Gaea Girls / Shinjuku Boys

Aroview: Two documentaries, one on the fascinating and hitherto unexplored world of Japanese women wrestlers (GAEA) and a second on Japanese transmen 'Onnabe' (SHINJUKU BOYS).

British director Kim Longinotto presents these outsider cultures with a level of expertise to rival early collaborator Nick Broomfield. She adopts an ethnographic approach which perfectly balances intimacy and non-intervention, and the result in both cases is a sensitive, highly authentic portrayal of contemporary Japanese women and the spaces of cultural and political resistance they are creating.

NZ International Film Festival 2001