The Director
DFS's director/cinematographer is Hotaka Matsumura, who is a native Osakan and speaks both English and Japanese. The following four films, both independent and commercial, form his signature body of work as a director.
The Kikuichi Story Trilogy (2022) - promotional documentary short (15min)
SARABA! (2021) - promotional narrative short (16min)
Midnight Delivery App (2020) - narrative short feature (50min)
Mother's Birthday (2013) - narrative short feature (51min)
While he possesses a wide range of skills that allow him to flexibly create pictures and artwork in accordance with his clients' requests, he is also highly capable of projecting his uniqueness as a director to the fullest extent in his works. For example, one of the common themes that he celebrates in his work is self-sacrifice. In a world where rationalism and profit and loss reign supreme, self-sacrifice often means an unnecessary death. However, he has strong sympathy, gratitude, and respect for those who have sacrificed themselves for others, large or small. The events of his life that provide the basis for this are not clear, but the major events are concentrated in his late teens and beyond, with the biggest incident being a conflict with his own mother. After all, his mother had long held her son in bondage with her clingy love. Wishing to be free from this, he asked his mother to accept his desire to leave home when he was in junior high school to fulfill his dream of becoming a soccer player. However, she not only did not support his wish, but even interfered with it. His wish at that time was for his mother to make a final self-sacrifice. He wanted her to release her beloved son from her bondage. In terms of visual style, his technical versatility allows him to use a wider variety of styles to achieve more effective storytelling, but in mise-en-scène, for example, he frequently employs nature, forests, trees, leaves, branches, plants, and flowers. In production, as a director, he has a strong commitment to all styles, and thus believes in exerting a strong sense of control or intent over all of mise-en-scène's film techniques, including cinematography, editing, and sound. For example, he is extremely reluctant to leave music to the composer, editing to the editor, and so on.