Found films at the FC

[Aaron Gerow]

The Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Film Center will be featuring from Nov 3 
to 20, "Cinema: Lost and Found 1999," a series featuring films the Center 
has recently found or restored.

The centerpiece will be some of the Pathe Baby films donated to the FC by 
Ugayama Masaaki. In the days before home video, film companies would 
often produce shortened versions of their popular films and sell them for 
home use on 9.5mm, the gauge that was popular before 8mm (the practice 
continued even after 8mm). Although these versions are often 1/4th or 
1/5th the length of the originals, the editing was often not that bad and 
preserved the story as well as famous scenes.  They thus differ from 
cases in which just reels or scenes have been preserved.  These prints 
have been a valuable means in recent years of resurrecting at least a 
portion of lost prewar Japanese film history.

Ugayama's father collected 47 such films, including several which have 
been lost in other versions.  Some of the films from the collection that 
will be shown include such long unseen works as Ozu Yasujiro's _Wasei 
kenka tomodachi_ (Fighting Friends, 1929--14 out of the original 77 
minutes), Ushihara Kiyohiko's _Kangeki jidai_ (1928), Saito Torajiro's 
_Ichikawa Goemon no hoji_ (1930), and Kumagai Hisatora's _Honruida_ 
(1931).

Other highlights include a reconstructed version of Mizoguchi Kenji's 
_Taki no shiraito_, putting together the scenes from the different 
versions that exist; the black and white version of _Karumen kokyo ni 
kaeru_ (which is DIFFERENT from the color version); as well as some rare 
Taisho era films.  Other films previously shown include _Chuji tabi 
nikki_ and the hilarious _Kokushi muso_.

You can check out the films and the schedule on the FC site (in 
Japanese): 

http://www.momat.go.jp/fc.html

Aaron Gerow
Yokohama National University
KineJapan list owner
For list commands: send "information kinejapan" to 
listserver at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
Kinema Club: http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/Markus/Welcome.html