Ascent
2016, Japan/NL
Directed by Fiona Tan
80mins, English, Japanese, with English subtitles
Closed captions available

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4 – 11 November: available to watch online (UK only)
Wednesday 4 Nov 6.30pm (BST): communal viewing
Wednesday 4 Nov 8.30pm (BST): live online discussion

A western female writer and her Japanese correspondent, Hiroshi, narrate a metaphorical journey up the iconic and mysterious Mount Fuji in Japan, crossing geographical, temporal and cultural divides. Made entirely with stills, Fiona Tan’s Ascent has been referred to as a photo-film, balanced between documentary and fiction, photography and film.

Successive images of Mount Fuji – spanning the history of photography  as well as Japanese and western art and popular culture – inspire the narrators to uncover different paths up the mountain, and to muse on the significance it holds within Japanese history, religion and philosophy.

In the words of David Campany, Ascent offers the viewer ‘a rich weave of associations that are personal, poetic, historical, scientific, anthropological, military, geological, political, literary and artistic. Ascent is a bowl for images, a vortex of images, with Mount Fuji at its centre.’