Promises, promises, promises… Yes, I have promised much and delivered very little in the way of regular updates these past days since Raindance began – in fact, absolutely nothing at all beyond the odd tweet or two. I’d intended to do daily postings about my impressions on a number of films, including Down Terrace, Love Exposure and Until the Light Takes Us, but it’s been just so hectic, I’ve barely managed more than five minutes in front of the computer this past week, and then only to fend off urgent emails. Well, once life gets back to normal again, I’ll come back to these films I mentioned and my impressions on them, as I’d imagine most of these will be getting some sort of release, or will be travelling on to further festivals. They’re all bloody brilliant anyway.

For now, just a few vague titbits about the events of the last few days. We’ve had more Japanese guests than ever this year – Yumiko Beppu (from the Peaches shorts programme), Tokachi Tsuchiya (A Normal Life Please), Yasunobu Takahashi (Locked Out), Sachi Hamano and Kuninori Yamazaki (Lily Festival) and of course, Momoko Ando, who’s here premiering her first feature with us, Kakera – A Piece of Our Life. James Iha, ex-Smashing Pumpkins, was also here to talk about his work on the soundtrack (he also scored Linda Linda Linda), though he’s already jetted back to New York. And Tom Mes, my Midnight Eye buddy, is also here. So all in all, its been a pretty hectic time, but great fun, nonetheless.

Audience attendances at this year’s festival have been unpredictable, to say the least. Every film on Wednesday night was sold out – even I couldn’t get a ticket for Until the Light Takes Us, and I programmed it! Well, I’ve seen the film before of course, but I’d have been interested to hear the q&a, which by all accounts was pretty animated. But it was particularly exciting that Kakera was sold out. As I’ve said, this was the world premiere of Momoko’s first film, and we were all very excited about how well the film went down, and highly positive about where it’s going to go next. The q&a afterwards was really fun, and we all bounded off euphorically down to the Phonenix Arts Club afterwards to celebrate.

There’s already some press online on the Japanese website Cinema Today about the focus on Japanese Women Directors this year. I spent the afternoon interviewing Sachi Hamano for Midnight Eye yesterday afternoon, and had one of the most fascinating discussions ever. Some might know her name, as one of the most prolific makers of pink film in Japan – which would probably make her one of the most prolific directors in the world. But what is most amazing is that she is essentially the first woman in Japan who has been able to maintain a career solely as a film director, and for over four decades. Her stories about what a rough time she had of things when she started in the industry, as part of Wakamatsu Productions were really amazing. The film she’s here with, Lily Festival, went down really well, and the q&a after was animated and really fascinating – she’s a real pro about this sort of thing, none of the mumbling incoherence we get from most Japanese directors. I was amazed that Lily Festival hasn’t even had a proper release in Japan, because the cinema owners all told her “who wants to see a film about the sex lives of a lot of old ladies”. Well, its a damn funny film, and Mickey Curtis is simply outstanding in it. She really is an amazing person to have at any festival, and I hope one day pretty soon she receives the recognition she is due for her achievements in Japanese cinema.

Anyway, off to the next screening of Kakera now, so must dash. Sorry, no pix today! Those in London, be sure to come to A Normal Life Please tomorrow – it is an incredible documentary, and the q&a after promises to be something really special.

Posted at 13:01 on 09 October 2009 Filed under news.

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• Kakera
• Lily Festival
• Momoko Ando
• Raindance
• Sachi Hamano

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Event: 17th Raindance Film Festival
Venue: Apollo Cinema, 19 Lower Regent Street, London SW1Y 4LR
When: 30th September – 11th October, 2009.

This year’s Way Out East section at Raindance contains a special focus on Japanese Women Directors. For more information on this year’s Raindance program, have a look at the post Titles Announced for London’s Raindance Film Festival.

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Posted at 10:18 on 30 September 2009 Filed under events.

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Sachi Hamano's Lily Festival

My article on the new wave of Japanese women filmmakers is now online on the Japan Times website, just in time to tie in with my Raindance programme, as is my interview with Atsuko Ohno, organiser of Peaches festival, from which we’re screening 3 films. Thankfully, someone at the paper came up with a decent title for the piece, because I’d been racking my brains all year, not just for this article, but for a general angle for the Raindance focus as well. I mean, how do you sell this idea? You either go the Orientalist route, say, something like “Cameras and Kimonos”, “The Chrysanthemum and the Camera”,”Not Just Cherry Blossoms” or something similarly banal, or take the condescendingly sexist approach – “Japanese Sisters are Doing it For Themselves”, “Girls in Film” … you catch my drift.

After all, should we be really surprised that women have been the guiding hand behind some of the most interesting Japanese films of the past few years? Is it really different from the situation here in the UK? I mean, I was looking through this year’s London Film Festival line-up this year, and there seemed to be a fair few woman directors listed there. Are films by women so different from those by men?

Well, these are all discussion points of course, but a couple of facts remain. Firstly, I don’t think I could have put together a 6-slot focus on Japanese women directors quite so easily, say, ten years ago. Secondly, I gave a talk about this very subject at the Japan Foundation UK last summer, and someone came up to me afterwards and said that when she told her friend she was off to a lecture on Japanese women directors, her friend said “ That will be a cosy ten minutes then” – it seems a lot of people, at least in this country, have assumptions about the roles of and opportunities for women in Japanese society that a more than cursory look at the facts would overturn. Thirdly, I should point out that it wasn’t really particularly hard to find enough films for it this year. I went through the usual procedures of drawing up a shortlist of the best titles of the past year, and half of the directors happened to be women, so it was just a case of adding some older names to the mix, of women who’ve been in the industry long enough to remember the days when their gender was an issue, such as Sachi Hamano and Naomi Kawase, and the programme pretty much formed itself.

The fact is though, this section could have been much bigger – there were plenty of other suitable titles out there from the last year, like Tsuki Inoue’s Autumn Adagio, covered recently by Tom on Midnight Eye, Satoko Yokoyama’s Bare Essence of Life, playing Vancouver and London film festivals very soon (I personally didn’t like it, but I know it has its fans), or Shimako Sato’s recent cult fantasy K20 Legend of the Mask, which certainly doesn’t fit the stereotypical image of a “woman’s picture”. It would also have been nice to delve back in time and add some historical landmarks, like Kinuyo Tanaka’s films, which have hardly been shown at all in recent years, although locating prints and negotiating affordable screening fees was something of an issue here.

Its obvious though, that if one wanted to do a fuller retrospective on Japanese women filmmakers, there’s no shortage of material to draw upon. It’s probably the right time to do it too, because it seems obvious to me that if recent years are anything to go by, future Japanese film programmes will feature an equal mix of male and female directors without any such need for making an issue about it.

Anyway, as the fest draws ever nearer, I should mention that we’ll have a healthy showing of guests to accompany this Japanese section; Yumiko Beppu, director of Csikspost from the Peaches selection has said she’ll be over, as will Sachi Hamano, whom I’ve written lots about in my book Behind the Pink Curtain, and her scriptwriter for Lily Festival, Kuninori Yamazaki – I’m really looking forward to talking to these guys. Also Yasunobu Takahashi, director of Locked Out, and Tokachi Tsuchiya, of A Normal Life Please. But most exciting, is that we’re getting the world premiere of Kakera, and not only will director Momoko Ando be over, but the musician who scored her film too – James Iha, best known for his stellar guitar work for Smashing Pumpkins. It all promises to be quite the party.

Posted at 18:51 on 21 September 2009 Filed under news.

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• Atsuko Ohno
• James Iha
• Japan Times
• Japanese Women Directors
• Kakera
• Momoko Ando
• Peaches
• Raindance
• Smashing Pumpkins
• Yumiko Beppu

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