Do Japanese films really stink??

[Roberta Novielli]

>
>As for other major film awards, including Berlin, Cannes, Venice, the
>selection process is more objective -- though how much more is open to
>debate. Writing as I do for a UK film trade magazine, I often have the
>feeling that, for my editors and other film people in Europe, Asia is a
>very distant place indeed. The filter for admitting Asian films is thus
>smaller and finer than for those from more familiar parts of the world and
>is largely controlled by a small band of "experts."

That's true. For example, in the case of Venice Film Festival, the director
(this year Alberto Barbera) co-operates with a team of experts (five), each
of whom usually covers an area of the world, pre-selecting the movies. The
one in charge with the Asian films, generally travels through Asia (China,
Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, etc) to choose the films. As you can imagine,
it's quite difficult for him  to select among all the independent works
made every year in Japan, so he has to limit the choise to the ones
arrenged in a special program by, let's say, the Kawakita Foundation.
(Tsukamoto Shin'ya told me that none of his movies has ever been selected
by the Kawakita Foundation.) Even an expert of Asian cinema as Marco Muller
(director of Locarno Film Festival) who goes personally to Japan to select
the movies every year, always follows the 3-4 day programs arranged by the
Kawakita Foundation - of course, in his case, he can also count on a "net"
of friends who advice him about good independent movies. The films not
selected for those special programs are often selected from "less
important" (sic!) film festivals all over the world. However, if they're
screened even once outside their own country, they cannot be selected any
more for the competition of major film festivals such as Cannes and Venice.
And so on...

Roberta