San Jose born director Allegra Pacheco has released the trailer for her new documentary film about Japan’s white collar ‘Salarymen’ workers that devote their life to their employers. Salarymen’s relentless work ethic helped build the country into the global superpower it is today.
It’s 3 am, the last trains have left and the loud hustle and bustle of Tokyo has turned quiet. Costa Rican artist Allegra Pacheco walks through the neon city to find it littered with drunk men in suits sleeping on the street. Some are curled up on sidewalks, others rest their heads on briefcases used as pillows. Only to her foreign eyes this every-day scene seems off, as if she were the only witness to a massacre.
In an attempt to draw attention to this “abnormal normality,” Allegra endeavors into a socio-historical journey investigating the strange phenomenon of salarymen. Her artistic practice takes her into a deep exploration that follows the lives of the men and women that work to live, or live to work?
Through performance art, visual documentation and animation SALARYMAN brings the sensibility of the artist into the office world and questions global work practices of modern-day life imposed by capitalism. SALARYMAN comes in an unprecedented time where the stakes of rethinking our working methods are higher than ever.
