Connected Colours [Nobumichi Asai, Japan, 2016]

Connected Colours is one of Nobumichi Asai’s earliest ventures in the world of face mapping technology and in this way feels more like a rehearsal than a cohesive narrative piece. The film, as the title suggests, is all about colours existing in symbiotic harmony throughout all walks of life, and Asai relates this back to the intolerance that humankind as a species experiences through its modern constructions. Here, Asai wishes to promote racial harmony and in his own words “wishes that people [would] acknowledge differences between cultures, races and religions as diversity rather than division”.

The concept is a noble one, but without ample explanation the message is lost behind the otherwise dazzling technology and mesmerising visuals. It is easy to see how much Asai’s abilities in this area have evolved once we get to a film like Prayer (Japan, 2017) where there is much more movement and confidence in both production and sound design. There is still a lot of beauty to be found in the different patterns and images that are projected onto the model’s face, but the film essentially feels more like a behind-the-scenes reel than a document of moral protest.