Kawase/Sento

[silvernyc at earthlink.net]

This year, besides for Kawase/Sento winning her prize at Cannes, Japan was
also represented for the second time in a row in the Venice Biennale by a
woman artist, Naito Rei.  (Another Japanese woman, Mariko Mori, was
prominently featured in two other int'l pavillions.)  Whereas neither Sento
nor Naito do work that is overtly political, both women do work about being
a woman from what I would call a woman's point of view.    It seems to me
that this subject or point of view has never been particularly valorized in
Japanese culture, and that historically, work done by women has not found
support equal to that of work done by men.

I'm not an expert on University studies in Japan, but I would guess that
the overwhelming number of professors are men.  It is clear that the
overwhelming number of role models (successful artists/filmmakers) are also
men.  That these women were able to attain this level of success
internationally points to a tenacity and strength on their parts, as well
as to the fact that something must be changing for women in Japan.

To compare Sento's work to Barbara Hammer or Sadie Benning, implying that
Sento's doesn't hold up seems unfair.  The conditions of production for a
woman in the US is different than in Japan, the lives of these women are
different, and above all, the interests and agendas of these women are
wildly different. It is also not so simple to compare Sento to Idemitsu
Mako, Idemitsu is of an entirely different generation and background, and
spent a good deal of formative time living in the California art world of
the 60's, a crucial influence on her work.  And in terms of the group of
women filmmakers who seem to be mostly coming out of Tama Art School, I
personally would not write their work off so quickly, either from an
artistic or feminist point of view.

Sento, because she is the one woman to attain such stature as a filmmaker
in Japan, is in the difficult position of being expected to live up to
everyone else's desires of what a Japanese woman filmmaker and probably
what a Japanese woman should be.  No doubt she is getting criticism from
all sides.  This seems to be both unfair to the artist and not very useful
from a feminist point of view.  There have been many women artists who have
been in this unenviable position, for some reason Lizzie Borden, possibly
not the best choice, is the first that comes to my mind right now.
Pressured from all sides in this way, where interest in the work itself
becomes less important than who the audience desires this artist to be (a
function of the audience's fears, desires, jealousy, projections,
prejudices, you name it), many artists choose or are forced to stop working.

Part of the reason I feel compelled to write this is because I thought I
sensed a kind of unspoken condescension towards Sento in some of the
e-mails, I wasn't sure that this condescension had to do with the fact that
she's a woman, or that she's a filmmaker (there seem to be more critics
than filmmakers on this list at the moment).   I would welcome a deeper
more specific discussion of her work.  I myself would also be interested in
changing the focus of the critique - rather than blaming the women I would
find it more useful to analyze and criticize the conditions.  Can any one
fill me in on the situation of art and film schools in Japan?  Are they as
male-dominated as I assume them to be?  Is this changing?  If not, is there
a move from inside our outside of the schools to change this?  And, from a
positive point of view, does anyone have ideas as to what is responsible
for the sudden interest and success of Japanese women's work?



Best,
Shelly Silver