International Japanese Film Distribution

[stephen cremin]

In response to Darrell Davis's e-mail (a response to the mailing of the 
TIFF programme), which made some perceptions on the type of audience who 
attended "Kamikaze Taxi" (versus "Bounce-ko Gals"), I wonder if it would 
be interesting to the mailing list to open up a small debate about the 
nature of the international distribution of Japanese film.

But first, in direct response to his mailing:

1) Hayashi Kanako is now based in Hong Kong having left the Kawakita 
Memorial Film Institute.  She has a column on international film 
festivals in the current edition of "Kinema Junpo" and will be back in 
Japan for the Tokyo International Film Festival which begins this coming 
weekend.  The job of coordinator at Kawakita is now occupied by a Miss 
Sakano Yuka.  The only real change that seems to have taken place is 
that the Institute no longer seems to have a list of recommendations for 
visiting film festival directors.  But I've never actually used their 
facilities, so I'm not the best person to assess the nature of Kawakita 
without Hayashi.

2) "Bounce-ko Gals" and "Kamikaze Taxi" had different distributors in 
Hong Kong.  The latter was distributed in Hong Kong by Shu Kei, 
immediately following his very successful distribution of Iwai Shunji's 
"April Story" at the same venue.  I believe Shu Kei didn't expect 
"Kamikaze" to perform as successfully as "Bounce".  Firstly because he 
expected "Kamikaze" to receive a restrictive Category III rating for the 
sex scene early in the film.  Secondly, because while "Kamikaze" is the 
kind of film which will gain strong critical reviews which can attract 
an "art house" crowd, that doesn't help it reach a crossover audience, 
or teen audience.  (Although I wasn't in Hong Kong, I imagine the key 
audience for "April Story" and "Bounce-ko Gals" were in their late teens 
and early twenties and probably a fair balance between male and female.)

Leading on from this, the debate I'd like to open up is whether any of 
you have a strong opinion on the kind of Japanese film which is being 
distributed internationally.  I'd like to believe that audiences 
internationally have more in common than the pattern of film 
distribution would lead you to believe and that the "distortion" has 
more to do with the influence of international film critics who prefer a 
certain kind of Japanese film.  I hate to use the word "masculine 
cinema" as it brings back the old cliche of the "feminine East" (among 
others) if we're defining what is "westernised cinema", but I do think 
that international critics expect weighty themes from Asian films: 
ideally death.  (The Japanese directors who have been focused on 
internationally in recent years - Suzuki Seijun, 
Kitano Takeshi, Mochizuki Rokuro, Miike Takashi - do seem to all be 
making their fair share of yakuza films, but I'm also thinking of films 
like "Maboroshi".)

The experience of my own film festival in London in May was that the 
audience and critics held completely opposing views.  The critics 
praised Suwa Nobuhiro's "2/Duo" and Aoyama Shinji's "An Obsession" which 
left the audience cold.  However, we had much larger audiences and a 
much stronger reaction for Iwai Shunji's "Swallowtail Butterfly" and 
Harada Masato's "Bounce-ko Gals" which, at least in the most important 
London media, were poorly received critically.  This dichotomy doesn't 
seem to be so strong in other Asian countries, particularly Korean film.

Is the difference that there are more "female critics" working in Asia 
than one finds in cities like London where just one female critic writes 
for a quality daily and then only sporadically?  I'm not necessarily 
suggesting that there is an explicit gender division on critical 
opinion, let me hide under the cowardly shadow of the "devil's advocate" 
for a little while.  Although the assumption is that Iwai Shunji, for 
example, makes films for a young female audience, I suspect that the 
best audience response, even for "April Story", is a male, dare I say 
heterosexual, audience which can relate to the male director's 
perception of a young woman's first love story.  This was certainly the 
impression from the Tokyo release.  I think the key difference between 
Asian critics and critics internationally is that their is a broader 
range of opinion in Asia.

If there is a very narrow definition of Asian cinema accepted by the 
critics internationally, I think that this is in part because of the 
special status given to Asian film as opposed to European or South 
American film.  I had the experience during my festival of important 
British critics stating that Asian film "wasn't their area" so they 
couldn't cover my festival.  But they have no problem with other 
territories.  I think that this has led to a situation of power falling 
into the hands of few important critics internationally, which however 
good they are, is bad for Asian film.  During the Pusan International 
Film Festival, one critic - on a panel discussion about the future of 
Asian film featuring five white middle-aged men - let it slip that his 
role is now as much about promotion as anything else because there 
isn't, for example, the studio structure in place to promote independent 
directors.  The danger of critics seeing for themselves a role as 
promoters is that agendas get in the way.

In London certainly there is a new generation of critics emerging who 
don't see Asian cinema as a special territory, perhaps because they 
began seeing film in the 1980s when Asian film was part of London's 
cultural landscape.  I wonder if this is true internationally and 
extends to film festival programmers, etc.

Stephen Cremin

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