The Peony's Whisper 牡丹の囁き
Vincent Guilbert's 2016 French documentary portrait of the Japanese rope master Naka Akira, shot in Japanese and selected for Sitges in 2018.
The Peony’s Whisper (Botan no sasayaki) is a documentary by the French filmmaker Vincent Guilbert about Naka Akira, a Japanese kinbaku master. Unifrance, the agency that promotes French cinema abroad, lists it as a 2016 French production in the Japanese language with a running time of 65 minutes. Guilbert is credited as director, director of photography, sound recordist, editor and executive producer.
Unifrance’s synopsis calls Naka one of today’s masters of kinbaku, which it describes as the tradition of tying and suspending the body with intricately interwoven ropes, and presents the film as an intimate portrait of an elusive man and an exploration of his discipline. The only selection Unifrance records is in the Panorama section of the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia in 2018.
An event page published by Studio Yukari for an appearance by Naka names the film, with its Japanese title, among the milestones of his career, alongside his performances in Japan and abroad and the Nawa Naka Kai, a regular rope gathering he has organized in Tokyo since 2011.