WebinarWednesday 16 September 2020
12:00pm – 1:00pm
LITTLE MISS SUMO: Smashing Glass Ceilings
This event will start at 12 BST (British Summer Time)
大和日英基金 主催
満席Women are said to ‘contaminate the sacred space’ and so are banned from entering professional sumo rings. Sumo has been around for thousands of years but now is as exciting a time as ever. In this webinar the director of award-winning short film Little Miss Sumo Matt Kay took us on a tour inside the world of female sumo wrestling. As well as discussing the inspiration for the documentary, history of the sport, and the filmmaking process, he branched out to the wider complexities of respecting tradition while remaining ethical.
Little Miss Sumo is about female sumo wrestling champion Hiyori Kon who confronts obstacles both inside and outside the ring in an attempt to change Japan’s national sport forever. Will both genders ever be regarded as equal in the sport of sumo? With Tokyo 2021 on the horizon how is this sporting world adapting? In a post #MeToo and #KuToo era how has Little Miss Sumo contributed to discussions revolving around larger discussions of gender equality in Japanese society?
Matt Kay’s short film ‘Little Miss Sumo’ (length: 19 minutes) can be found here on Netflix.
A video of the event can be found here:
コントリビューターについて
Matt Kay
Matt Kay is an award-winning documentary filmmaker based in London. He founded Walks Of Life Films in 2011 after making his first feature documentary Over The Wall about a British football team’s journey to play in Palestine and has continued making socially conscious, character led documentaries. In the past nine years he’s directed and shot a variety of projects for broadcast, festivals and online including Netflix, BBC, Channel 4, SKY, Facebook, The Guardian and over fifty film festivals. He has filmed all over the world including Egypt during the Arab Spring, a Brazilian favela during the World Cup and Japan for his latest short Little Miss Sumo, which is a Netflix Original, available in 190 countries and in 30 languages worldwide. He is currently expanding his award winning film into a feature documentary with Endeavor Content and is in production with another feature documentary for A&E Networks about one of the world’s most successful music groups.