Kenji Yoshida: Artist of the Soul (2008)

Kenji Yoshida - Artist of the Soul is an in-depth profile of the 83 year-old former Kamikaze pilot and Avant Garde artist, Kenji Yoshida. The film presents a rare interview with Yoshida, intercut with eloquent analyses and anecdotes by his agent, curators and friends. It also explores the fact that, despite his historical status as the only living artist to be given a solo exhibition at the British Museum, Yoshida remains relatively unknown in Japan. Central to this film is Yoshida's profound spirituality and his philosophy on life. Almost all his paintings are titled 'La Vie', Life or the Act of Living. He owed this to his experiences in WWII and what his art teacher had told him before it: "Take up the paintbrush, not the gun." Yoshida believed that when his teacher died after the war, he left him the legacy to capture life: "Before the war I thought with his head, but after the war I learned to think with my soul". This underlined his belief that he embodied the spirits of his departed friends and family. Directed by Ishmael Annobil, this lyrical film is the first ever feature about the artist. Shot with rudimentary equipment, and without external sound recorders, Kenji Yoshida-Artist of the Soul exemplifies instinctual filmmaking, and its director's journalistic pragmatism. Classically, this historical film about one of the greatest artists of the 20th and 21st Centuries was shot on a sub-micro budget.