Hiroto Tanimizu makes films slowly. The Salt Line is his fifth feature in twenty-two years, and like the others it began with a place: a stretch of tidal flat on the edge of a city bay where the shoreline on the map and the shoreline under your feet no longer agree.
The film follows two municipal surveyors sent to re-mark the boundary. Not much happens, in the usual sense. They measure, they wait for the tide, they talk about anything except what is on their minds. It is also one of the most quietly gripping films in this year’s programme.
We spoke by video call a fortnight before the festival. This conversation has been edited for length.
Starting with a line on a map
Where did the film begin?
With an actual survey marker. I was walking on the flats near where my mother grew up and found a brass disc set in concrete, about forty metres out into the mud. Someone had once decided that was the edge of the land. The sea disagreed. I stood there for a long time.
And the surveyors?
I met two of them, eventually. They were funny and very exact, and neither of them would say a word about their own lives. I thought: these are people whose job is to be certain, working in a place that will not hold still. That was the film.
“These are people whose job is to be certain, working in a place that will not hold still.”
Six years of waiting
You held the shoot for six years. Why?
Partly money, as always. But mostly the tide tables. I wanted the lowest spring tides to fall in the last week of summer, in the late afternoon, with the light coming across the water. That happens properly about once every few years. We missed it once because of a typhoon and had to wait again.
What did the wait change?
Everything, in small ways. Three things in particular:
- The script lost about a third of its dialogue.
- One of the two leads was recast, because the first actor had become too well known.
- The ending moved from the office to the shore.
I think I would have made a busier film if I had been allowed to make it straight away. Waiting took things out.
On shooting film
You shot on 35mm. Was that ever in doubt?
Not for me. Mud and mist and low sun are exactly what film is good at. It is also a discipline. When each take costs something, everyone on the flat is paying attention, including me.
Showing it in Port Averley
What would you like people to know before they watch?
Only that it is patient, and that patience is rewarded. Come a little early, sit close, and let it be quiet. I will be there for the first screening and I am happy to be asked anything afterwards.
The Salt Line has its Australian premiere on Saturday 12 September, followed by two more sessions. See the film and its sessions.
Written by
Kenta Aramaki
Kenta is the festival’s programmer for Asia and the Pacific, and hosts most of its filmmaker conversations.
