Today, we’d like to introduce you to Rionne McAvoy. Rionne was introduced to us by the brilliant and talented Asia Bonetto.
Rionne, can you walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My name is Rionne McAvoy, a documentary filmmaker from Australia currently residing in Tokyo, Japan (coming up on 20 years).
I recently finished my first feature documentary titled “The Ones Left Behind: The Plight of Single Mothers in Japan” about the hardships that single mothers face in Japan, as well as Japan’s hidden poverty that is completely ignored. The film delves deep into Japanese society, culture, and history, to give the viewer a very different view of the Japan that we think we know.
For people who know me, a middle class Australian guy raised by the beach, who moved to Tokyo to pursue martial arts and ended up becoming a professional wrestler (ring name Rionne Fujiwara), the topic of single mothers and hidden poverty in Japan is no doubt the last thing anyone ever expected me to do a documentary on.
Documentaries can be entertaining, informative, and inspiring. They offer a unique and powerful form of storytelling that can capture the viewer’s attention and provoke thought and discussion, but for me, I had never wanted to be a documentary filmmaker. I had always wanted to film yakuza gangster movies or action/suspense type films, based on my martial arts background of course. And then there is the professional wrestling, which makes it an even stranger combination, a guy who fights in the ring, now looking to fight for those who cannot themselves.
When COVID hit in 2020, I like many others, lost a lot of work. Thankfully in 2021, I began to see a coincidental increase in video work related to documentaries. Lots of interviews to begin with, then I was selected to direct and film a big Fukushima government campaign to have the overseas import ban of Fukushima food products lifted. My treatment for the project was selected from a group of over 100 submissions and I was tasked with being asked to make a government PR video look like a documentary. The “documentary” was released on YouTube but also screened privately to visiting foreign diplomats and dignitaries, who came to watch the Olympics in 2021. It was so successful that 5 countries lifted their import restrictions immediately after the film was released.
Through all of this, I realised I wasn’t that bad at making documentaries and rather enjoyed the process. As I moved on to short Japan related documentaries for the BBC, and also a 30 minute piece for NHK World (Japan’s national broadcaster), I was sitting down for coffee one day with my good friend and one of our producers F.J Fox, who I first met in Japan over 20 years ago. We had always wanted to work together on something, and had thrown each other scripts we had written to look at and critique. We were always in contact about potential fictional film ideas.
On this day, the random topic of single mothers in Japan came up. Frank (F.J) was raised by a single mother in California and I had just heard an absolutely awful story about a single mother here in Japan. We got to talking about the issue and Frank, who had told me he was so impressed with me snagging BBC and NHK jobs, said “You know, we should make a documentary on Japanese single mothers” and that’s how it began. A random idea over coffee in Hamatsucho, Tokyo.
I had no idea that poverty existed in Japan. Nobody anywhere would ever associate this country with that word and I was completely ignorant to it. However, that is the real danger of hidden poverty, it’s so hard to see and so hard to understand. I also had no idea that Japanese single mothers were struggling. I mean, we know it is probably very hard, but we don’t think about it. The mothers most definitely do not talk about it, and it certainly was a completely foreign concept to me.
So I began digging, and researching. The first thing I did was scour the internet to see if anyone had tackled this topic as a documentary before. To my surprise, I couldn’t find a single documentary on single mothers anywhere in the world. I found one low quality video about a African American single mother that was filmed about 7 years ago for YouTube, but other than that, there was nothing. After researching for a few weeks, I then wrote a treatment and gave it to Frank to look at. He was shocked, as was I, about the situation here in Japan. We knew we had a winner – we’d found a group of people that we could really do good for, through the power of documentary film.
Please talk to us about your creative work and career. What should we know?
Rionne McAvoy is a documentary filmmaker originally hailing from the Gold Coast in Australia. Now residing in Tokyo, Japan, for over 17 years, Rionne is fully bilingual in English and Japanese. Rionne grew up in South East Queensland, Australia, and at the age of 19 went to Japan for an 8 week karate training trip and fell in love with the country. Putting his IT university studies on hold and returning to Japan 1 year later on a working holiday visa, Rionne spent 18 months living and working in Japan, including spending the last 8 months living with a Japanese host family. Realizing the need to complete his college education, Rionne returned to Australia and enrolled in a full time Japanese language degree at Griffith University. In the middle of those studies, Rionne spent 1 year as an international exchange student at Seikei University. Upon graduation from Griffith, Rionne returned to Japan where he has lived ever since. A keen martial artist, Rionne has been in the Japanese film industry for over 10 years, often mixing his profession with that of his other profession – a professional wrestler under the ring name of Rionne Fujiwara. Rionne’s debut documentary The ones left behind: The plight of single mothers in Japan has won numerous overseas film festival awards as it continues to be a shining light down the path of improving the living conditions for single parents in Japan, and around the world. Rionne runs Japan Media Services (japanmediaservices.com) and work can be found at vimeo.com/japanms
So, as we mentioned to our audience earlier, you were introduced to us by Asia Bonetto and we really admire them and what they’ve built. For folks who might not be as familiar, can you tell them a bit about your experience with Asia.
Asia is our wonderful associate producer for the film
Website: onesleftbehind.com
Instagram: instagram.com/onesleftbehind
Twitter: singlemomjapan
Youtube: youtube.com/rionnetv
Other: Trailer: https://vimeo.com/772395650
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt24225838
Screenshots from film: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/zajjl99nfb7722cvi8j0r/h?rlkey=6niw9asspuj4g986s492w17x5&dl=0
Image Credits
All mine
