The season is the Japan Foundation’s most ambitious yet, with a total of nine films travelling to seven venues across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland (but not that other place) between 10 February to 28 March 2012. This year’s title is ‘Whose Film Is It Anyway? Contemporary Japanese Auteurs’, and the films have all been selected because they are directed from original scripts, not adaptations of books or manga, or TV tie-ins. We thought it was an important theme, because when you look at the list of top-grossing Japanese films of recent years, it seems to be dominated by TV spin-offs such as the Umizaru, Boys Over Flowers and Rookies films. It seemed a particularly good time to celebrate the auteur, and also extol the virtues of originality rather than tried and tested formulas – something worth remembering given the various debates that raged a couple of weeks back vis-a-vis David Cameron’s comments outlining his ideas for the British film industry as touched upon in my previous post (although it now seems these might have been slightly misreported).

Shall We Dance? director Masayuki Suo in London and in conversation with yours truly on Thursday 9 February, to introduce his most recent film I Just Didn't Do It.

The series kicks off in London at the ICA on 11 February and will run there until 16 February – the full programme of the London screenings is given here. In order to launch the season, the Japan Foundation will be holding a special event on 9 February at their Russell Square premises, with the director Masayuki Suo in conversation, talking about his filmmaking methods to mark our screenings of his last work, I Just Didn’t Do It (Soredemo boku wa yattenai), a damning indictment of the Japanese judicial system.

I’m particularly honoured and excited to be conducting this onstage interview with one of Japan’s most internationally-acclaimed directors, because as I frequently tell anyone who asks me, it was his wonderful ballroom comedy Shall We Dance? that provided one of my early epiphanies about Japanese film, which resulted in my leaving the humdrum security of office life and heading over to Japan to study its cinema (You can read the whole story in this piece I wrote for J-Film Powwow a couple of years back. I’ve never met Suo before, but I do know I love his films, and that in this particular case, they’ve had a life-changing effect on me. It still brings a tear to my eye, this beautiful film (and this is from someone who can’t bare to be in the same room as BBC Saturday night talent show Strictly Come Dancing).

The other end of auteurism - director Katsumi Sakaguchi will be talking about his film Sleep with Roger Clarke at the Japan Foundation UK on 13 Feb.

The Japan Foundation has two guests over this year, the second being Katsumi Sakaguchi, whose gritty Sleep (Nemuri yusurika), a docudrama about prostitution and sexual dysfunction, presents an altogether more challenging aspect of ‘auteurist cinema’ than Suo’s films. Chairing what I am sure will be a fascinating discussion with the director at the Japan Foundation on Monday 13 February 2012 (from 6.30pm ) is the critic Roger Clarke, writer for The Independent and Sight & Sound among other things.

I should be there for much of the first weekend at the ICA introducing the various films, so look forward to seeing you there. As for the two events at the Japan Foundation, both are free to attend but booking is essential. To reserve a place, please email your name and the title of the event you would like to attend to event@jpf.org.uk.

Event: ‘Whose Film Is It Anyway? Contemporary Japanese Auteurs’ Japan Foundation UK Touring Programme

Venue: Institute of Contemporary Arts, then Belfast Queen’s Film Theatre, Bristol Watershed, Edinburgh Filmhouse, Glasgow Film Theatre, Nottingham Broadway and Sheffield Showroom

Kenji Uchida's A Stranger of Mine.

This year’s Japan Foundation annual touring film programme looks at narrative creativity by contemporary Japanese directors in contrast to the recent storm of adaptations, and how they express their voices through cinema. Ranging from the emerging to the established, this programme showcases directors who are not necessarily well-represented in this country, but whose works demonstrate their keen creativity.

Giants such as Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu are renowned for their uniquely creative signature styles, along with more recent examples such as Takeshi Kitano and Kiyoshi Kurosawa, but recent years have revealed a more mundane side to the industry, where the top-grossing titles have largely been generic spin-offs of TV shows or adaptations of other sources such as popular manga and novels unpublished outside Japan, in order to generate audiences based on a pre-existing associated market.

This programme is an effort to demonstrate that there are in fact still a number of Japanese directors who, rather than being swayed by ever-fickle markets and following a “safe” formulaic film model, have instead elected to pursue their own methods of expressing themselves and using film as a voice. 9 directors have been selected for this programme, including the respected Masayuki Suo and unique auteure Miwa Nishikawa.

The Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme continues to go from strength to strength, returning this year with more films and more venues than ever before!

Programme advice from Jasper Sharp

Films In Season:

A Stranger of Mine (Kenji Uchida, 2005)

About Her Brother (Yoji Yamada, 2010)

All Around Us (Ryosuke Hashiguchi, 2008)

Bad Company (Tomoyuki Furumaya, 2001)

Dear Doctor (Miwa Nishikawa, 2009)

Heart Beating In The Dark (Shinichi Nagasaki, 2005)

I Just Didn’t Do It (Masayuki Suo, 2007)

Sleep (Katsumi Sakaguchi, 2011)

The Dark Harbour (Takatsugu Naito, 2008)

Guests from Japan:

Q&A session with director Masayuki Suo (I Just Didn’t Do It)

ICA Screenings: 11th February (3:30pm) ; 12th February (4:00pm)

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Q&A session with director Katsumi Sakaguchi (Sleep)

ICA Screening: 16th February & Showroom Screening: 17th February

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Venue: Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH

When: 18-24 November 2011

Following the success of last year’s inaugural festival, the second Zipangu Fest – celebrating the best of cutting edge and avant garde Japanese cinema – will be held at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts from November 18th to 24th, before moving to venues around the UK.

Showcasing a selection of Japan’s finest features, documentaries, shorts, animation and experimental films, this year’s Zipangu Fest will include a retrospective screening of two rarely seen gems that have never been shown in the UK. One of these – a pre-war horror title – has been subtitled especially for the festival.

SECOND ZIPANGU FEST TO KICK OFF AT LONDON’S ICA

Festival director and head programmer, Jasper Sharp, comments: ‘After the runaway success of last year’s festival, we are very excited about Zipangu Fest 2011. Our aim is to showcase the wealth of talent in the independent and experimental filmmaking scene in Japan by showing the sort of films that other festivals barely seem to be aware of. The beauty of Japanese film is that you know you’re always going to see something different, and this year we’ve got another exciting and diverse range of titles to challenge, provoke and entertain. We’re particularly thrilled that the ICA is hosting this year’s event, as it is the perfect venue for us, and with last year’s programme touring to cities including Bristol, Leeds, Newcastle and Tallinn in Estonia, we hope to continue with our goal of bringing these films to as wide an audience as possible.’

To make sure you are kept up to date with Zipangu Fest news, please subscribe to our press list: http://zipangufest.com/press/2011

For further press information please contact: Sarah Macdonald: sarah@zipangufest.com

You can also join out Facebook group or sign up to our Twitter feed.

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Zipangu Fest 2011 design by Michael Lomon

If you want to read the original press releases, you can find them on the press section of our website here, but if you want more basic details about the lineup, you can find the full schedule either on the ICA website or on the Zipangu Fest website.

Basically we’ve divided the programme into four sections, all of which overlap and inter-link in various cunning ways that I’m about to outline: Sounds of Zipangu, Experimental/Animation, Zipangu Retro, and Nuclear Reactions. The first section consists of two European-produced documentaries that look at Japanese avant-garde/experimental music and the traditional, religious and contemporary cultural forces that inform it, with We Don’t Care About Music Anyway… and KanZeOn both looking as good as they sound.

We Don't Care About Music Anyway... (Cédric Dupire & Gaspard Kuentz)

The latter film, which also screened over this summer at Shinsedai in Toronto and EvA in Estonia, provides the inspiration for our opening party, which features an astounding line-up of DJs and performers, not least in the form of tat2mi, the beat-boxing Buddhist monk featured in the film in his first ever London performance. The event, to be held in the ICA’s bar, boasts a live remix of the visuals by Amoeba.Av with director/cinematographer Tim Grabham (aka Cinema Iloobia).

I’ve already posted the flyer for this party just below this entry on my blog, so do feel free to circulate, won’t you!  You can win tickets for our marvellous opening screening and party via this competition on the Japan Centre website.

All of this links rather nicely with another film in this section, Abraxas, about a former punk musician turned Buddhist monk who finds himself drawn back to give just one more performance. Not only is the soundtrack by Yoshihide Ohtomo, a towering figure in Japan’s avant-garde scene who is featured in We Don’t Care About Music Anyway…, but coincidentally the film was shot in the rural Fukushima region devastated by the earthquake and tsunami on 11 March of this year.

Set in Fukushima and featuring a soundtrack by Yoshihide Ohtomo and a starring turn by Suneohair, Naoki Kato's Abraxas.

The earthquake of course can’t help but cast a long shadow over any Japan-related events this year. Zipangu Fest will be doing their bit to raise awareness and hopefully a bit of money to help those affected when we move temporarily out of the ICA on Tuesday 22 Nov for a special charity screening of experimental films at Cafe Oto in Dalston. The two Nippon Re-Read programmes, as announced previously on this website, are part of a touring programme curated by Kinema Nippon (Aily Nash and Nine Yamamoto-Masson) and cover key works in the history of Japanese experimental film from the 1960s to present.

If you’re interested in either experimental film or Japanese cinema, the Nippon Re-Read: Radical Fragments and Abstractions from Japan I & II night on Tues 22 Nov presents a unique chance to watch these works placed within an informative yet fun context at one of London’s funkiest venues (worth visiting for the okonomiyaki and decent bar prices alone). It’s only £5 to get in, although you are free to pay more as all profits will go to the Japan Society Earthquake Relief Fund, and you can also buy advance tickets via WeGotTickets. As if this wasn’t amazing enough value for money in its own right, legendary London-based Japanese psychedelic rockers Bo Ningen will also be in attendance to perform a live soundtrack to Tatsuo Sato’s surreal animated classic Cat Soup from 2001.

Experimental films and a live performance from Bo Ningen at Cafe Oto on 22 Nov

This provides me with two ways to segue back into the other parts of the programme, but I’ll take the Experimental/Anime route. Alongside Abraxas on Saturday we have the Beyond Anime: The Outer Limits programme which, to whet your appetite for Cat Soup, will provide a wonderful and revealing glimpse of the innovation and creativity in Japan’s independent animation scene. This is a truly amazing sample of works covering a wide range of ground, but I’ll say it now, Sayaka Oka’s mesmerising Melting Medama is about the closest thing to a religious epiphany I’ve experienced this year.

What eyes are made for - Sayaka Oku's Melting Medama, part of the Beyond Anime programme

On a similar tack is the Enter the Cosmos programme of three works by that maestro of cinematic abstraction, Takashi Makino. His recent film Still in Cosmos will be screened as part of Tuesday’s Nippon Re-Read earthquake appeal night, but here’s a unique chance to immerse yourself in the full experience, with Makino himself there to introduce the films. Linking back to the Sounds of Zipangu section, Makino’s films are collaborations with some of the the foremost international talents of noise and soundscape music, including Jim O’Rourke and Machinefabriek. Another connection is that both Makino and KanZeOn’s Tim Grabham have served some time under the Quay Brothers, an influence that will become all the more clear when you see the Death of Phonebook animation made by Tim (under his customary handle of Cinema Iloobia), the honorary gaijin included in the Beyond Anime section.

Shasyo, one of several of Ryu Furusawa's films included in the Beyond Anime section

On the other side of the Sounds of Zipangu musical spectrum lies the sickly sweet strains of J-pop teeny band Momoiro Clover, as featured in Koji Shiraishi’s hilariously cruel J-horror mockumentary Shirome. Watch the tribe of teen songstresses agree to sell their souls for fame and fortune, and remember, nothing about their performance is faked for the camera!

Horror also lies at the heart of one of our Zipangu Retro screenings, and I am absolutely delighted that we have managed to make this come together, in partnership with the National Film Centre of Tokyo and the Japan Visualmedia Translation Academy. Never seen before in the UK, the 1938 supernatural chiller Ghost Cat and the Mysterious Shamisen is going to shake up a few preconceptions about the development of the horror around the world during is early decades, revealing that the genre was alive and kicking in Japan long before the films of Nobuo Nakagawa for Shintoho in the 1950s. Pioneering director Ushihara went to Hollywood to study filmmaking under Charlie Chaplin in the 1920s, so it is no surprise that he kept more than one eye on other developments in American cinema throughout his career. Personally I think that with its well-deployed arsenal of kaleidoscopic lenses, double-exposures and slow-mo sequences, in the expressionistic stakes Ghost Cat is easily abreast of, if not ahead of the Universal horrors of the period. Zipangu Fest have especially arranged to get this film subtitled and available for English speaking audiences, so make sure you don’t miss it while it is screening over here – the film gets its UK premiere ahead of Zipangu Fest at Leeds International Film Festival on Tues 8 and Thurs 10 Nov, and will be playing in Bradford in December and Newcastle in March. More details as they come, but if anyone out there reading this is also interested in showing this rare gem anywhere else, then drop me a line!

Vintage chills in our UK premiere of Ghost Cat and the Mysterious Shamisen

And our second Zipangu Retro screening takes us into our final section, Nuclear Reactions. Lucky Dragon No. 5 is a little-seen work by a pretty well-known director, Kaneto Shindo. One of the most important figures in the history of independent cinema in Japan, Shindo is primarily known in the West for his two horror films Onibaba and Kuroneko (another film about a ghostly black cat!), but also for a number of films on the subject of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and the director’s own birthplace of Hiroshima, beginning with the first fictional work from Japan on the subject, Children of Hiroshima (1952) right up to his latest film Postcard (2011), realised at the age of 98. I have no idea when was the last time this film was shown in the United Kingdom, if ever, but suffice it to say, you probably won’t get another chance to see it soon. The film is a docudrama based on a real life incident in which the crew of a fishing trawler were caught in the vicinity of American atomic bomb testing in the Pacific during the 1950s. The incident is pretty well-known today, if only because it inspired the original Godzilla.

Shinpei Takeda's poignant documentary road trip, Hiroshima Nagasaki Download.

Lest we forget, the legacy of the atomic bomb is the subject of our second film in the Nuclear Reactions section, with Hiroshi Nagasaki Download detailing a road-trip by the Mexican-based Japanese artist Shinpei Takeda, who will be coming as a guest of Zipangu Fest to introduce his film, as he and his college friend embark on a road trip across North America to interview a number of the survivors of this tragedy who have now made their homes outside of Japan.

The Nuclear Reactions section is our attempt to remember the potentially lethal destructive power of atomic energy, whether used militarily or to provide our energy needs, with a series of four films produced in a country that has suffered the most from its misuse. The nuclear power debate in Britain seems to have already died down in the wake of the catastrophe at the Fukushima power plant, a power plant that politicians repeatedly told the Japanese public was completely safe. In Japan, Hitomi Kamanaka has made several films that have attempted to delve beneath the claims of the politicians long before the disaster, and her findings in the two films that we are screening at the festival, are both chilling and yet also provide hope for those who are prepared to engage with the issues more fully. With the director travelling to Sellafield in the first of these two films to investigate a radiation leak that already seems to have been forgotten by the British media and public, the films offer little in the way of cold comfort for those still convinced by the “can’t happen here” argument.

So what do you do with nuclear waste? Hitomi Kamanaka's Rokkasho Rhapsody provides a chilling answer.

So there’s a guide through our programme for this year’s Zipangu Fest. No doubt there are even more links between the films if you look for them, and we really hope this years festival succeeds in fulfilling our goal of bringing people together to enjoy these films, and to talk about them and other related matters. I’m certainly looking forward to it myself!

Almost forgot too, just a few days before the festival, me and Julian Ross will be at the Horse Hospital near Russell Sq at the invitation of Electric Sheep magazine for An Evening of Subversive Japanese Cinema. Electric Sheep and Strange Attractor will present a screening of Koji Wakamatsu’s anarcho-pinku Sex Jack (1970) to tie-in with their recent book publication The End: An Electric Sheep Anthology, while Julian and I will be there to provide some cultural background to the film as well as another screening of one of the top hits from last year’s Zipangu Fest, Naoyuki Niiya’s ero-guro kami-shibai animation Man-eater Mountain.

Yumehiro Imanari's highly entertaining documentary short The Student Wrestler, playing alongside Hiroshima Nagasaki Download

In the meantime, here’s a link to an interview I did with Zoe Baxter on her Lucky Cat show on Resonance FM last Saturday (29 October), in which I talk a lot more about the films and a few other things besides.

Parts of Zipangu Fest’s programme will be touring to the Bradford Media Museum on 10-12 December, and the Star and Shadow Cinema in Newcastle in January.

More news as it comes, and again, if there are any venues out there in the UK that are interested in hosting parts of the Zipangu Fest programme, then do drop us a line.

And in the meantime, you can sign up to our press list, our Facebook page and our Twitter feed.

Takashi Makino's Still in Cosmos (2009, screened as part of the earthquake benefit night at Cafe Oto on 22 November

November screenings at London’s ICA and Café Oto of Takashi Makino’s films, featuring soundtracks by Jim O’Rourke and Machinefabriek

Four films by the leading light of Japan’s contemporary experimental scene, Takashi Makino, will be screened at this year’s Zipangu Fest (18-24 November 2011). Three of Makino’s abstract visual odysseys – with soundtracks by avant garde musicians Jim O’Rourke and Machinefabriek – will be shown at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts on Saturday 19 November as part of a programme entitled Enter the Cosmos, while the fourth will be screened at Zipangu Fest’s benefit night for the Japan disaster fund to be held at Café Oto in Dalston on 22 November.

Come and enjoy a fine spectrum of experimental moving image works from Japan, for a good cause! The benefit night at Café Oto in Dalston (18-22 Ashwin St, London E8 3DL) – Nippon Re-read Radical Fragments and Abstractions from Japan I and II – will also include experimental works from the late 1960s by Takahiko Iimura and Toshio Matsumoto, as well as recent films by Tomonari Nishikawa and Shiho Kano. Organised by Zipangu Fest’s Julian Ross, the programme was curated by Aily Nash and Nine Eglantine Yamamoto-Masson of Kinema Nippon.

The films in this two-part programme range from late 60s to contemporary works. Although varying greatly in their formal and aesthetic concerns, the works all rigorously reexamine the everyday through their respective experiments and innovations in their medium.

Abstractions of the mundane are seen in the graphic films in Programme I, which deal directly with the materiality of their medium rather than focusing on a visual referent. In White Calligraphy Re-Read (1967), Takahiko Iimura activates the Japanese characters of the Kojiki, the earliest Japanese historical chronicle, by deconstructing text into its constitutive graphic ciphers. These works, including Lika (2007) by Stom Sogo, and Still in Cosmos (2009) by Takashi Makino, direct the attention of the viewer to the pictorial, emphasizing more painterly concerns, digital and celluloid textures, the visceral correlation of sound and image, and of flatness versus representational depth.

Sixties split-screen psychedia in Toshio Matsumoto's For the Damaged Right Eye (1969)

The works in Programme II offer a poetic investigation into the fragmentary experience of the quotidian by eschewing narrative and rendering cultural images and references to unveil the uncanny within the familiar. Tomonari Nishikawa’s in-camera manipulation of bustling metro hubs in Shibuya-Tokyo and Tokyo-Ebisu (2010), as well as Shiho Kano’s pensive meditations on quintessential Japanese subjects form a counterpoint to Toshio Matsumoto’s split-screen filmic hallucination of the late-60s underground, For the Damaged Right Eye (1969).

Tomonari Nishikawa's Tokyo-Ebisu (2010)

Doors open at 7.30pm. An admission fee of £5 will be charged on the door, and all proceeds the benefit night will go towards Japan disaster relief, via Japanisch-Deutsches Zentrum Berlin.

More details of the event can be found at http://zipangufest.com/events/2011/nippon-re-read-radical-fragments-and-abstractions-from-japan-i-ii.

*** We hope to have an added something extra special for the night, to be announced shortly ***

SECOND ZIPANGU FEST TO KICK OFF AT LONDON’S ICA

This year’s celebration of cutting edge Japanese cinema will get under way from November 18th to 24th in London

Following the success of last year’s inaugural festival, the second Zipangu Fest – celebrating the best of cutting edge and avant garde Japanese cinema – will be held at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts from November 18th to 24th, before moving to venues around the UK.

Showcasing a selection of Japan’s finest features, documentaries, shorts, animation and experimental films, this year’s Zipangu Fest will include a retrospective screening of two rarely seen gems that have never been shown in the UK. One of these – a pre-war horror title – has been subtitled especially for the festival.

Festival director and head programmer, Jasper Sharp, comments: ‘After the runaway success of last year’s festival, we are very excited about Zipangu Fest 2011. Our aim is to showcase the wealth of talent in the independent and experimental filmmaking scene in Japan by showing the sort of films that other festivals barely seem to be aware of. The beauty of Japanese film is that you know you’re always going to see something different, and this year we’ve got another exciting and diverse range of titles to challenge, provoke and entertain. We’re particularly thrilled that the ICA is hosting this year’s event, as it is the perfect venue for us, and with last year’s programme touring to cities including Bristol, Leeds, Newcastle and Tallinn in Estonia, we hope to continue with our goal of bringing these films to as wide an audience as possible.’

To make sure you are kept up to date with Zipangu Fest news, please subscribe to our press list: http://zipangufest.com/press/2011

For further press information please contact: Sarah Macdonald: sarah@zipangufest.com

You can also join out Facebook group or sign up to our Twitter feed.

Now in its 8th year, the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme focuses on the marked resurgence of Japanese cinema from the mid 1990s onwards. With a series of works from seven key directors who have carved a new path for the future and contributed to the recent success of Japanese cinema around the world, the 2011 line-up provides UK audiences with an insight into a pivotal period which changed the landscape of Japanese cinema and provided a once great industry with a new lease of life.

The titles in this year’s line-up are among the finest examples from key Japanese directors of this period, popular both at home and abroad, such as Takashi Miike and Kiyoshi Kurosawa, alongside directors like Isao Yukisada and Isshin Inudo who have been highly successful within the domestic market in Japan but are less recognised overseas. Also included are representatives from a younger generation of directors including Yuya Ishii who is part of a new stream of talent to watch out for in the future.

As well as inspiring the beginnings of a new era of Japanese cinema, these directors all continue to work, and remain a part of the future of Japanese cinema. Though the selected works may be less well-known in the UK, they are all key works in the development of their respective director’s career, they also serve to illustrate the development of contemporary Japanese cinema and help to exhibit a great breadth of creativity.

The Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme is organised by the Japan Foundation with advice from Jasper Sharp.

Also at BELFAST, BRISTOL, EDINBURGH, NOTTINGHAM and SHEFFIELD
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I’m more excited about this year’s than I’ve been in some time because the theme is not so constraining as it has been in previous years. Entitled Back to the Future: Japanese Cinema Since the Mid-90s, what we’ve aimed to do this time round is simply showcase some of the most important filmmakers of the past 20 years, the major names who have emerged after the time when everyone was pronouncing Japanese cinema more or less dead. This was a great trip down memory lane for me, back to the time when we started off Midnight Eye over ten years ago and began championing the likes of Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Takashi Miike, who were at the time virtually unheard of outside of Japan.

Isao Yukisada's Go - ten years old this year!

The aim was to take a couple influential directors active in the early 1990s (Kurosawa and Miike), a handful who hit their stride in the early part of the new millennium (Isao Yukisada, Isshin Inudo and Nobuhiro Yamashita) and two to watch for now (Yuya Ishii and Yuki Tanada). This gave us a far broader and more varied pool of films to select from than usual, and a great chance to reintroduce the big names that got me into Japanese film in the first place.

It was important to remember that though I and other Japanese film fans might be well versed in the works of, for example, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, it is fair to assume that most of the British public probably aren’t, and so opportunities to catch Cure on the big screen are rare things indeed, and it is all the more amazing when you realise that one of the most influential and effective films in the J-Horror genre has never been released on DVD over here. Similarly, while there was a phase in the early 2000s when seemingly Miike only had to fart and it would get put out on DVD, one of the titles that got missed was also, in my opinion, one of his most impressive, The Bird People in China. And then there were brilliant titles like Isao Yukisada’s Go, which made a huge impact at the time, but never got picked for overseas distribution because companies like Tartan were swamping the market with its ‘Asia Extreme’ crap and alienating a whole generation from Japanese film. Josee, the Tiger and the Fish is a great example of this sort of thing – a film that did the festival rounds and impressed most who saw it, but it never really went anywhere in terms of DVD distribution. Inudo and Yukisada were two of the most profitable directors working in the Japanese industry during the past decade, yet they’re virtually unknown in the West.

Almost unbelievable to think that Kiyoshi Kurosawa's masterful Cure never got a UK DVD release

So without the constraints of the themes of the previous years (the family in Japanese film, women in Japanese film etc), this years’ programme more simply gave us a chance just to select good films, entertaining crowd-pleasers that represent the very best of the past twenty year that haven’t been shown widely in the UK before. Even then, there were a few surprises about what was actually available. Its funny, but you think that films that the late-90s and or early-2000s were fairly recent in terms of the broad sweep of cinema history, but I was amazed by the number of titles we looked at where the only subtitled prints were too poor condition to screen or the original production company had gone bankrupt and the current rightsholders were unknown. There are a lot of pretty major titles from the past decade will probably never see light of a projector again. Shocking.

Bird People of China - still one of Miike's finest, IMHO

The season kicks off at the ICA on 4 February and runs for 9 days before heading to a number of other cities: Belfast, Edinburgh, Nottingham, Bristol and Sheffield.

Before its opening, I’ll be giving an introduction to the season on 27 January from 6.30pm at the Japan Foundation, so please come along. Its free, although you need to inform them you are coming an advance, and it will be a great chance to talk with me and others about Japanese cinema and this year’s programme – and you get a free glass of wine at the end (maybe two or three if you’re quick!)

Details of my talk can be found on the Japan Foundation website here.

Details of the season are here, but I’m also pasting them below (you’ll note in my last post I mentioned “wrestling with WordPress”  – apologies for the formatting below, but it is simply not doing what I am asking it, damn it!) :

Anyone remember this one? A rare chance to catch Isshin Inudo's touching 2003 film Josee, the Tiger and the Fish on the big screen

From the Japan Foundation Website

This year’s Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme focuses on the marked resurgence of Japanese cinema from the mid 1990s onwards. Including established names such as Kiyoshi Kurosawa as well as up-and-coming talent Yuya Ishii, the featured directors have carved a new path for the future and contributed to the recent success of Japanese cinema around the world. Showcasing a great breadth of creativity, the 2011 line-up offers UK audiences an insight into a pivotal period which changed the landscape of Japanese cinema and provided the industry with a new lease of life.

2011 Film line-up:

Linda Linda Linda

Dir: Nobuhiro Yamashita, Japan 2005 (114min, 35mm, subtitles)

Cure

Dir: Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan 1997 (115min, 35mm, subtitles)

Go

Dir: Isao Yukisada, Japan 2001 (122min, 35mm, subtitles)

Sawako Decides (Kawano Sokokara Konnichiwa)

Dir:Yuya Ishii, Japan 2009 (112min, 35mm,subtitles)

Josee, the Tiger and the Fish (Joze To Tora To Sakana Tachi)

Dir: Isshin Inudo, Japan 2003 (116min, 35mm, subtitles)

One Million Yen Girl (Hyakumanen To Nigamushi Onna)

Dir: Yuki Tanada, Japan 2008 (121min, 35mm, subtitles)

The Bird People in China (Chugoku No Chojin)

Dir: Takashi Miike, Japan 1998 (102min, 35mm subtitles)

Date: 4 February 2011 – 28 March 2011

Touring venues:

4 – 13 February ICA Cinema, London

21 – 24 February Queen’s Film Theatre, Belfast

4 – 10 March Filmhouse, Edinburgh

11 – 16 March Broadway, Nottingham

18 – 20 March Arnolfini, Bristol

22 – 28 March Showroom Workstation, Sheffield

Jun Ichikawa's How to Become Myself

Posting for the first time in 2010 from an icy, snowbound London, I wanted to pass on details about this year’s touring programme across the UK from the Japan Foundation, for which, as I have done for the past few years, I acted as advisor. This year’s selection of six films is themed ‘Girls on Film: Females in Contemporary Japanese Cinema’, and runs from 9 to 17 February at the ICA in London, before heading off to other venues, details of which I’m providing below. Copying the blurb about the tour from the JF UK’s website:

“The Japan Foundation’s 2010 touring film programme looks at contemporary Japanese cinema made for, about, and, in some cases, by women. Touring to five venues during February and March, the programme is composed of works from the past few years and showcases how Japanese contemporary filmmakers, from the very established, such as the late Jun Ichikawa, to young and promising filmmakers, like Satoko Yokohama, approach the issues facing women and adolescents. This season also includes works by female directors, reflecting the exciting trend of a marked increase in the number of female directors working in the Japanese film industry. This is a unique collection of films not to be missed!”

Naoko Ogigami's Kamome Diner

I’ll also be giving a talk at the London Office in Russell Square to introduce the season, at 6.30pm on 4 February 2010. It’s free (and usually a few drinks involved too), but you’ll need to book with the Japan Foundation first. More details here.

The tour line up is as follows:

Fourteen (Ju-yon-sai, Hiromasa HIROSUE, 2006)

German Plus Rain (German + Ame, Satoko YOKOHAMA, 2007)

How to Become Myself (Ashita no watashi no tsukurikata, Jun ICHIKAWA, 2007)

Kamome Diner (Kamome shokudo, Naoko OGIGAMI, 2006)

Non-ko (Nonko 36-sai, Kazuyoshi KUMAKIRI, 2009)

Asyl: Park and Love Hotel (Pâku ando rabuhoteru, Izuru KUMASAKA, 2007)

Izuru Kumasaka's Asyl: Park and Love Hotel

And the dates:

9 to 17 February – ICA, London

22 February to 4 March – Showroom, Sheffield

5 to 9 March – Queen’s Film Theatre, Belfast (Except Non-ko)

10 to 14 March – Filmhouse, Edinburgh

18 to 21 March – Arnolfini, Bristol

I’ll no doubt be posting up reminders and more details, as they arrive, throughout this month. You can find out information on some of these titles on Midnight Eye of course. Anyway, for most of the films, this is the first time they’re playing in the UK, so I really hope to see you at the screenings or the introductory talk, and please, spread the word!

Kazuyoshi Kumakiri's Nonko

]]> http://jaspersharp.com/blog/news/2010/01/japan-foundation-uk%e2%80%99s-annual-touring-programme-announced/feed/ 0 http://jaspersharp.com/blog/news/2009/10/shion-sonos-love-exposure-released-in-london-from-this-friday/ http://jaspersharp.com/blog/news/2009/10/shion-sonos-love-exposure-released-in-london-from-this-friday/#comments Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:25:31 +0000 Jasper http://jaspersharp.com/blog/?p=140

Hikari Mitsushima in Sion Sono's Love Exposure

It’s done great guns on the festival circuit and now, courtesy of Third Window Films, Love Exposure is just about to get its official UK release with a month-long run at the ICA in London this November, with a screening on November 14^th at Leeds International Film Festival and no doubt other dates in the UK to follow. It’s surely a bold move on the behalf of both Third Window Films and the ICA, but (and I’m getting almost tired of saying this), DO NOT BE PUT OFF BY THE 4-HOUR RUNNING TIME! This is the strongest film from Japan I’ve seen in a long-time. Read any review you can find online about it, ask anyone who has seen it. They’ll all tell you the same thing – it’s an absolutely fantastic experience, so intense you’ll be still struggling to assimilate it all for days, nay weeks, after you’ve seen it. The film whips along at such a cracking pace that you’re barely registering the time, and when the interval occurs, it seems like a major inconvenience.

Takahiro Nishijima, the star of Love Exposure

I’ve experienced the film twice already, firstly on DVD while looking for suitable titles for this year’s Raindance, and secondly at Raindance itself. The first time I thought it would take a couple of sittings to get through, but it didn’t take too long for me to realise I was in for the long haul. The second time, at the festival itself, was my first chance seeing it on a big screen, and I was so immersed in it that even then I knew I simply had to see it again, so I’ll most certainly be trotting off to the ICA at some juncture. And this seems to be the typical response. Several at the Japanese guests at Raindance had already seen the film several times. One chalked up their sixth viewing at the festival – that’s a full day in total of Sion Sono’s masterpiece! Another reported their experience of seeing the film in Tokyo, in which during the interval the other viewers could be seen wandering around with ecstatic expressions on their faces, and I couldn’t but help notice a similar phenomenon at Raindance. Ooh, I’m getting goose-pimples just thinking about it. My only regret is that the film was originally meant to be six hours, and Sono had to cut it down by a quarter at the insistence of his producer. I can only pray that at some point we’ll ever get a chance to see the full cut.

Sakura Ando and friends

Not sure what else I can say to anyone but to implore you to go see it. If you’ve seen it once, then see it again, tell your friends what a masterpiece it is. And if you have no idea of what I am talking about, then here’s a quick taster in the form of the trailer.

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