Self introduction; Martin Beck

[Martin Beck]

From: Adrenafilm, Martin Beck
To: All members of KineJapan


Hello together,

I just recently discovered the kinejapan mailing list and am really glad to 
finally have found a way to improve my knowledge about Japanese films. In 
Germany, my home country, it's rather difficult to obtain informations about 
recent Japanese films because nearly nobody speaks Japanese and most of the 
films (i.e. the ones directly from Japan) don't carry the all important English 
subtitles. I myself am running a mailorder business called Adrenafilm, which is 
specializing in all kinds of film stuff from Asia. I carry laserdiscs, 
videotapes, CDs, magazines, books, posters and all kinds of related merchandise. 
Most of my customers just want HK films and just some are into Japanese cinema. 
The ones who are, however, are really hardcore fans. They don't care about not 
understanding what the people are talking. They just are fascinated by the 
very special way Japanese directors are making their films.

I myself got into Japanese films, like so many others, via Beat Takeshi and the 
3 films released by ICA in England. From that moment on I was hooked and tried 
to watch as many films as possible. A good -albeit rather expensive and eye 
damaging- source was Video Search of Miami, who supplied me with such delights 
as "Last Frankenstein", "My soul is slashed" or the "Lone wolf and cub" films. 
Since I started the mailorder business around 2 years ago everything became much 
easier for me, because I now have contact to wholesale distributors and also 
managed to find some Japanese films while on my trips to HK. Sadly, I haven't 
been to Japan so far, but I'm planning to do so this year.

My favourite films from Japan so far are "Swallowtail butterfly", "Sonatine", 
"Last Frankenstein", "My soul is slashed", "Stray Dog", "Shall we dance?", "Sumo 
do sumo don't" and "Secret waltz". I'm not at all into gore films but happen to 
be interested in just about everything else. The reasons I joined this list are 
that I want to get more informations about Japanese films in general, that I 
want to get more sources to buy films from and that I want to get stuff for a 
new magazine I'm editing right now. The tentative title is "Burning paradise" 
and covers everything connected to Asian films. I'm afraid the text is in German 
but anybody who nevertheless wants to get a copy is invited to drop me a line. 
The price is DM7,50 plus DM8,00 postage (for all countries outside Germany). In 
Germany it's DM5,00 postage. Of course you can also order my mailorder 
catalogue. It's price is DM8 (payable in German money, German stamps or IRCs).

OK, that's all. I'm looking forward to get in contact with other members of the 
mailing list and hope to be of any use to you with my tiny bit of knowledge.

Best wishes to all,

Martin Beck