"Sunrise at Midnight" (2002) is both a documentary portrait of Yumi Umiumare, a contemporary Japanese / Australian Butoh dancer, and a Japanese Ghost story set in the Australian Desert. Filmmaker Sean O'Brien and Butoh Dancer Yumi Umiumare make an expedition into the desert to experience and exorcise Noriko's lost soul.
Read MoreSakasama: the reverse world. The two worlds of Life and Death are described as two shores; one is ‘the near shore’ (the world of the living), and the other is ‘the far shore’ (the world of after-death). A river flows between them. ‘The far shore’ is a reversed world: it is the reverse of the world of the living and everything is upside down.
Read MoreUsing everyday objects as metaphors of ‘loss’, while also collecting residential memories defined by a psycho-emotional space, Yumi takes on the notion of ‘oriental’ in the context of moving and living in “foreign” spaces. The work explores the cracks and spaces between disorientation / destruction & attraction / familiarities.
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