"field"/"framework" (was Sento [was Kawase])

[Abe' Mark Nornes]

That distraction called "teaching" kept me from responding to a couple
posts re: Sento:

>Idemitsu

I'm not interested in comparing Sento and Idemitsu, although the latter is
interesting because she was producing overtly feminist avant-garde for
screening at the Underground Film Center (the precursor of Image Forum),
which used the space of Terayama's Tenjosajiki Theater. This was precisely
the historical juncture I was writing about before, when feminism
mainstreamed in film studies and much of the avant-garde. Significantly,
perhaps, in recent Image Forum history classes this early work is ignored
in favor of her snow studies and the like. 

>Sento

It's not "unspoken condescension" you're picking up on. I think it's more
like disappointment. The more interesting question is where the
disappointment is coming from. It's not that she's not living up to
anyone's expectations/desires vis a vis being a "Japanese woman filmmaker."
It has more to do with what I was writing about before----I'm not concerned
with women's filmmaking as such, but with larger ways people frame history
and its relationship to both production and criticism. 

People are disappointed with Sento largely because she is being measured by
the framework of "shutai/taisho/shakai" (subject/object/society) that I was
writing about. There are complex reasons for this. She used the language to
talk about her work, as did others. When she was doing her Super-8 work,
she got generous behind the scenes cheerleading by old Ogawa Pro members.
This turned into professional relationships with someone like Tamura,
Ogawa's cameraman. Whether or appropriate or not, this is the framework
through which she's been read and often criticized. 

This is what I was getting at. As a theorization of documentary, there's
not much there to work with here. It doesn't account for very many
approaches to filmmaking, but it dominates discussion of nonfiction form in
Japan. It informs many political and aesthetic evaluations, even though its
conceptualization has hardly been worked out. There were attempts to use
Marxism and psychoanalysis, most notably by Matsumoto, but what is striking
is that when someone tries to put a spin on the terms no one seems to pick
up the discussion. Everyone's doing their own thing, even if they're using
the same words. This interests me, especially when you look at analagous
contexts: the Soviets and montage, the impressionists and photogenie, third
cinema and ideology, feminism and subjectivity or melodrama, etc. etc.

I guess the larger, most pertinent question---at least for those of us who
aren't making films---is that of "field." Without a sustained inquiry or
debate, it becomes difficult to talk to each other. Go to a talk, a
conference, an after-film discussion and you get this sense that people
have little in common. Everyone's off in their own little world. So you end
up with something like the strong version of documentary that I described,
even if it's not very useful. Smart critique, smart history, even smart
production becomes disabled. 

A potential strength of this is that it inhibits the development of
monolithic agendas....like 70s/80s film theory! The last thing I'm
interested in is dealing with (or producing) a *Language and Materialism*
for the 90s. However, some more common ground and engagement sure would
make things more interesting and fun. There are also implications here for
those of us writing about the Japanese moving image as a "national
'cinema'", as a _field_. I sense where people are "at" today, is somewhat
different than people "have been." I also sense that it's far more eclectic
and heterogenious than where we've come from. How do we keep talking to
each other? What would common ground mean for us today?

Just some rather scattered thoughts.....

Markus