Time marches on, with less than a week to go until Zipangu Fest announces its line-up to the world at the Halloween Schlockfest Double Bill this Friday, 29 October, at the Barbican. Tickets are just about sold out for this, although you might be lucky if you get in quick and grab one of the last ones. If you can’t make it, not to worry, as news about the main festival will be posted up here in due course, and no doubt on other sites across the web.

Tetsuaki Matsue's Annyong Kimchee at CUEAFS

In the meantime, I’m pleased to announce that our first pre-festival event, a lecture about jishu eiga by myself followed by a screening of Tetsuaki Matsue’s revealing debut Annyong Kimchee at the Coventry University East Asian Film Society went really well, with a great turnout and an enthusiastic response from all those who came to see it. Thanks to all who came, and also a big thanks to those CUEAFS members who took the time to film and interview me: here’s a video of me talking about the film and the fest from Youtube, with questions being fired at me by the delightful Michelle Bailey.

I’m also really happy to announce that for those who weren’t in Coventry, that I’ll be doing this same “Putting the ‘I’ in Independent” talk and Annyong Kimchee screening in London from 7-9pm, Friday 12 November, at the Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre in the Russell Square campus for SOAS. Entry is free to anyone who wants to come, and you can find out more details about this here.

Which leads me on to the details of another Zipangu Fest event, this time directly prior to the main festival screenings at Cafe 1001 and the Genesis Cinema. On Tuesday 23 November, we’re collaborating with those legendary guardians of film culture in the East End, Close-Up, to present Nippon Year Zero: Japanese Experimental Film from the 1960s-1970s at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club. There’s more details on the Close-Up website here and the Zipangu Fest website here, and Chris Magee at the Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow has also already covered it here.

Masanori Oe's Great Society, screening as part of the Nippon Year Zero event at the Bethnal Green Working Man's Club on 23 November.

We’re really excited about this programme, which showcases the works of three of the great underground/experimental/avant-garde directors of the 1960s, Motoharu Jonouchi, Masanori Oe and Donald Richie – yes, when he wasn’t writing books about Japanese film, Donald Richie made films in Japan, and damn fine ones too! All of the films we’re screening are pretty special, but I’m particularly excited about Oe’s dazzling multi-screen piece of swinging sixties zeitgeist, Great Society – nothing to do with David Cameron’s “Big Society”, mercifully, but a film I’ve been meaning to share more widely ever since I caught it at Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival in 2003. Just a quick note, to say too, if there are any UK programmers or exhibitors who want to make use of these films while the prints are in the country, please drop me a line and we’ll see what we can do.

More news coming later this week, so keep your eye on the Zipangu Fest website …

Posted at 22:58 on 24 October 2010 Filed under news.

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• CUEAFS
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• Halloween Schlockfest
• Masanori Oe
• Motoharu Jonouchi
• Nippon Year Zero
• Tetsuaki Matsue
• Zipangu Fest

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So here it is, the first officially announcement on this website of Zipangu Fest, which will be kicking off with a pre-emptive double strike of Big Tits Zombie 3D and Robo Geisha on 29th October at the Barbican. The first of these will be shown in eye-popping 3D, accompanied by the UK premiere of the short film Augmented City by award‐winning director Keiichi Matsuda.

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, allowing us to keep ticket prices down to less than half those charged in the West End. Cinema venues include the Barbican, Genesis Cinema in Whitechapel, Café 1001 in Brick Lane and the Working Man’s Club in Bethnal Green. The main body of film events will be held in London from 23rd to 28th November 2010, with regional events currently arranged in Bristol, Leeds and Coventry, and more to be confirmed.

AV starlet Sora Aoi in Big Tits Zombie, part of the inaugural Zipangu Fest

The Japanese Halloween Schlockfest Double Bill, has been organised by Zipangu Fest as part of number of wider seasons of Japanese films running at the Barbican throughout October and November, which include girlsworld: women in contemporary japanese cinema, a small retrospective of films by Kenji Mizoguchi, and later in November, retrospectives of Kitano and Akira Kurosawa. I will be there to introduce both titles on this Halloween double bill, during which Zipangu Fest will also announce its full line-up for the main festival, running 23-28 November. Prior to this, there’s going to be a number of other smaller events in various places across the UK, including screenings of Hiroshi Shimizu’s Children of the Beehive in Leeds, as announced in my previous post, and some programmes of 1960s experimental films, about which details will be announced in the coming weeks.

BIG TITS ZOMBIE (KYONYÛ DRAGON) 3D, directed by Takao Nakano and starring Japanese adult video superstar Sora Aoi, is a tongue‐in‐cheek take on the Western/zombie genre Japanese‐style, with bored exotic dancers unwittingly unleashing an army of the undead and having to battle them with nothing but samurai swords, chainsaws and wasabi paste, in a live action film adaptation of Rei Mikamoto’s cult manga. Peppered with 3D set pieces, KYONYÛ DRAGON (BIG TITS ZOMBIE) 3D is distributed in the UK by Terracotta Distribution.

Another of Zipangu Fest's Halloween Schlockers, Robo Geisha, directed by Noboru Iguchi, with special effects by Yoshihiro Nishimura

From the team that brought us The Machine Girl, ROBOGEISHA is unabashedly over‐the‐top and deliriously inventive. A megalomaniac Japanese businessman and his son recruit a vicious gang of surgically‐enhanced Geisha assassins. Directed by Noboru Iguchi, with special effects supervisor Nishimura Yoshihiro, and featuring buildings that bleed, a Giant Castle Robot, and breast milk from hell, it’s a wonderfully insane mix that will have you laughing out loud. ROBOGEISHA is distributed in the UK by Cine Asia.

The full press release can be downloaded from the Zipangu Fest website.

Posted at 17:27 on 25 August 2010 Filed under news.

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