08
Sep
Female Prisoner and Scala Forever

All night Sasori at the Rio in Dalston on 24 Sept

There’s been a whole load of film-related news in our buzzing capital these past few days. Admittedly, the announcement of the London Film Festival programme yesterday slightly overshadowed my own announcement of the dates for Zipangu Fest (18-24 November at the ICA, if you can’t be bothered to scroll down a bit). Of course, we haven’t actually made  public any of our programming choices yet, which we’re keeping a closely guarded secret until nearer the time, but you might hear me let a few things slip out if you’re at the Female Prisoner #701 Triple Bill at the Rio Cinema in Dalston on 24 September. The event starts at 11pm and carries on through to daybreak, and I’ve been kindly asked by the organisers, Cigarette Burns Cinema, to stand up between screenings and deliver some patter about Meiko Kaji, Toei Pinky Violence, and other related topics. Perhaps I’ll crack under the pressure of sleep deprivation and end up revealing the whole programme…

The cool iconic beauty of Meiko Kaji, as Sasori

Anyway, my presence aside, this is going to be a wonderful night. If you’ve not seen any of the Female Prisoner #701 films (or Female Convict Scorpion, or whatever other titles you like to refer to them under), then you’re in for a rare treat – these aren’t your average Woman in Prison bits of exploitation fluff, but hypnotic, frequently surreal and dreamlike action titles with a logical progression between each of the various instalments and a captivating performance by the cool iconic beauty Meiko Kaji. I’ve not seen them for a while myself, and it’s going to be fab watching them on the big screen all at once.

The hypnotic Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (1972)

The films are being presented in association with the Scala Forever season currently running across a number of venues this Summer (although chiefly The Roxy Bar and Screen) in memory of the legendary repertory cinema up in Kings Cross in which so many of us had our viewing habits formed. In fact, I’m just looking at the programme and I notice that the ICA are showing my favourite Imamura film, The Ballad of Narayama, on the 28th and 29th of this month, which, as I wrote in the intro to Behind the Pink Curtain, proved a seminal experience when I first saw it on a Double Bill at the Scala with Koji Wakamatsu’s Violated Angels back in 1990.

Check out the Female Prisoner all-nighter Facebook page here and more info on this and Cigarette Burns’ other activites can be found here.

Posted at 14:27 on 08 September 2011 Filed under news.
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07
Sep
Zipangu Fest at ICA in London, 18-24 November 2011

SECOND ZIPANGU FEST TO KICK OFF AT LONDON’S ICA

This year’s celebration of cutting edge Japanese cinema will get under way from November 18th to 24th in London

Following the success of last year’s inaugural festival, the second Zipangu Fest – celebrating the best of cutting edge and avant garde Japanese cinema – will be held at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts from November 18th to 24th, before moving to venues around the UK.

Showcasing a selection of Japan’s finest features, documentaries, shorts, animation and experimental films, this year’s Zipangu Fest will include a retrospective screening of two rarely seen gems that have never been shown in the UK. One of these – a pre-war horror title – has been subtitled especially for the festival.

Festival director and head programmer, Jasper Sharp, comments: ‘After the runaway success of last year’s festival, we are very excited about Zipangu Fest 2011. Our aim is to showcase the wealth of talent in the independent and experimental filmmaking scene in Japan by showing the sort of films that other festivals barely seem to be aware of. The beauty of Japanese film is that you know you’re always going to see something different, and this year we’ve got another exciting and diverse range of titles to challenge, provoke and entertain. We’re particularly thrilled that the ICA is hosting this year’s event, as it is the perfect venue for us, and with last year’s programme touring to cities including Bristol, Leeds, Newcastle and Tallinn in Estonia, we hope to continue with our goal of bringing these films to as wide an audience as possible.’

To make sure you are kept up to date with Zipangu Fest news, please subscribe to our press list: http://zipangufest.com/press/2011

For further press information please contact: Sarah Macdonald: sarah@zipangufest.com

You can also join out Facebook group or sign up to our Twitter feed.

Posted at 14:55 on 07 September 2011 Filed under news.
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06
Sep
EVA- East via Asia recap

I’ve been back from Tallinn for about a week now, and am still basking in the memories of an absolutely wonderful long weekend at the first EVA – East via Asia! Japanese film festival in the city’s majestic-looking Kinomaja cinema. You don’t need to scroll too far down this page for some background on this event. Basically I worked on the programme while the wonderful organisers Helen Merila and Piret Mägi were at the coal face, sorting out the venue, the publicity, the concerts, the catering… basically all the difficult stuff! And this meant a pretty relaxing but thoroughly enjoyable couple of days while the event unfolded, a long weekend blessed with bright blue skies and sunshine away from a damp and drizzly London.

Against the beautiful backdrop of Tallinn

This was my first time in Tallinn, and I absolutely fell head-over-heals with the city. It must be one of Europe’s best kept secrets, and I hesitate to sing its praises too loudly lest it become totally overwhelmed by tourists. It’s already suffering to some extent from the usual curse of jeering drunken idiots on organised stag parties that Britain seems to have a predilection for inflicting on Eastern Europe, something I’d already just encountered in Wroclaw the month before. Fortunately these are largely confined to the overpriced tourist and titty bars in the Old Town area, and it’s not difficult to wander off the beaten track and find quieter spaces to explore.

Cultural rivals - the Stalker Film Festival was going on simultaneously in the 2011 European Capital of Culture where parts of the film were shot

Tallinn is Europe’s 2011 City of Culture, and there were a whole host of events going on over the weekend that threatened to overshadow EVA. One of these was the Stalker film festival celebrating Tarkovsky’s classic Soviet sci-fi, parts of which were shot in the city, and featuring a number of examples of films of the type that it has now become acceptable to refer to as “slow cinema” – Bela Tarr, Sergei Paradjanov, you know the type. Luckily, it didn’t seem to draw too many, if any, potential viewers away from our festival, which was amazingly well-attended and well-received. Nothing is too far apart in Tallinn, it seems, and on one of the mornings before the screenings I managed to wander down to the film’s locations, and onwards down to the dockland/beach area, along with my old friend Yoshihiro Ito, whose Vortex and Others surreal shorts programme we screened. The last time we’d met was about 18 months ago in Tokyo, and before that, he was there with his films and disarming grin at the first ever Shinsedai, one of the first ever events I documented on this website in this post from 2009.

Drunken yobs in Tallinn: Saturday night ended in tequila, with Yolanda, Tim Grabham and Yoshihiro Ito, and me staying sensibly behind the camera

Another guest from rather less further afield (i.e. London) was Tim Grabham, one of the directors of the beautiful documentary KanZeOn, accompanied by his charming companion Yolanda. While this film was included in the programme for this year’s Shinsedai, this was the first time Tim had actually been present at one of its screenings, which was effectively the European premiere. It went well, incredibly well… as did Yoshihiro’s films, and that night, we celebrated with an extended tequila session before winding up down at the port area again, at an open air gig by local punk outfit Chungin & The Strap-On Faggots, one of the bands at the festival’s opening night punk concert, along with J.M.K.E., local legends with a fanbase that stretches as far as Finland. Apparently punk is to the Estonians what rockerbilly is to the Finns, the ultimate anti-authoritarian musical stance during the twilight of the Soviet era and still going strong – the fact that I managed to catch Chungin & The Strap-On Faggots twice during my brief stay merely highlighted this fact. You can read Tim’s account of his screening and beyond on the KanZeon website.

Again, I’ll end by saying a huge thanks to our wonderful hosts in Tallinn, Helen and Piret. It’s looking like we’re going to do the event again next year, so I can’t wait to head back, who knows… maybe even before the next fest…

Posted at 15:47 on 06 September 2011 Filed under news.
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