In Okinawan filmmaker Go Takamine’s feature film debut, Paradise View (1985), Reishu (Kaoru Kobayashi), an unemployed man who is obsessed with ants, impregnates a local girl who is arranged to marry a Japanese scholar (Haruomi Hosono). Meanwhile, the village’s helper Chiru (Jun Togawa) is obsessed with the musician Haruomi Hosono. With dialogue mostly in the endangered Okinawan language, Paradise View is a historically and culturally significant work of cinema.

As the film’s music director, Hosono makes good use of Okinawan musical elements in his synth-driven score. The enigmatic soundscape is the perfect fit for Takamine’s surreal tale that traverses between dreams and reality.

Go Takamine (b. 1948) went to university in Kyoto as a foreign student while his native Okinawa was still under American occupation. After making experimental and non-fiction films, he directed his first feature Paradise View (1985). His next film Untamagiru (1989) went to Berlin International Film Festival. His most recent film is Hengyoro (2016).