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<div>Markus wrote on 18 Jan:</div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>> I think Kehr is a conscientious
critic who may well slap his forehead with<br>
> dismay when he gets e-mail from Kine-Japan members pointing out
his various<br>
> sins, but I wouldn't read too much into his "Japan
passing." January just<br>
> doesn't happen to be our month.<br>
<br>
I think it's more that this, and that's why I brought this up in the
first<br>
place. For example, I've noticed over the last couple years that
lists of<br>
"essential movies," "top ten films of all time"
lists...you know the<br>
genre...have started to drop Japanese films and directors and
replaced them<br>
with directors from other Asian countries. I'm not offering these
examples<br>
because I'm kuyashii. Rather, I'm suggesting we're seeing a shift in
popular<br>
and academic canons. This will influence many things, not least of
which is<br>
film and video distribution in the US (that members of this list are
getting</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>their Japanese films from Hong Kong VCD
companies says a lot).<br>
</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>Okay, a shift in popular and academic canons. Let me see
if I can follow this. I think Markus is suggesting that the
reformulation of Japan's position for a western academic film
discourse that used to privilege or even fetishize Japanese cinema
might be sort of leaking back into less specialized and more
commercial activities like journalism, film distribution, etc., and
affecting the reception of new Japanese cinema "on the
ground". That is to say, there's some sort of attenuated
but congruent movement in academic and popular canons. It makes
sense, there's got to be some kind of connection, but that would seem
to imply either that Japanese film would be sort of erased from the
academic and popular consciousness in tandem, or, that the anomalous
position of Japanese film in the 1950's through 1970's having been
rethought, Japanese film is now evaluated as just one of many
non-western cinemas (cinemae? cinemon?) rather than a fetishized
representative of "the other".</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>The trouble is, that doesn't quite fit the puzzle we're
considering now. What we see here is the marked<u> success</u>
of Japanese film both in the festival circuit over the last 5 years,
and even mixing it up at the multiplex level (I just watched Sabu's
1996 film Dangan Runner at the local theater last night, advertised
as "a parody of "Run Lola Run"!) on the one hand, and
the<u> omission</u> of new Japanese film from the article on the
Asian invasion. That doesn't fit the model of a broad-based
shift in tandem of popular and academic canons, and requires more
specific attention to the logic of the article.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>By the way, I agree with Markus, there's nothing really
"kuyashii" (vexing and worrying) about this, and I don't
intend it to be a criticism of Kehr. I thought the article was
very nicely done, especially in the way it situated 5th and 6th
generation Chinese cinema, and somehow the omission of Japan
"made sense". Rather than wanting to stump for
Japanese film, I'm interested in what made it seem coherent.</div>
<div>J. Murphy</div>
<div>-- <br>
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Joseph Murphy<br>
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TEL: (352) 392-2110/2442. FAX (352) 392-1443<br>
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