Jasper Sharp : Japan Foundation

Currently browsing Japan Foundation:

24
Mar
Something for the Weekend

The sun is out, the birds are singing in the trees, and it looks like Spring has most definitely sprung over here in the UK. Not exactly the sort of weather one would like to spend the weekend holed up in the cinema in, which is a pity, because there’s a number of events and screenings I was hoping to draw your attention to. No, were I in London, I’d probably want to spend my Saturday participating in the TUC demo against Tory cuts in government spending.

Rare screening of Anna May Wong film Song (1928) in London this Saturday

Well, I won’t be in London as it happens, but even if I were on the demo, I think i’d probably duck off a bit early to the new(ish) Cinema Museum, situated midway between Elephant & Castle and Kennington Tube stations on where at 19.30 there will be a Special Event dedicated to Hollywood’s first non-Caucasian screen siren, the Asian-American actress Anna May Wong. The evening will kick off with Elaine Mae Woo’s biographical documentary Anna May Wong – Frosted Yellow Willows: Her Life, Times and Legend (2007), followed by a Q&A with its director. I caught this documentary a couple of years ago when it played at the BFI, and it’s a pretty good introduction to its subject, though obviously lacks something of the depth of detail of the best book on the subject, Graham Russell Hodges’ Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend. This is followed by a very rare screening of Richard Eichberg’s Song (Schmutziges Geld, 1928), which I’m positively gutted I am missing: it’s one a handful of brooding, atmospheric silent films she made in Europe during her Hollywood career lull in the late 1920s, which also include the same director’s haunting Pavement Butterfly (Großstadtschmetterling, 1929) and E.A. Dupont’s altogether more vibrant celebration of 1920s London nightlife, Piccadilly (1929), arguably her best known star-turn and the only one of these films currently out there on DVD – I love this particular film, which ranks among the best British silents, but it’s a shame that screenings of the other two are so rare. Incidentally, I’ve yet to check out the Cinema Museum, but hope to visit very soon. It’s not a place I’ve heard anything about yet, so I’m very curious to what’s there, and why, with the BFI just down the road, there should even be a need for it (I would suspect the answer to this rhetorical question might not reflect too well on the BFI.)

Koji Yakusho in Kiyoshi Kurosawa's brilliant psychological chiller, Cure (1997)

Well, Japan’s recent tragedy has been well covered on this site, and one would think our attention to all things Japanese would be better oriented towards helping its victims. However, as Pia Film Festival director Keiko Araki writes in a newsletter I received from the festival this morning “The recovery of the Tohoku area, or rather, of Japan itself will still probably take a very long time. But Pia Film Festival will continue to do whatever it can by having faith in the power of film and in the power of the nameless aspiring young filmmakers everywhere. Now, more than ever before, we ask that you keep your eyes on Japanese films.” So, people of Sheffield, I draw your attention to the Japan Foundation’s Back to the Future season, details of which are posted on the events section of this website and which this weekend winds up its tour of the UK in the city’s Showroom Cinema starting with Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s masterful Cure this evening.

Nostalgic pleasures with The Dark Crystal, screening in 70mm this weekend at Bradford's Widescreen Weekend

While I’m actually in Sheffield at this precise moment, I regrettably won’t be around for the season, as at the crack of dawn tomorrow, I’ll be heading off to Bradford’s National Media Museum for Widescreen Weekend 2011, details of which (+links) are posted on my events page. High-points at present look set to include the complete 3-strip Cinerama presentation of How the West Was Won, a 70mm screening of The Dark Crystal, and…. Suspiria! Oh, and there’s Dersu Uzala (which I’ll be introducing), Bridge On the River Kwai, Operation Crossbow, and much, much more, all screening on probably the best screen in the UK! I hope to post fairly regularly on the festival here on this website over the course of the weekend, so if you’re not out sunning yourself, please take a look (or if you are sunning yourself, just check in on your iPhone).

More nostalgia with Dario Argento's Suspiria at Widescreen Weekend

Posted at 14:48 on 24 March 2011 Filed under news.
Comments Off  
04
Feb
Japan Foundation UK Back to the Future Tour, ICA and other Venues, 04 February to 28 March 2011

Event: Back to the Future: Japanese Cinema Since the Mid-90s
 Venue: Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH
+ others When: 4-13 Feb 2011 in London, then until 28 March 2011.

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
View Larger Map

Posted at 13:04 on 04 February 2011 Filed under events.
Comments Off  
07
Jan
Japan Foundation UK Touring Programme 2011 (4 February – 28 March)

No sooner has one Japanese film festival finished in the UK than another begins. Yes, its that time of year again when the Japan Foundation UK prepares to launch its annual touring programme, and as usual I’ve been onboard as programme advisor.

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

Posted at 10:28 on 07 January 2011 Filed under news.
4