Jun Kuromiya is a filmmaker and writer. A graduate of Princeton University with a BA in Philosophy in 2014, he left academia with the conviction that whatever was vital in the world had to be sought elsewhere. He took with him invaluable training under experimental filmmakers Su Friedrich and Keith Sanborn and the preeminent film historian P. Adams Sitney. He then went off to study Buddhism, training in the Soto Zen lineage, the Chan lineage, and currently in the Sanbo Zen tradition. He spent several years in New York City, where he developed his filmmaking and founded a video production company (Triptych Films). He also worked at Anthology Film Archives and held film screenings for independent filmmakers.
Jun’s film work spans documentary, poetic, experimental, and narrative traditions. He has filmed in digital and 16mm film formats and he is particularly interested in the possibilities of visual language to point directly to reality (to mind, etc.)
Kurozuka
Narrative, 20 mins., 2023
Kurozuka is an attempt to bring to life the Japanese myth about a demon in Adachigahara who lives disguised as a woman. The story has a long history in Japan and was most famously rendered as a Noh play in the 15th century. Even by Noh’s standards, the play generates a unique spiritual intensity in the transformation of the mysterious woman into a demon. This project was born from a desire to explore this intensity in film.
This project consequently became a way to explore how various principles of Japanese aesthetics (the rhythmic principle of jo-ha-kyu from Noh, the musical style, the separation of dialogue from the speaker, as well as ideas about light) could operate in cinema. But these principles did not simply translate to a new medium…
Irises
Two sisters return home from their mother’s funeral, facing the absence of their parents for the first time. (Narrative, 15 mins., 2021).
Official Selection: Houston International Film Festival, Tokyo Lift-Off Film Festival
Awards: Remi Award for Narrative Short - Houston International Film Festival
Onwards-
A document of an individual and of New York City, the film breaks apart into an expression of the patterns of the mind and the nature of the present, leading finally to an invocation to life. (50 mins., 2016-2020).
Miyakojima
One of a trio of song films that depict the experience of listening to music, Miyakojima is at once a self-portrait and an intimate encounter with the music of the Okinawan singers of kamiuta (songs of the gods). (7 mins., 2019).
Essays
Reflections on Eniaios (2016) - “My first day watching any of Eniaios at the Temenos site. I am most lucidly aware of an architectural sense of rhythm to the film – a pattern of white frames black frames and images that occurs in the same sequence enough times to bring the discerning spectator into a physical relationship with the pattern before it changes. What sort of physical relationship? How can it be explained…” Click here for full text
Persimmons - “I have been cutting persimmons, but they do not grow here, not anywhere near here… deep orange life lies in their centers, having migrated from Japan. They followed half my ancestry and we are now plucked together in the winter in the state of New York, and I’m going to eat them, each one, I’m going swallow them slice by slice and taste their nectar and consume their vitamins. I’m going to digest them, these ancient few, which matured over millennia into something sweet…” Click here for full text
Stories
The Father - “Once there was a man who accidentally had a child after graduating college…” Click here for full text
Passing By - “There were two people who lived their whole lives together…” Click here for full text
Contact Me.
kuromiyajun@gmail.com
(508) 654-8323