Filmmaker grew up in a neighborhood where the oldest zoo is in Japan. Since she was a child, she had many dreams about the zoo; she was in a birdcage with an exotic bird, she was drawn to the green and muddy pond with a crocodile. Once in the dream, all the cages in the zoo were removed, and the animals roamed around the streets of Tokyo.

“Shackles” deals with the intersected dream space between women and animals in the zoo.

For a human being, putting someone in a cage is a form of punishment. Animals exhibited in the zoo are set to have an educational value. The zoo is an institution to display the power of humans over animals. It functions as a system to justify and propagate the myth of human domination of the earth, over territoriality and controllability. In the film, several women stroll around the zoo and are enchanted by animals incarcerated in the cage. Their dream-telling voices intersect with animals’ dreams in slumber.

Cast: Azusa Yoshimoto, Isabelle Mairiaux