A Window of Memories
- JAPAN / 2023 / Japanese / Color / DCP / 67 min
Director: Kiyohara Yui
Text: Sunako Kyoko, Kiyohara Sachiko, Kiyohara Yui
Assistant Director: Ota Tatsunari
Photography: Teranishi Ryo, Kiyohara Yui
Sound: Iwasaki Kanshi
Music: Yoda Marie
Construction: Iwasaki Kanshi, Ota Tatsunari, Kiyohara Yui
Producer: Kiyohara Yui
Cast: Sunako Kyoko, Kiyohara Sachiko, Oyama Kaoruko, Sakato Kana
Presented by: Aichi Arts Center
Produced by: Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art
Source: Kiyohara Yui
The filmmaker interviews her paternal and maternal grandmothers, co-writing texts with them that are later read aloud by two women of her own generation. The grandmothers share detailed memories grounded in daily life—stories of work, marriage, and family. As their recollections are reassembled through reading, the grandmothers’ stories gradually converge, blurring the line between personal memory and the lived experiences recounted by others, until they become our story. A cinematic attempt to explore the memories of two grandmothers—each from a different side of the family—and to share them through others. (KT)
[Director’s Statement] As a child, I often visited the houses of both my grandmothers. I found it so strange that even though they were both my “grandma,” their homes were far apart, their lifestyles completely different. I felt like I was shuttling between different worlds.
It was a comment from my maternal grandmother that made me want to listen carefully to the stories they told. She worked at my grandfather’s factory, long past its peak by the time I was a child. She said she actually ran the factory, sometimes even making managerial decisions. She had been unable to speak about it for many years, in order to uphold my grandfather’s reputation. Stunned at this revelation, I felt various emotions flow out of my grandmother and straight into me. If I hadn’t had the chance to properly hear these stories, I wondered where such tucked-away memories would have ended up. I found myself wanting to know more about the lives of my two long-lived grandmothers, so I began to listen to them and record their stories.
For this film, I put their lives as told in their own words onto the page together with them. I asked two women close to my age to read out the text. As the events of their lives were read out through the voices and bodies of the two readers, I witnessed a moment when the memories of the grandmothers as strangers, the two women reading, and my own self seemed to overlap and blend with each other.
The grandmothers’ narratives are absolutely no one else’s but their own. But is it possible to share these unique experiences and narratives with others as universal stories? This was something I thought about throughout the production.
Kiyohara YuiSince making her first film with friends at the age of 17, Kiyohara has continued making films and videos. Her graduation project, Our House (2017), won the Best New Director Award at the Shanghai International Film Festival and was screened at international festivals in more than ten countries, including the Forum section of the Berlin International Film Festival. Remembering Every Night (2022) received the Jury Special Mention in the Forward Future section of the Beijing International Film Festival and was shown at various festivals such as the Berlin International Film Festival and the San Sebastián International Film Festival. In addition to filmmaking, she also creates research-based visual works concerning memories of places and people.