Director-writer Addison Heath is such a fan of classic Japanese gangster movies his next film is entitled Mondo Yakuza.
Due to start shooting in Melbourne in August, the micro-budgeted film will star Australian-born Kenji Shimada as Ichiro Kataki, a violent Yakuza gang member in Japan.
When his younger sister is murdered in Melbourne, he sets out to wreak vengeance on those responsible and teams up with Cassidy Arizona (Skye Korvin), a lady of the night who is on her own vendetta.
Glenn Maynard will play Ryan Beckett, a sadistic, mid-level criminal with a thirst for violent torture, whose days are numbered.
Shimada and Maynard appeared in Heath’s debut feature, Under a Kaleidoscope, which premiered at last year’s Monster Fest, where it was voted best Australian feature.
For the key support roles Addison is holding auditions in Melbourne on July 4. He describes it as “a violent action film which will subvert the audience’s expectations.” In that vein, much of the dialogue will be improvised, he says.
Cast and crew are deferring their payments and shooting will take place two or three days a week over two months.
That’s rather quicker than the schedule for Under a Kaleidoscope, which was often shot on for two days a week but stretched over eight months.
He’s fixing some sound problems with that film, a thriller that followed an agoraphobic twenty-something who befriends the abused woman who lives next door and introduces him to a violent crim, and aims to arrange festival bookings later this year.
The director, who founded Black Forest Films, is largely self-taught, having dropped out of a film course after a year. He wrote the screenplay of Chocolate Strawberry Vanilla, a black comedy/drama about a lonely ice-cream van driver (played by Maynard) and his unhealthy obsession with a TV soap starlet, directed by Stuart Simpson.
He’s keen to work again with DoP Emma Matsuda, who shot Under a Kaleidoscope, but plans to shoot Mondo Yakuza using multiple digital SLR cameras. Upon completion he plans to take a print to Japan to screen for potential distributors and to book the film on the fest circuit.