<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Hello!<br>and greetings from Tallinn, Estonia. I think it is worth mentioning that I'm currently developing a similar research project as Nathan's as a part of my graduation thesis in in the Department of Asian Studies and Tallinn University and hopefully during a year of guest researcher work at Waseda this autumn.<div><br></div><div>Just as a quick background note, the idea for my research project came out my 9 years programming experience of Asian films, particularly Japanese films for the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (<a href="http://www.poff.ee">www.poff.ee</a>) - a relatively acknowledged art house film festival taking place each December with around 250 feature films in the main program.</div><div>At some point I realized that the festival audience, and to be honest some of the members of the programming team, had developed an almost subconscious perception of "Japanese cinema" - almost resembling genre having an odd or twisted plot, exaggerated sexuality and violence, combined with notions of traditional elements of Japanese culture (samurais, geishas etc). </div><div><br></div><div>At the same time and interesting dynamic that is part of the "Japanese film genre" is the absence of a midpoint between two extremes - for the audience a film can be "a little Japanese" (having just an odd plot) or "exaggeratedly Japanese" (take any of old Miike films for example), but a relatively ordinary Japanese cinema is considered somehow "too Japanese" and hence not suitable or understandable for the audience and hence is excluded from program.</div><div><br></div><div>I experienced the previously described last year when Air Doll was generously accepted by both the programmers and the audience selling out all screenings, but Fish Story was rejected ,because it was "too ordinarily Japanese" hence not suitable for the festival (with the argument that nobody will understand it except hard core fans of Japanese culture).</div><div><br></div><div>Now in relation to the discussion and based on the previous one shouldn't definitely underestimate the power of the programming/festival distribution of Japanese genre cinema and I have a gut feeling (and there's definitely room for some fan group studies) that Western fans perceptions on Japan are influenced not only by proper films of mainstream/arthouse cinema, but also a great extent by genre flicks such as Machine Girl or Tokyo Gore Police.</div><div><br></div><div>So that's the backstory for my research idea. However, in difference to Nathan's project and based on the success story of Machine Girl I'm particularly interested in how international co-production and financing of Japanese (genre) films influences what gets produced and what is depicted in the actual co-productions. According to my knowledge Machine Girl was co-financed by a US production company (sorry can't remember the name at the very late hour) and hence I'd like to investigate to which degree the co-production and financing influenced what and how was presented in the film.</div><div><br>Particularly I feel that the film is full of and of course partially playing on the Western stereotypes and cliches of Japanese culture (taking the kawaii schoolgirl and mixing it up with a ninja yakuza family:) which combined with the gore makes it particularly appealing for the Western "exotic" hungry audience. My hypothesis is that perhaps behind the massive reliance on cultural cliches might be co-production interests with the aim of making the film deliberately "cult" for Western markets to satisfy its' need for the exotic that the distribution system has created itself.</div><div> Oliver Dew tackles this process where violence and sexuality (of Asian/Japanese films) gets associated with art house and cult in quite a good article on Tartan ('Asia Extreme': Japanese cinema and British hype) which I'm sure many are familiar with and which could be applicable to the case of Machine Girl as well.<div><br>For me the whole process got particularly interesting with Nikkatsu and Sushi Typhoon (Jasper got it first to spell it out) where it seems that Japanese producers are now g a sort of reverse orientalism as a goal to create a new success formula. So if Machine Girl was a successful cult accident then it's interesting to see what would come out the the formula's replication and what kinds of creative and business strategies will be applied in maintaining the hype.</div><div><br></div><div>Of course another overlapping issue really is the role and position of the researcher as it is easy to claim the presence of orientalism from Western perspective, but that might not be true at all from the perspective of Japanese industry. To tackle this I'm hoping to base a substantial part of the work on actual interviews with affiliated people during my year at Waseda.</div><div><br></div><div><br>I hope that any of the ideas spelled out made some sense and apologies for some spelling and clarity mistakes.</div><div>Having just spent a week in Berlin watching new Japanese films has been quite exhausting.</div><div>With best wishes,</div><div>Sten</div><div><br></div><div>PS. I recommend seeing Wakamatsu's new feature "Caterpillar". Though it has some limitations (of being shot only in 12 days) I think the leads do an excellent job of the portrayal of the ridiculousness of war.</div><div><br></div><div><div>Sten-Kristian Saluveer</div><div><br></div><div>Tallinn Black Nights FF Program Consultant</div><div>Haapsalu Horror & Fantasy FF (HÕFF) Director</div><div><a href="mailto:sten.saluveer@poff.ee">sten.saluveer@poff.ee</a></div><div>Office: +3726314640</div><div>GSM: +3725165242</div><div>Skype: stenskype</div><div><a href="http://www.poff.ee/">www.poff.ee</a></div><div><a href="http://www.hoff.ee/">www.hoff.ee</a></div><div><br></div></div><div><br><br>On Feb 18, 2010, at 3:56 PM, Jasper Sharp wrote:<br><br><blockquote type="cite">This is of particular relevance to this discussion: Nikkatsu have just started up a new label called Sushi Typhoon which seems to be explicitly targeting this Western market previously tapped by the likes of Tokyo Gore Police et al, with a series of films by directors including Yoshihiro Nishimura, director of the aforementioned film. There seems to be a ready made festival audience for this type of film, especially in North America. <br><br>There's more details on this label here: <a href="http://www.screendaily.com/festivals/afm/japans-nikkatsu-to-unleash-sushi-">http://www.screendaily.com/festivals/afm/japans-nikkatsu-to-unleash-sushi-</a>typhoon/5007653.article<br><br>There's something interesting worth mentioning here, which is that the studios themselves are intentionally trying to create 'cult' films, which for me goes against the implied definition of a cult film, i.e. one that finds its own audience.<br>Comparisons/distinctions might be drawn with Tartan's attempt at creating a cult around their 'Asian Extreme' label, and Ring-producer Tak Ichise's attempts at producing films also with his main eye on the Western market.<br><br>As an aside, one can probably say that the word 'cult' was first really applied to Japanese cinema with Thomas Weisser's magazine Asian Cult Cinema, first published under the title Asian Trash Cinema - this celebrated the more vernacular productions that Western critics had hitherto pretty much ignored before the 1990s.<br>When we kicked off Midnight Eye, our slogan was "Japanese Cult Cinema", which was quickly ditched as we realised it was too limiting and didn't really seem appropriate to a lot of the films by the likes of Shinji Aoyama and Naomi Kawase which we were covering at the beginning, nor older titles by directors such as Teinosuke Kinugasa and Keisuke Kinoshita. I think we changed it after about six months to "the latest and best in Japanese cinema".<br>Also, it might be worth checking up the archives of the old Mobius Home Video discussion forum (http://www.mhvf.net/), which was, around 1999-2000, one of the main websites discussing Asian cinema, in seperate forums to those of Sci-fi/Horror, Eurocult, Exploitation etc. You'll get an idea of the type of films that were falling under discussion.<br><br>Hope this helps,<br><br>Jasper<br><br><br><br>Midnight Eye: The Latest and Best in Japanese Cinema<br>www.midnighteye.com<br><br>More details about me on http://jaspersharp.com/<br><br><br><br><br>> Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 03:22:20 +0100<br>> From: berndstandhaft@gmx.de<br>> To: KineJapan@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu<br>> Subject: Re: Japan and Cult<br>> <br>> Hi,<br>> <br>> Mark Mays wrote:<br>> <br>> > Interesting. I think the notion speaks to how Japanese films make it to<br>> > the West (the US in my case) and how they play to certain expectations/<br>> > notions of Japanese cinema especially in the 18 to 34 demographic.<br>> <br>> I think an interesting example of transnational film marketing can be experienced in the way some film producers in Japan tried to hop on the wave of Japanese Cult Cinema in the West and produce films with an international Cult Film Market in mind. I think of Machine Girl, Tokyo Gore Police, Chanbara Beauty, Samurai Princess, Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl... . Maybe the success of these films can explain why a film of the type of Hausu can appeal to certain audiences even more than 30 years after the original release in Japan and become Cult.<br>> <br>> <br>> Greetings<br>> Bernd<br>> <br><br>Do you want a Hotmail account? Sign-up now - Free<br></blockquote><br><div apple-content-edited="true">Sten-Kristian Saluveer (Niijanaa)<br>Creative Director<br><br>Niijanaa Audiovisual Communications<br>Call: +372 51 65 242<br>Write: <a href="mailto:Sten@niijanaa.net">Sten@niijanaa.net</a><br>Skype: stenskype<br></div><br></div></div></body></html>