The Japanese Film Festival kicks off this weekend in Mesa at Arizona State University’s Media and Immersive Experience Center. The festival will feature a mix of features and short films.
One of the shorts is called “Yuri.” It tells the story of a Black Russian weight lifter named Yuri who lives in a small American suburb. Yuri’s imposing physical stature — and his limited English — make it difficult for him to relate to his neighbors and co-workers.
But one day, he meets an older Japanese widow named Hiroko. She takes a liking to Yuri, and invites him over for sake in her cluttered living room, which is crammed with flowers and artifacts from her past. As they talk, they find themselves opening up in unexpected ways.
“Yuri” is co-written and directed by filmmaker Johnnie Hobbs.
Full conversation
SAM DINGMAN: So Johnnie, to start, tell me where the idea for this film came from. You’ve, you’ve chosen two characters that I personally don’t think I’ve really seen on screen before.
JOHNNIE HOBBS: Yeah, right. I mean, I guess that’s the point is that these two people, this Black Russian, which generally is 1% of the Russian population, and then you have this older Japanese woman who, it’s not directly said, but you know, had a wife or had a partner that was a woman.
The point was to make sure that the people that we can assume don’t exist or we don’t even think of don’t need to necessarily find like-minded individuals in their community to connect with. That’s good, but you can also find people that have no discernible connection or visible connection to you and you can find people that still see you.
DINGMAN: Yeah, yeah. Well, there’s a line in the film that Yuri, the Black Russian weight lifter, he says to Hiroko, “they see what I look like. But not me.”
I got the sense, and I’m inferring here that for both of them, whether it’s people who they might think they would have a natural community with, or just the general world of America, it seems like until the events that we see in this film, nobody has really seen the other one quite as clearly as they do for each other, with the exception probably of Hiroko’s partner who passed away.
HOBBS: Yeah, nobody is, nobody in the world, and this is beyond the movie, but nobody is seeing anybody for who they truly are until they get to really sit down and talk to them. And even then it can be kind of muddled.
And look, the movie that I made is extremely idealistic, you know. So you know it’s in a perfect world, these two people come together and they sort of understand one another, but we’re all sort of living in our own bubble until we decide to really listen and take in somebody.
DINGMAN: OK, well, can I ask you about, there is a real specificity culturally to both Yuri’s character and Hiroko’s character, as you were pointing out. What was interesting to you about bringing those two specific cultural identity together?
HOBBS: Well, the reason why I decided over time to make Yuri a Black Russian comes from a lot of different things. Personal stuff about me being a Black American in America, being a dark-skinned Black American male in America and how I can be perceived or misperceived just by my existence.
DINGMAN: Can I ask you about that because not to assume, but that makes me think about the opening scene of the film where Yuri is getting a massage and It’s not going the way that he wants it to, and he sort of like objects to the way that the massage therapist is touching him and she completely freaks out and goes to get her husband, who comes in with a bat like Yuri was threatening to attack her, which is absolutely not the case, and Yuri has to take a deep breath and make it very clear to them that he’s not a threat. Is that part of what you’re referring to there?
HOBBS: Yeah, so you know, my co-writer and I, Aviv Rubinstien, I think the thing that we both wanted was for him to a moment to feel sexualized, to feel outside of his own body like an alien, and to feel put upon or accused of something that he didn’t do.
And these have been things that have happened in my life in many different ways and have, frankly, I’m sure for you, too, Sam, in your own existence, in your own body have happened to you …
DINGMAN: Absolutely …
HOBBS: … just because I am an African American living in America, I don’t have a stamp on being misunderstood. I think that’s what I was trying to make sure that I was, I was opening up the conversation. That it wasn’t just about Black Americans, that it was we have this idea as Americans of what a Russian looks like on film. Yes, villains, mischievous or deceitful individuals. Maybe they drink a lot.
DINGMAN: That makes me think about the sequences in the film where we see Yuri. He has this notebook that he carries around where he’s written down these like practice conversational phrases, and I realized some of that is because English is not his first language, but I don’t know, it just reminds me of the way that he seems so obsessed with trying to figure out what is the right way to come across, how do I make people not be threatened by me, unnerved by me.
HOBBS: Yeah, complete, complete anxiety about something, you know, where you’re trying to be so perfect that you end up sort of fumbling, you know, and, and it’s not your problem.
DINGMAN: Can I ask you then also about, there’s a couple of things that we see both Yuri and Hiroko be interested in that to my mind as a viewer were very, not to overuse this phrase, but culturally specific traditions that are frequently misappropriated.
One of them being yoga, which we see Yuri doing with, a yoga teacher who’s literally looking at his phone the whole time he’s running the class.
HOBBS: Yeah.
DINGMAN: And the other being Ikebana, the Japanese flower ranging tradition, which Hiroko clearly has a very profound relationship with.
[AUDIO CLIP OF HIROKO]
Arrangements thrive when their beauty is fully acknowledged. This dance is a discipline that creates an act of love towards you, the flower, and your surroundings.
HOBBS: Ikebana is about self-expression within discipline.
DINGMAN: Yes, that makes sense, and it makes me think about another one of my favorite lines is, I believe it’s Hiroko who says this as she’s talking to Yuri about her Ikebana work. She says, :any unnecessary parts of the flower should be cut so that the artist can flourish and grow.”
It’s a really lovely idea, but it also strikes me that in a way that is kind of what Yuri helps Hiroko do in the film, is to keep the memory of her partner alive in the home, but not need there to be all these cluttered physical artifacts there that might be blocking her a little bit.
HOBBS: You, you, you’re right, but let me tell, but let me tell you this also, she is helping him with the same thing. The words that she is saying are directly connected to his life.
DINGMAN: Yes.
HOBBS: The yoga class, the massage therapist. Why do we have these people in our lives? Why do we have people that are bringing us down or not willing to listen to us? Why are they existing in anybody’s life? We don’t need it. Let’s cut it out.
DINGMAN: Well, Johnnie Hobbs is the filmmaker of the film we’ve been talking about, which we’ll be screening at the Japanese Film Festival here on Sept. 12 and 13, and the film “Yuri.”
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AloJapan.com