Out There

Five years on from his first film, Ito Takehiro tacks between Tokyo and Taiwan; between documentary and feature film and between fiction and reality with his independent debut, Out There. What Ito wanted to do was make a documentary about Taiwanese director Edward Yang. When this project didn’t get off the ground, he decided to work up the trials of filmmaking into a feature film.
So, Out There is about director Haruo – Ito’s alter ego – who is looking for a new lead actor for his previously unsuccessful project. He finds Ma (played by himself), a Taiwanese who roller-skates with gusto through the streets of Tokyo. From interviews, it transpires that both director and actor miss a sense of being at home, in the right place, and this is symbolised visually by the continuous switching from 16mm to Handycam to widescreen digital.