The Arnolfini’s Pigs, Eels & Insects: Reassessing The Legacy of Shohei Imamura season comes to London.
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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.