Jasper Sharp : Blue Film Woman

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24
Jul

Behind the Pink Curtain retro at Era New Horizons Festival in Wroclaw, Poland

This is just a very quick post following on from the last, to go through with my earlier promise of putting some information up on the programme for the retrospective I curated with the Era New Horizons Festival in Wroclaw, Poland, to coincide with the Polish edition of Behind the Pink Curtain. For those who are interested, you can follow this link here. Just to give a quick teaser though, this is one of the fullest pink/Roman Porno retros I’ve ever curated, and aside from a lot of the usual films I’ve shown at other similar retros I’ve curated to tie in with the book (at the BFI in 2008, Nippon Connection, Montreal’s Fantasia and Thessaloniki in 2009 etc), including the beautiful new prints of Blue Film Woman and Gushing Prayer that got done up originally for Austin Fantastic Fest and which have been doing the rounds recently, we’ve got some new stuff too.

Assault! Jack the Ripper, one of the treats in store for visitors to Poland's Era New Horizon festival

On the Roman Porno front, I’m most excited we’re screening Yasuharu Hasebe’s quite bonkers Assault! Jack the Ripper. On the pink side, there’s a whole load of treats, but am particularly pleased that women directors are being well-represented, with two films by Yumi Yoshiyuki, who will be there to introduce them, and one by the wonderful Sachi Hamano.

Anyway, the festival’s already been running a few days, so I’ll be arriving in the thick of things and am really looking forward to seeing what the Polish audiences are making of it all. Hope to post either from Poland with my news, or at least not too long after I get back home.

Era New Horizons Festival’s Behind the Pink Curtain retrospective full programme

Posted at 22:55 on 24 July 2011

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04
Nov

Wakamatsu in Greece for 50th Thessaloniki International Film Festival, 13-22 November 2009

Koji Wakamatsu's United Red Army

The buzz surrounding Koji Wakamatsu is spreading across the globe at quite a pace at the moment. I’d like to think that Behind the Pink Curtain had something to do with all this, but the reality is that it is the other way round – I have benefited immensely due to the release of the finest film of Wakamatsu‘s career, and arguably the most important Japanese film of the decade, United Red Army, coinciding roughly with my book’s publication last October. The film is screening in the Cinemafamily theatre in LA this very evening, to be followed by a handful of classics from his pinku eiga period in the 1960s, and French viewers already have the first in a series of box-sets of his work out there on DVD.

Masao Adachi's Gushing Prayer

My next Wakamatsu-related announcement is something I have had a hand in though, a special selection of pink and Roman Porno films that will be screening at the 50th Thessaloniki International Film Festival. The eleven chosen titles will be shown as part of the PINKU EIGA: BEYOND PINK programme in the Independence Days section, which I put together with critic and festival programmer Lefteris Adamidis. Films to be screened include Kan Mukai’s Blue Film Woman (1969), Masao Adachi’s Gushing Prayer (1971), Mamoru Watanabe’s Secret Hot Spring Resort: Starfish at Night (1971), Tatsumi Kumashiro’s Woods Are Wet (1973) and a selection of Noboru Tanaka films, including the rarely-screened Beauty’s Exotic Dance: Torture! (1977).

Kan Mukai's Blue Film Woman

I’m going to be heading over to the festival at the end of the next week, which I’m really looking forward to, as I’ve never actually been to Greece before. I hope to pop up a few posts while I’m there. Most exciting of all is that Wakamatsu himself will be coming to introduce United Red Army and three earlier films, Secret Behind the Walls (1965), Running in Madness, Dying in Love (1969) and Shinjuku Mad (1970). I’ve met him on several occasions before, twice at Frankfurt’s Nippon Connection, who have long championed his work, and one particularly surreal night over a drink in a bar in Tokyo’s Golden Gai – I think by now he’s realised I’m not the same person as that certain French Wakamatsu fan who directed Irreversible!

Koji Wakamatsu's Running In Madness, Dying In Love

Anyway, its going to be really interesting to see how these films go down with a Greek festival audiences. Several of the programme’s titles I’ve already screened in London, Montreal and Frankfurt, but this will be my first chance to see the new prints of Running in Madness, Dying in Love (1969) and Shinjuku Mad (1970) on a big screen, to me two of his most interesting works, (they’re also playing in LA – so if you see them, feel free to post your comments on them) and am looking forward to catching United Red Army again.

Koji Wakamatsu's Shinjuku Mad

Hopefully this is the first of many airings of Wakamatsu’s films across the world, now that they’ve been newly subbed for foreign distribution (one of the reasons the director was so woefully underrepresented at last years Wild Japan season of Japanese erotic films at the BFI in London). And I’m sure some bold English-language DVD distributor will pick up on them before too long too.

Posted at 14:04 on 04 November 2009

Filed under news.