THE LAST BALL explores the historical clash of gazes which took place at the Rokumeikan on November 3rd, 1886. The film intersects two literary sources from the Occident and the Orient: Pierre Loti’s “A Ball in Edo”(1889) and Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s short story “The Ball”(1920). Written as a counter-Orientalism to Loti's first-person travelogue, Akutagawa rewrites the ball from the point of view of the Japanese woman Akiko, whom Loti had danced with. In Araki's cinematic reinterpretation, the notion of the gaze is re-animated with a contemporary twist.

This one-take performance was captured using multiple cameras. One of the perspectives alludes to the 'Western' style of filming a ballroom dancing from high above, and another refers to the low, 'eye-level' of the early Japanese cinema. The videos are then synchronized, creating complex vertigo of oscillating viewpoints. On a technical note, the iPhone cameras for the couple are employed with complementary color scheme, which derives from scientific research on how we perceive our world differently depending on the amount of melanin that makes up our irises. Theoretically, when the separate iPhone footage of each overlaps through the screen, these complementary colors mix to create a perfect white.