Crowdfunding for Lowlife Love, a new Japanese Movie from Third Window Films
Third Window Films, one of the leading distributors of Japanese films in the UK, has launched a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to create a film named Lowlife Love. Here are the details:
Earlier this year Third Window Films released Eiji Uchida’s original take on the slasher genre with GREATFUL DEAD, a film which was called “Amelie meets Battle Royale” (as original mixup if ever there was one) by The Geek Show and was included in many Top 10 lists of 2014 including Twitch and Film Bizarro among others, so when the director came to us with a new project we were more than eager to help out!
Lowlife Love (tentative title – Japanese title is 下衆の愛 – Gesu no Ai) is a slacker comedy about Tetsuo, a film loving, though up his own ass low-life whose bitterness about a failed career as a director is taken out on those around him. He makes porn films to keep money in his pocket, but won’t go against his ‘artistic integrity’ which he uses as a tool to exploit women and others. One day he comes across a perfect script and a young, fresh actress, but will he be able to make the film which will reignite his career as a director, or will his past exploits catch up on him?
The lead character of Tetsuo is played by Kiyohiko Shibukawa who is one of Japan’s leading independent actors. He has had a long career starring in films across the board, always popping up in those from Toshiaki Toyoda (9 Souls, Blue Spring, I’m Flash, etc), but also has main parts in films such as Yoshihiro Nakamura’s Golden Slumber, Yu Irie’s Joker Game, Sion Sono’s upcoming Love & Peace, Sogo Ishii’s latest That’s That and much more.
Third Window Film fans will also recognise him from our releases of And the Mud Ship Sails Away, Isn’t Anyone Alive and Fish Story.
Despite our low budget and short shooting schedule (just 1 week), we have called in favours from all over to bring in a phenomenal cast plus we will be shooting with a RED camera (almost unheard of with independent films in Japan).
The cast includes:
Denden (Cold Fish, Himizu)
Kanji Tsuda (Juon: The Grudge, Guilty of Romance)
Kanji Furutachi (Woodsman & the Rain, Fukuchan of Fukufuku Flats)
Shugo Oshinari (Kabukicho Love Hotel, Yokohama Story)
Chika Uchida (Sad Tea, Penance)
Yoshihiko Hosoda (Detroit Metal City, Lady Shogun and her Men)
Yuumi Goto (Be My Baby, I Catch a Terrible Cat)
This is a totally independent production, produced only by us at Third Window Films and on a very small budget. To reach the production budget, I, Adam Torel, had to sell the majority of my personal record collection of 1960s rare records, which was more than half my life’s work and passion.
Unfortunately (though also fortunately depending on how you look at it) the project became more popular than we had imagined and has slightly swelled in budget, hence running this crowdfunding campaign to cover the gaps. The amount raised in this campaign will be used to cover the extra fees of the bigger name cast, plus cover post-production expenses such as editing, sound correction and colour grading.
We start shooting on March 12th and will finish on March 19th.
Risks and challenges
Since the basic production budget is complete we can make the film without any problems, we just need to cover the end bits such as post-production and some cast fees.
Third Window Films already have experience producing films in Japan, plus as an international sales agent to handle the film once complete, as since we’ve been running a distribution company for 10 years and also book for many festivals we can’t see many setbacks once the film is funded. Due to the impressive cast and director we have high expectations for the film, hence us taking on this project!
The campaign seeks £5,5000 and lasts for 12 days. Pledges range from £25 to £500 and the rewards range from signed copies of a limited edition dual format DVD/BLU-RAY edition at the lower end to a script and a credit as Associate Producer as well as the film and poster. At the time of writing, the higher pledges have been scooped up but there are still plenty of other rewards to get.
