Rehearsal for a Reunion (with the Father of Pottery)

Overview

In Rehearsal for a Reunion (with the Father of Pottery) (2011), Fujiwara uses a difficult relationship with a distant father as the starting point for a humorous, circuitous video that reenacts a real-life experience through the “rehearsal” of a screenplay about it. Fujiwara visited Japan to reconnect with his father, and using craft as a kind of catharsis, they together created a tea set in the style of mid-twentieth-century British ceramist Bernard Leach. The tea set becomes the central prop in the titular rehearsal depicted in the film, with the artist in the role of the son and an actor as his father. The video progresses through enmeshed layers of fiction and reality, culminating in a moment of destruction and release.