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25
Jan
East Winds: A Third Window Film Festival (11-13 Feb, Coventry)

Never let it be said that we don’t get to see a lot of Japanese films on this small isle. We personally did (and indeed are continuing to do) our bit to spread the love with Zipangu Fest, and as mentioned in a previous post, throughout February and March a selection of seven of the best Japanese films of the past two decades never to receive UK distribution will be doing the rounds across London, Belfast, Edinburgh, Nottingham, Bristol and Sheffield as part of the Back to the Future: Japanese Cinema Since the Mid-90s Japan Foundation Tour.

And now comes the news the even Coventry is about to get its own dedicated Asian film festival in the form of East Winds: A Third Window Film Festival. As if the title wasn’t enough to give things away, this event at the Warwick Arts Centre is the initiative of Adam Torel, head honcho and Lupin-lookalikey behind the UK distributor Third Window Films, while the venue is a dead give-away as to the involvement of Spencer Murphy and the folks at the Coventry University East Asian Film Society, or CUEAFS.

Confessions, the latest from Kamikaze Girls and Memories of Matsuko director Tetsuya Nakashima, up for release from Third Window Films very soon

As Adam writes on his website “Our goal is to raise awareness of Asian cinema to a university crowd who might normally not have much chance to catch Asian cinema on the big screen.” Its a great line-up too. That old favourite from the Third Window back catalogue, Memories of Matsuko, soon to be released on Blu-Ray, paves the way for one of the company’s latest acquisitions, Confessions, the most recent offering from director Tetsuya Nakashima – this film is out on DVD and Blu-Ray in the UK on 25 April. I’ll be up on stage too, to conduct a Q&A with the composer of both films, Gabriele Roberto, and with Gen Takahashi, following the screening of his Confessions of a Dog, one of my faves of last year following its screenings at Toronto’s Shinsedai and my own Zipangu Fest, even though it was originally made some five years before – Third Window are putting out the DVD on 11 March, but before then, if you can’t make it to Coventry, then pop down to the ICA on 16 February and I’ll be conducting the onstage Q&A with Takahashi-san then too.

Cold Fish - Nobody does it like Sion Sono

The other exciting film Japanese film on the programme is the widely-praised Cold Fish, the serial killer epic from Love Exposure director Sion Sono. I have to confess I’ve not seen this yet, but Third Window Films have just announced this is coming up for a wider UK release later this year, though I’m not sure of the exact dates. There’s a Korean film too, in the form of Kick the Moon, another from Adam’s back catalogue (get the DVD here), while Spencer’s presence manifests itself in the inclusion of one Chinese film, and the only actual UK premiere, Kuo-fu Chen & Qunshu Gao’s 2009 wartime drama The Message. Gao is coming over for the festival, and participating in a Q&A after the screening. I don’t know much about this film, but it looks pretty beautiful from the stills, and Chinese cinema is always an intriguing prospect.

The beautiful-looking wartime drama from China, The Message

Ticket prices are very reasonable: £6.60 for normal people; students £4.30; Warwick Students and CUEAFS members £3.00, while a festival ticket at £20 for 4 films (inc booking fees) is also available – worth travelling some distance for, I’d say. The Warwick Arts Centre is on the campus of the University of Warwick, so have a look at the website for further instructions on how to get there.

Whilst we’re praising Adam’s fine release roster, I’ll end with the news that Third Window Films have also just picked up Yuya Ishii’s Sawako Decides, the most recent of the films included as part of the upcoming Japan Foundation tour and one I’d have chosen for Zipangu Fest, had Tony Rayns not grabbed it for London Film Festival first.

Hikari Mitsushima, Third Window favourite and star of Love Exposure and Kakera as you've never seen her before, in a scene from Yuya Ishii's Sawako Decides

Here’s a link to an interview with Mr Torel that the Twitch website has just put up recently.

Posted at 17:47 on 25 January 2011 Filed under news.
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02
Aug
Shinsedai Round Up

Shinsedai guests (from l to r) Yasunobu Takahashi (Locked Out), Gen Takahashi (Confessions of a Dog), Tokachi Tsuchiya (A Normal Life, Please) and Akino Kondoh (Ladybird's Requiem), with Co-Programmer/ Co-Director Chris Magee and Excecutive Director James Heron

Actually this post title is a slightly misleading one. I have no intention of giving you a round up of last weekend’s Shinsedai Cinema Festival in Toronto. I’m too exhausted for a start, after another sleepless night courtesy of the newborn. In fact, I’m currently wondering if I am ever going to have the energy to attempt writing anything significant again. It’s at the 4pm mark at the moment, and I’m just a few minutes away from retreating back to bed after spending most of the day glowering unproductively through my headache at the screen. Secondly, as I wasn’t actually there in Toronto for the fest, my distant observations probably wouldn’t mean very much anyway. So instead, I just want to point you all in the direction of other some fest write-ups from those who actually were there. I will state first of all though that this year’s edition sounded like a rousing success, with attendances around double that of our inaugural year and a good time had by all, from what I’ve heard.

During the Opening Night screening of Kakera, Momoko Ando meets with a very special audience member, the esteemed director Deepa Mehta, as James Heron looks on

For those that are interested, first up there’s the Shinsedai website itself, which has two posts from Marc Saint-Cyr of the Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow written as the festival was ongoing. My co-programmer on Shinsedai, and Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow founder Chris Magee has also written up a review for Confessions of a Dog on his site, one of the talking point films of the fest, and one which viewers in the UK will have a chance to get a look at very soon. Cathy Munroe Hotes also has a review of the film on her blogspot, the Nishikata Film Review. (Just a quick note, but director Gen Takahashi has already had one film released on DVD in the UK, which is the completely-different Goth: Love Of Death.) The same site has a review of Yasunobu Takahashi’s Locked Out.

Toronto based experimental outfit Vowls get ready to lay down the live score to Kenji Mizoguchi's Water Magician

Bob Turnball of the Row Three blogspot has a review of the screening of Mizoguchi’s The Water Magician with live accompaniment by Vowls, a unique event I am really pissed off I wasn’t able to get out there for, but am glad to hear it was very well attended and people loved it, while Tetsuaki Matsue’s Live Tape gets a great write up on cineAWESOME. And I’m sure there’s more if you hunt around for it, but for now, to get a flavour of the mood of the weekend, check out Jon Jung’s photo album he put up on Facebook and take a listen to his VCinema podcast on the website Varied Celluloid, in which he and Marc Saint-Cyr talk about Kakera, followed by an interview with the film’s director and festival guest Momoko Ando. This is the first of a number of podcasts Jon Jung has planned from Shinsedai, and I should also say a big thanks to him for providing the pix that accompany the post. Thanks!

Posted at 17:10 on 02 August 2010 Filed under news.
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17
Jul
A new look for my website, and plus info on Shinsedai and Masao Adachi

Facebook seems to do it all the time, so why shouldn’t I? Yes, you’ve probably noticed, my website has just been given a makeover by its wonderful designers at Go Logic, and should now be even better. Well, I can’t speak for content of course, but you’ll notice that as well as the new improved cleaner layout, there’s also a little heart-shaped button at the bottom right hand side of each entry which, like Facebook, allows you to ‘like’ my posts, if you have read and found them interesting yet don’t have the time or inclination to pass comment on them. Basically it’s a way of me knowing if anyone is actually reading all this stuff, or whether I am just pissing in the wind trying to get my opinions out there. There’s also a pretty nifty animated tag-cloud which I’m rather fond of, which spins around to give a better idea of the sort of subjects I’ve been covering rather than having to root around in my archives.

Life has been even crazier than usual these past few weeks, which is why there have not been any posts recently and there my not be that many more in the immediate future either. For those that don’t know, my beautiful partner Michelle gave birth to our son, Thorin, at 2.30am on 8th July, so the past week has been something of a mixture of euphoria, blind panic, disbelief and head-mashed exhaustion. Wonderful news, being a dad, but I won’t bore you all with the details at this juncture. No, I’ve got a few other announcements to make first….

You're forgiven if you missed it, but Gen Takahashi's Confessions of a Dog was the best Japanese film of 2006!

First up is a reminder that next weekend in Toronto it is the 2nd Shinsedai Cinema Festival, a four-day showcase of the best recent Japanese films taking place in the Japan Canadian Cultural Centre between 22-25 July. There’s a link to this on the right hand of this page, just beneath Graham Humphrey’s masterful portrait of me, or you can click on the ‘events’ tab up above and you’ll get a whole load more info about this, including a map showing you how to get you to there, should you be in Toronto or anywhere near at the time – you’ve no excuse for not going! I do have an excuse for not going, of course, namely the baby, as well as the Atlantic ocean between me and the JCCC, but I did go last year and would have done again this year if I didn’t have another hungry mouth in the house to feed. It’s going to be amazing, I promise you.

There are some brilliant films playing, including some of the best-regarded titles of the past year, such as Tetsuaki Matsue’s Live Tape, Koya Yoshida’s Yuriko’s Aroma, Momoko Ando’s Kakera: A Piece of Our Life and Tokachi Tsuchiya’s A Normal Life Please, plus a few revivals/rediscoveries, notably Go Shibata’s stunning 1999 debut NN-891102 and Gen Takahashi’s epic The Wire-styled expose of police corruption Confessions of a Dog, a film I am frankly amazed so few people know about given that it was made back in 2006, although one which I am pretty sure will be picking up a lot more interest as the year progresses.

And another scene from Confessions of a Dog, as I love this film so much!

Another thing I am particularly excited about this year is a screening of Kenji Mizoguchi’s hauntingly beautiful silent classic The Water Magician, with a new soundtrack by the Toronto-based experimental outfit Vowls (their website is here, and you can also have a listen on myspace. Japanese silent films are rarely screened outside of Japan, but along with Teinosuke Kinugasa’s Page of Madness, this is one of the best of the limited handful of titles that survive, and it’s from one of the world’s greatest ever directors too. It looks absolutely gorgeous, with Mizoguchi’s atmospheric tracking shots and Kyoko Izumi’s vaguely ero-guro style carnival milieu making this a must-see, and the live accompaniment is only going to work in its favour. I’m actually gutted I am not going to be there!

Kenji Mizoguchi's haunting Water Magician, playing at Shinsedai with a live score by Vowls

There’s a whole host of filmmaker guests going to be attending too, including Akino Kondoh, Gen Takahashi, Momoko Ando, Yasunobu Takahashi and Tokachi Tsuchiya. Anyway, there’s a lot more info about the festival on the Shinsedai website, but if you are a Japanese film fan or scholar and are based in Toronto or its immediate environs, you will not get a better selection of films laid out for you than this.

Right, my next bit of news comes courtesy of Matteo Boscarol, who has his own impressive looking Italian-language blog on all things Japan-related. It is about the Italian DVD release of Masao Adachi’s Gushing Prayer, or rather Gushing Prayer: A 15-Year-Old Prostitute as it was originally known: when I got a new print struck up from the original negative as one of the films to go out on the various screening to promote Behind the Pink Curtain (its played at the British Film Institute, Austin Fantastic Fest, Montreal Fantasia, Thessaloniki and Nippon Connection so far), I decided it was wise to suppress any insinuations of underage sex in its title to facilitate its passage through customs. Those that have seen it will know it is not some lurid jailbait fantasy, but a rather haunting avant-garde work that takes a metaphorical look at the student protests in Japan in the 1960s. Or something like that. I’m still not entirely sure what it means. This was a film that got a rather polarised response during its festival screenings, with some viewers scratching their heads non-plused before moving on and dismissing it as pretentious, and others bowled over by its rather melancholy tone and fascinating snap shots of Tokyo back in the day. Personally I love it, but whatever your take, you can’t deny its uniqueness. Now it is finally available for viewing on DVD, and I have it on good authority that the release by Raro Video actually has English as well as Italian subs, which I take to mean that they haven’t blocked out the English language subs that were burnt into the actual print as we prepared it. So this is great news for all Adachi fans, and if you’re interested, then please allow me to direct you to one of the several online retailers offering it up for order here.

Italian DVD release by Raro Video of Masao Adachi's Gushing Prayer, with English subtitles!

I also don’t know if I’m giving too much away here, as I think it is something of an open secret, but there will be a Masao Adachi retrospective in France later in the year, which should result in some of his other films being released on DVD. If there are any readers who don’t have a clue who Adachi is, then I’ll point you to an interview I did with him for Midnight Eye a few years back.

So that just leaves one other brief topic before I sign off for today, which is the publication of issue two of the Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema. Articles include Olga V Solovieva’s Kurosawa Akira’s The Idiot: Where the East meets the West, Isolde Standish’s Night and Fog in Japan: Fifty Years On and Steven Rawle’s From The Black Society to The Isle: Miike Takashi and Kim Ki-Duk at the intersection of Asia Extreme.

There’s also a rather nice review of Behind the Pink Curtain by Stephen Prince, who writes “Jasper Sharp gives us a detailed history of the pink film, copiously illustrated and written in an accessible and engaging manner… [he is] an able guide to this inchoate genre that fused social subversion and crass exploitation… Behind the Pink Curtain will not soon be equaled in its portrait of a cinematic demi-monde whose film-makers have flaunted their status as outlaws and outsiders.” Nice!

Posted at 18:02 on 17 July 2010 Filed under news.
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