The first UK-wide festival devoted to Japanese Film...

Japanarchy in the UK

The first UK‐wide festival devoted to Japanese cinema November 23‐28 2010 http://zipangufest.com

Monday October 18th 2010

New Japanese film festival Zipangu Fest warms up for the main event with a string of exclusive lectures and rare archive screenings across the country

The first Zipangu Fest is delighted to announce more details for its programme of events this autumn. The festival will run from November 23th to 28th 2010 in London’s East End before touring the country. The full programme will be announced by Festival Director Jasper Sharp at the Barbican’s Japanese Halloween Shlockfest Double Bill of RoboGeisha and Big Tits Zombie 3D + Augmented City 3D on October 29th. Tickets are almost sold out for these screenings, so be sure to book right away!

To whet audience appetites, Mr Sharp will be presenting a lecture exploring the history of independent jishu eiga filmmaking in Japan, followed by an exclusive screening of Annyong Kimchee (1999). The film is Japanese‐Korean filmmaker Tetsuaki Matsue’s personal enquiry into the importance of ethnic and cultural roots and what it means to be Japanese. This event will first be held at the Coventry University East Asian Film Society (CUEAFS) at 2pm on Wednesday October 20th in Room G34 of the university’s Ellen Terry Building, and then at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at 7pm on Friday November 12th, in the Brunei Gallery lecture theatre.

Tetsuaki Matsue's Annyong Kimchee screening at CUEAFS and SOAS

Zipangu Fest is also proud to announce a special presentation at the 24th Leeds International Film Festival of Hiroshi Shimizu’s rarely‐seen early classic of independent Japanese cinema, Children of the Beehive (1948). The film relates the journey of a group of war orphans (in real life all orphans taken in and raised by the director) as they are taken under the wing of a nameless soldier and set out across a shattered, post‐ war landscape in search of a more certain future. The film will be showing first on Saturday 6 November as part of a one‐day symposium, Breaking Boundaries: Alternative Approaches to Japanese Film, organised by the University of Leeds, and then at 7pm on Monday November 8th at the Hyde Park Picture House. Tickets are £6.50/£5.00.

Zipangu Fest has also put together a special programme of Japanese underground animation in collaboration with the Encounters 16th International Film Festival in Bristol. The Ero Guro Anime Night programme, a selection of nightmarishly morbid animations from the Japanese underground, will screen at the Cube Microplex on Friday November 19th at 8pm. Zipangu Fest festival director Mr Sharp and Man‐ Eater Mountain sound designer Takuro Kochi will be there to introduce the programme. The screenings will be followed by a Late Night Japanese Pink Double Bill of Sexy Timetrip Ninjas (1984) and Groper Train: Search for the Black Pearl (1984), two deliriously tasteless comic classics of the pink film genre directed by Yojiro Takita, now famous as the winner of the 2008 Best Foreign Film Academy Award for the drama Departures. Doors open at 11pm. The Late Night Japanese Pink Double Bill has been made possible by Pink Eiga.

Midori: The Girl in the Freakshow, screening at Bristol's Cube Microplex

Leading up to Zipangu Fest’s much‐awaited London festival dates, Zipangu Fest has worked with Close‐Up to present the Nippon Year Zero programme of 1960s Japanese experimental films on Tuesday November 23th, at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club.

Zipangu Fest has confirmed the festival venues of Café 1001 in Brick Lane and the Genesis Cinema on Mile End Road. Guests can expect two full nights of entertainment from 6pm on November 24th and 25th, for the modest ticket price of £5.00 per evening. Zipangu Fest will launch into full swing for the weekend from November 26th to 28th at the Genesis Cinema in Whitechapel. Tickets will be £7.50/£5.00.

Zipangu Fest at the Genesis Cinema, Mile End Road, 26th-28th November

Following this, a selection of the Zipangu Fest festival programme will be screened at the Arnolfini in Bristol between December 16th and 19th, with further venues to be announced at a later date.

Jasper Sharp comments: “I’m really excited about these upcoming events across the country, because the goal with Zipangu Fest was always to reach out to new audiences and introduce Japanese cinema to as wide and diverse a crowd as possible. We’re really happy to be partnering up with so many respected film festivals and other organisations to this end, and I really hope this is something we will be able to expand on in the future. I also can’t wait to announce the main programme. We’ve got a really strong set of films and a host of guests already confirmed, and there’s going to be plenty more going on around the actual festival dates than just the screenings.”

For further press information please contact: michelle@zipangufest.com

Visit the Zipangu Fest website at http://zipangufest.com.

About Zipangu Fest

The first UK‐wide festival devoted to Japanese film, Zipangu Fest will introduce works new and old, previously unseen by mainstream UK film audiences, to demonstrate the many identities of Japan as depicted by some of the country’s most exciting and revered talents.

For its main event this year, Zipangu Fest will be holding around 15 screenings and other related events at venues across London’s vibrant East End. Cinema venues include the Barbican, Genesis Cinema in Whitechapel, Café 1001 in Brick Lane and the Working Men’s Club in Bethnal Green. The main body of film events will take place in London from November 23rd to 28th 2010, with regional events currently arranged in Bristol, Leeds and Coventry, and more to be confirmed.

If you’re not familiar with Iimura’s work, you can check out his website, and await the interview with the director which should be coming up on Midnight Eye sometime soon conducted by Julian Ross. Julian also had a hand in getting the screenings up to Leeds, in conjunction with the Cherry Kino exerimental filmmaking/screening group and the University of Leeds’s Centre For World Cinemas-Mixed Cinema Network, where I gave a talk on the Japanese New Wave back in February of this year. Not only that, but Julian is also the driving force behind the Breaking Boundaries: Alternative Approaches to Japanese Film conference I mentioned in my post a couple of months ago.

I mention all of this because not only is Zipangu Fest, the new Japanese film festival that I am programming, collaborating with Breaking Boundaries where we’ll be screening a print of Hiroshi Shimizu’s Children of the Beehive, but Julian has also put together a programme of 1960s experimental work in collaboration with Close Up Video which will be screening at the Bethnal Green Working Man’s Club as part of Zipangu Fest on 23rd November. I’ll of course be announcing more details about this as they come, but suffice it to say for now, if you’re based in England and interested in 1960s experimental film from Japan, you’re going to be very well served this year!

Anyway, more details about the Iimura screenings below – note that the programme is different from venue to venue:

From Iimura's 'Talking Picture (The Structure of Film Viewing)', now available on DVD from the directors website

Dates in the UK:

October 5th: London, Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club: Seeing/Hearing/Speaking – The Films of Takahiko Iimura + Live Performance

October 6th: London, Nowhere Lab (Workshop): no.w.here and Takahiko Iimura present: How To Make Time Visible In Film (without photography)

October 7th: London, Central St. Martins, University of Arts London

October 11th: Leeds, ICS Cinema in the University of Leeds more details on this particular screening below

October 13th: Bristol, Arnolfini: Takahiko Iimura: On Time in Film (Discussion and Screenings)

Observer-Observed: Takahiko Iimura

Here’s some more information for the Leeds event:

Cherry Kino and the CWC-MCN University of Leeds presents: Japanese Experimental Cinema: An Evening with Takahiko Iimura

Date: October 11^th 2010

Time: 6:30-9pm

Venue: ICS Cinema, University of Leeds

Price: FREE

Takahiko Iimura is an experimental filmmaker, video artist and writer on experimental film who has been working with the moving image since the 1960s. His work explores the relationship between media, time and language and has strived to redefine the exhibition of cinema as a mode of performance. He has worked closely with members of the Hi-Red Centre and Fluxus, as well as Yoko Ono, Jonas Mekas, John Cage, Stan Brakhage, Stan Vanderbeek and many others, bridging boundaries between film, art and performance. He moved to New York in 1966 and has since been a conduit of intercultural communication between Japan and America, introducing Japanese experimental cinema to the West and vice versa. He recently began self-releasing his work on DVD and continues to travel around the world to show his films.

“Although Taka was and continues to be an active part of the New York avant-garde scene, he always remained an enigmatic, mysterious presence, pursuing his own unique route through the very center of the avant-garde cinema. While the intensity and the fire of the American avant-garde film movement inspired him and attracted him, his Japanese origins contributed decisively to his uncompromising explorations of cinema’s minimalist and conceptualist possibilities. He has explored this direction of cinema in greater depth than anyone else.” – Jonas Mekas

“From early sixties, though Japanese, Iimura was well known as one of the first generation of the New York Underground … For many years, Japanese experimental film was Takahiko Iimura” – Malcolm Le Grice

Cherry Kino and the CWC-MCN University of Leeds have invited Takahiko Iimura to join our screening of a selection of his films, which will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker himself. Many thanks to WREAC who have helped us fund the event and the ICS for kindly offering their venue.

For more information on the event, please click here.

White Calligraphy

Films programmed for the event (16mm):

Ai (Love) (1962)

Iro (Colour) (1962-3)

Kuzu (Junk) (1962)

One Frame Duration (1977)

Cine-Dance: Anma (1963)

Ma: Space/Time in the Garden of Ryoan-ji (1989)

Performance of White Calligraphy (2008)

Imamura's Profound Desires of the Gods from Eureka

Just back at home a few days from a 10-day break in Kenya en route to my next stop on a work/research trip to Japan, and while I should be busy unpacking my shorts, swimming trucks and suntan lotion in exchange for clothing more suitable for the icy climbs of Hokkaido where I’ll be heading on Wednesday for Yubari film festival, I just couldn’t contain myself at the news, which reached me via the Wildgrounds website, that UK label Eureka are to release Shohei Imamura’s Profound Desires of the Gods on Blu-Ray in May as part of their Masters of Cinema series.

Profound Desire of the Gods

Yes, it’s slightly annoying that this is only on Blu-Ray, but on a more positive side, this is the first time that I’ve felt the Blu-Ray I’ve had hooked up to the HD TV for the past 9 months has actually been necessary. Imamura’s film is a beautiful-looking work, shot in vibrant colours in verdant, tropical climes, all in expansive widescreen NikkatsuScope. This is a film I’d been waiting to see ever since I first read about it about ten years ago while researching the Imamura chapter of The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film. It’s true, while I was living in Japan, I could quite easily have rented the VHS and watched it without subtitles, but from what I’d read, this film was so close to my own interests and tastes that I wanted my first encounter with it to be a little more special, which is the main reason for getting involved in the Imamura showcase at Bristol’s Arnolfini last October (see my thoughts on the retro), to actually bring a subtitled print across to the UK. Well, the film was everything I’d hoped for and more, from the bizarre opening sequence of a pig being throw into the sea as a sacrifice to be feasted upon by sharks to the coda set on the ludicrous tourist train, and caused much discussion with the other viewers at the Arnolfini after the screening finished. This is an utterly one-off work, and I am trembling in anticipation at seeing it up on a screen again. I can’t emphasize how much I love the films of Shohei Imamura. This is among the best, ranking in my books alongside Pigs and Battleships and The Ballad of Narayama. Imamura is pretty well-represented on region 1 DVD, but I just hope this Eureka release garners enough attention and excitement for further UK releases of his films. These really benefit from being seen as a large a screen in as high resolution as possible.

Profound Desires of the Gods

I do remember suggesting this title to Masters of Cinema quite a few years ago, so whether they took my advice, or were inspired by the Imamura season last year, or already had it under consideration anyway, I don’t know. I’m just ecstatic it’s imminent. Now its time to work on the next campaign to spread the word outside Japan about forgotten or unknown classics from forgotten or unknown filmmakers, and the next candidate is Susumu Hani, a director who I am quite flabbergasted that Western distributors or film curators have not picked up on yet. Following the Tomu Uchida season, Alex Jacoby and I pitched a retrospective of this figure to the British Film Institute, but didn’t get any response at all – the powers-that-be there obviously think it safer to stick with what they know, so we get Ozu and Kurosawa retrospectives again this year. Anyway, keep your eyes fixed on Midnight Eye, as you’ll find out plenty more on Hani there in the coming month or so.

In the meantime, as mentioned, I’m off to Tokyo tomorrow, and to Yubari Film Festival on Wednesday, from which I hope to post updates about the good films on offer there. I also hope to post a bit more on some other Eureka releases which I’ve not had time to write about yet, so I hope to be rather more active on this site than I have been over the past month or so.

]]> http://jaspersharp.com/blog/news/2010/02/eureka-to-release-imamura%e2%80%99s-profound-desires-of-the-gods-on-blu-ray-in-may/feed/ 3 http://jaspersharp.com/blog/news/2009/10/some-thoughts-on-the-shohei-imamura-retro/ http://jaspersharp.com/blog/news/2009/10/some-thoughts-on-the-shohei-imamura-retro/#comments Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:05:01 +0000 Jasper http://jaspersharp.com/blog/?p=130

Ballad of Narayama

Back at home after a week dashing round the country for various reasons, not least of which was the Imamura retrospective at the Arnolfini which I had a hand in. After the punishing routine of Raindance, I was rather grateful to be afforded the opportunity just to sit in a cinema over a long weekend and binge on the six wonderful films in the programme in relative peace and quiet. Imamura was the one director who really stood out when I first started exploring Japanese cinema. There was something about his sense of humour and his general world view that struck a chord with me, the notion (some might call it cynical) that humans are essentially animals whose primary motivations are the satiation of basic needs such as food and sex, and their every other action is merely an attempt to rationalise these drives.

But it’s been almost ten years ago since I looked at the director in any depth, and I’d not revisited many of these films since. It was funny, because I thought the basic concept of the season, to reassess Imamura’s legacy, was slightly odd, being as his status as one of the key figures in Japanese cinema, and of the 1960s in particular, hardly needed emphasizing. But it became clear talking to several of the members of the audience that while Imamura’s name might be well known in Japanese film fan circles, the general public in the UK really haven’t had a chance to see many of his films, and by and large they loved them. It occurred to me how little of his work is available on DVD in comparison with other directors such as, say, Seijun Suzuki. It just goes to show how much a director’s currency can change over time. The last retrospectives on Imamura in the UK, I believe, were just after his Palme d’Or win for The Eel, and that was well over ten years ago. Clearly people do need to be reminded of this director after all.

Pigs and Battleships

Watching the films back to back it struck me, while there are certain uniform themes and ideas explored in his films, individually they are all very different in style and tone. I’d never actually seen Pigs and Battleships before, for example, which was one of the standouts of the programme, a more obvious commercial piece which bore some similarities with Sun Tribe films such as Crazed Fruit and Cruel Story of Youth, yet also signalled the direction that Imamura would pursue, with its bawdy humour, really vibrant style, and that wonderfully surreal ending as the pigs stampede through the streets of Yokosuka. Ballad of Narayama I’d not seen for years, but it has a special place in my heart as one of my first encounters with Japanese cinema in a screening at the Scala in the late 1980s (with Wakamatsu’s Violated Angels). Watching it again really spelled out for me what an amazing achievement it is, perhaps the quintessential Imamura film. The film isn’t well-known at all in Britain with modern audiences, but there is a US DVD. But one of the main treats of this program was finally getting to see Profound Desire of the Gods on a big screen, and what a bizarre film it is. If Ballad of Narayama is Imamura’s masterpiece, then this title is his folly, inviting comparisons with Herzog at his most ambitious, or Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain. It has its more digressive moments, it must be said, but the sheer scale and energy behind it really signals this out as an essential piece of cinematic history which will never be repeated. It is simply bewildering that this film is not out there on DVD anywhere, and I can’t work out why, because it’s handled by Nikkatsu, so obtaining the rights shouldn’t be too problematic. Someone rectify this situation, please!

Profound Desire of the Gods

Anyway, the main Arnolfini session is over, though there’s still a double bill of Vengeance is Mine and The Eel on Sunday 8^th November. Those in the UK who couldn’t make it to Bristol will be heartened to here that the films are now up in London and screening at the ICA this very weekend, before moving to the Glasgow Film Theatre next week. Go watch them all. Who knows when you’ll get a chance to see them on the big screen in the UK again.

Read more about the lineup and screening times here, and visit here for ticket information.

View Larger Map

Profound Desire of the Gods

Some of you may recall my post from a few weeks back regarding the upcoming Shohei Imamura symposium and screenings at the Arnolfini in Bristol in October. These have been organised by Patrick Crogan of the University of the West of England, Alastair Cameron of the Arnolfini and myself.

I know there was some talk a while back between us of taking of advantage of having the prints in the country and getting them shown a little more widely. Well, it seems Alastair has been working his little bit of magic behind the scenes, as most of the films will now also be getting an airing at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London under the banner Carnal Knowledge: The Films of Shohei Imamura. The full line-up is here, and I’m particularly pleased to see that some of the less regularly screened films such as Profound Desire of the Gods are included in the programme (no Vengeance is Mine or The Pornographers, which have screened quite a lot recently in the UK).

This is going to be great news for all Londoners hankering to get their next fix of Japanese New Wave brilliance after the BFI’s Nagisa Oshima season that’s currently running. I’ll be a little partisan here and say that personally I prefer Imamura’s bawdy, messy pokes of fun at Japanese society than Oshima’s more cerebral and academic approach. In fact, he’s one of my favourite Japanese directors, so its great that these films are being brought to a wider audience. I might also add that the ICA also has a better bar than the BFI Southbank – I spent nearly half an hour waiting for a pint of Guinness the other day while three of the Benugo’s staff struggled to make a cocktail for the only other person who was waiting there. You probably couldn’t find a bottle of house red anywhere cheaper in central London than at the ICA, especially if you’re a member, where you get a 10% discount – membership is well worth it if you’re a Japanese film fan, because I know Third Window Films have got a couple of forthcoming releases that will be playing there in the near future.

Anyway, enough of this bar talk and back to Imamura. Now, for all I know, these films may well be playing other venues across the ICA, because I wasn’t really in the loop about the ICA screenings, so I’ll try and find out more, and if I hear of any other screenings, will be sure to post it here.

Shohei Imamura

I promised back in my posting about the BFI’s Oshima season that I had some more news about an upcoming season focused on another New Wave director. Well, this is is – a retrospective and symposium on Shohei Imamura that will be hitting the Arnolfini in Bristol at the end of October. The details aren’t up online yet, though a look at the Arnolfini website will give you an idea of just what a cool venue it is – wish I could make it down for the Aelita: Queen of Mars screening… Bristol sure is an exciting place to be a film fan, I sometimes don’t think they know how lucky they are.

This season was organised with Patrick Crogan of UWE university with some assistance from myself and the Arnolfini’s Al Cameron. I’m enclosing the schedule below from the Arnolfini’s own press release, but I should add the proviso that this info may be subject to change – we’re still working on the guests for the symposium, though you can bet I’ll be there.

Here are the details.

THE BALLAD OF NARAYAMA (18)

THU 15 OCT, 7.30pm
Dir. Shohei Imamura, Japan, 1983, 2h 10m, Subtitled

The Ballad of Narayama

In an isolated mountain region, austere village laws to ensure survival dictate that, despite her good health, matriarch Orin must shortly ascend the sacred summit of Narayama where her soul must be laid to rest like all who turn 70. But before she goes, she has much family business to attend to. One of the greatest Japanese films: a haunting, poignant meditation on human nature, existence and death that won Imamura his first Palme d’Or.

INTENTIONS OF MURDER (CTBA)

FRI 16 OCT, 7.30pm
Dir. Shohei Imamura, Japan, 1964, 2h 25m, Subtitled

Intentions of Murder

Bold, expansive and intriguing, this tale of a low-caste household drudge who runs off with the burglar who breaks into her house and assaults her, marks the most complete consolidation of the themes that inform Imamura’s initial cycle of features in the late 50s and early 60s. Beautifully photographed and technically perfect, a faultlessly constructed model of sophistication.

PIGS AND BATTLESHIPS (CTBA)

SAT 17 OCT, 6.45pm
Dir. Shohei Imamura, Japan, 1961, 1h 17m, Subtitled

Pigs and Battleships

A cruelly comic movie, set in Yokosuka, a coastal city dominated by vice and a U.S. military base, where gangs kill each other over the right to control the black market in US Army food scraps — here, Imamura emerges as Japan’s incarnation of Buñuel, omnisciently satiric and utterly cynical. Irreverent and unabashedly human: a defining self-portrait of Japan in the post-war moment.

BLACK RAIN (PG)

SAT 17 OCT, 8.30pm
Dir. Shohei Imamura, Japan, 1989, 2h 3m, Subtitled

Black Rain

A deeply affecting study of the uncalculated tragedy of nuclear holocaust, as a couple try to marry off their niece after Hiroshima. In contrast to Imamura’s usual subversively bawdy cinema, this is a spare and tonally muted masterpiece of dignity and human resilience, its carefully composed monochrome reminding us that Imamura began his career as an assistant to Ozu.

PROFOUND DESIRE OF THE GODS

SUN 18 OCT, 2.30pm
Dir. Shohei Imamura, Japan, 1968, 2h 52m, Subtitled

Profound Desire of the Gods

A crystallization of Imamura’s ideas, transported to an island so secluded its inhabitants have evolved into animalistic, incestuous nutcases. Into this hothouse, full of superstition and hungry wildlife, comes a mainland civil engineer, looking for a fresh water source so a factory can be built. A hair-raising, richly imagined epic, filthy with unforgettable images and, by its end, beautifully mysterious.

THE INSECT WOMAN (CTBA)

SUN 18 OCT, 6.30pm
Dir. Shohei Imamura, Japan, 1963, 2h 3m, Subtitled

Insect Woman

A beetle labouring up a tiny mound opens the film, symbol of a woman named Tomé’s slow rise through poverty, servitude, and exploitation to become one of Tokyo’s top brothel-keepers, in a time of profound national change under the repressive influence of a patriarchal society. This objective yet sympathetic portrait of Imamura’s archetype – the sensual, primal, and strong-willed heroine – celebrates the resilient soul of a marginalized national identity.

PIGS, EELS & INSECTS: SYMPOSIUM

SAT 17 OCT, 10am – 5pm, £5/£3

Pigs and Battleships

A one day event bringing together experts including Professor Tadao Sato of the Japan Academy of Moving Images, to explore and celebrate the career of Shohei Imamura. The panel will examine his incisive insights into the lives, loves and experiences of everyday people in post-war Japan. His characters move in a fascinating zone between documentary and fiction, navigating between private desires and public duty, tradition and modernity, and local and westernizing forces. Mark Bould, Reader in Film Studies at UWE, and Jasper Sharp, editor of Midnight Eye, are among the symposium presenters.

DOUBLE BILL

SUN 8 NOV, 2.30pm

THE EEL (18)
Dir. Shohei Imamura, Japan, 1997, 1h 57m, Subtitled

This quirky, surreal and affecting film, following the attempts of a convicted murderer to reintegrate himself into normal life – with the help of his eel friend – after a prison sentence for murdering his philandering wife, won Imamura his second Palme d’Or. A flash of quiet brilliance that resonates long after the images have faded from the screen.

+

VENGEANCE IS MINE (18)
Dir. Shohei Imamura, Japan, 1979, 2h 20m, Subtitled

Based on the true story of a cold-blooded sociopath, this morally-ambivalent story unfolds using the killer’s confessions and reconstructed testimonies to retrace his past in an attempt to discover what made this monster. Exploring the problems inherent with reconstructing real-life events within a fictional format, Imamura once again proves himself ahead of the game.

SEASON PASS: ALL FILMS & SYMPOSIUM: £20/£15
SCREENINGS: £6/£4.50
SYMPOSIUM: £5/£3

With generous support from The Japan Foundation, The Daiwa Foundation and UWE Film Studies Research Group. Film prints supplied by the Japan Foundation.