is a Japanese

film director A film director or filmmaker is a person who controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfillment of that Goal, vision. The director has a key role ...

and

screenwriter A screenwriter (also called scriptwriter, scribe, or scenarist) is a person who practices the craft of writing for visual mass media, known as screenwriting. These can include short films, feature-length films, television programs, television ...

first known for his soft-core pornographic ''

pink film refers in Japan to movies produced by independent studios that includes nudity (hence 'pink') or deals with sexual content. This encompasses everything from dramas to action thrillers and exploitation film features. Many pink films would be a ...

s'' of the 1990s. Along with fellow directors,

Kazuhiro Sano is a Japanese film director, screenwriter and actor best known for his '' pink films'' of the 1990s. Along with fellow directors, Takahisa Zeze, Toshiki Satō and Hisayasu Sato, he is known as one of the . Sano's films differ from those of ot ...

, Toshiki Satō, and Hisayasu Sato, he is known as one of the . In recent years, he has directed such major commercial hits as '' 64: Part I'', '' 64: Part II'', and '' The 8-Year Engagement'', while continuing to make independent art films like '' Heaven's Story'' and '' The Chrysanthemum and the Guillotine''.

Life and career

"I try to show relationships, I make films about love. It's not just about the act of having sex, but what leads up to it and what comes after. What are the feelings of the people before, while they do it and after they did it? It's this development that interests me. I don't care very much about rape, because it's very one-sided and doesn't allow for this kind of development... I don't want to depict characters as having sex, but as making love."
-- Takahisa ZezeZeze, Takahisa quoted in

Takahisa Zeze was born in 1960 and graduated from

Kyoto University , or , is a National university, national research university in Kyoto, Japan. Founded in 1897, it is one of the former Imperial Universities and the second oldest university in Japan. The university has ten undergraduate faculties, eighteen gra ...

in 1986. While attending this prestigious university, Zeze began making experimental films. He began his career in the film industry working for Shishi Productions as a

and

assistant director The role of an assistant director (AD) on a film includes tracking daily progress against the filming production schedule, arranging logistics, preparing daily call sheets, checking cast and crew, and maintaining order on the set. They also have ...

for various ''

'' directors, including Hisayasu Satō. Zeze usually writes the scripts for his films, which often contain examinations of social concerns not usually found in the ''pink film'' genre. His style is much less violent than Sato's, and rarely includes rape, one of the traditional thematic staples of the ''pink film'' from earliest times. Zeze also engages in more satire and self-conscious humor than is typical in the genre. He has the habit of giving his films eccentric titles during their production which the studios replace with a more commercially exploitable name before release. For example, Zeze's title ''My Existence Is a Phenomenon Based on the Hypothesis of Blue Light Generated by Organic Currency'' was changed to ''Amazon Garden: Uniform Lesbians''. He sometimes uses whimsical pseudonyms in his directorial credit, such as "Jean-Luc Zeze" or "South Pole #1". After a decade of making ''pink films'', Zeze turned to mainstream releases in 1997 with ''Kokkuri''. While continuing to work in the ''pink film'' genre, he has since directed several mainstream successes such as ''Rush!'', ''Hysteric'' and ''Dog Star''. In 2002 Zeze was honored with a career retrospective at Italy's Far East Film Festival. He often works with the cinematographer Kōichi Saitō.

Partial filmography

References

* * * * * * *

External links

* , - ! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;" , Pink Grand Prix , - , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Zeze, Takahisa 1960 births Japanese film directors Pink film directors Japanese screenwriters Living people Kyoto University alumni