Uzumasa Limelight 18

太秦ライムライト(Uzumasa Limelight)

An award-winning film telling the admirable story of Seiichi, a ‘kirareyaku’ actor whose main job in samurai movies is simply to be killed-off by the lead star. When the studio where Seiichi works decides to discontinue its samurai epics, Seiichi finds himself at a loss but hope arrives in the form of a young woman named Satsuki, who soon becomes his disciple.

Using Charlie Chaplin’s Limelight as an underlying theme, this film pays homage to the unsung heroes of Japanese movies filmed in Uzumasa film studios (Kyoto), Japan’s Hollywood. The semi-autobiographical performance by real-life kirareyaku, 71-year-old Seizo Fukumoto, who is said to have acted out 50,000 on-screen deaths, earned him the best actor prize at the Fantasia International Film Festival, Montreal, in 2014, with the film also winning the festival’s Cheval Noir for best film.