, reigniting the laughter whenever the story flags a bit. And though the whole film is played for silliness, director Minoru Kawasaki does have something to say about the politics of the individual. Naturally, this is lost in the bizarre comedy images, such as Calamari’s wonderfully mundane shopping trips, basket in tentacle, or his adrenaline-pumped Rocky montage (can squids lift weights?). It’s a simple story that might not have been released were it not for the kooky protagonist, but nonetheless an enjoyable watch.