Re: Kyoto Film Festival

[AbeNornes at aol.com]

????? 10/1/99 11:41:04 AM? gerow at ynu.ac.jp ??????

<<Third, there's still the problem of ideology.  While clearly Yamane 
wanted to talk about great movies, the foreign quests immediately brought 
up the issue of politics and resistance.  This speaks much about the 
differences in critical discourse on film between Japan and the 
US/Europe.  Clearly, foreign scholars are brought up in the post 1968 
tradition of searching for ideology and resistance within cinematic 
works, a quest that is mostly undeveloped in Japanese criticism (except 
the rare and under publicized academic work). >>

Aaron, I'd like to take this opportunity to squeeze your brain a little, 
since I know you've been looking back at the history of film criticism 
recently. This posting draws a distinction between Euro-American film studies 
and Japanese around the nub of 1968. Elsewhere, what you've described as 
"post-Hasumi" here you've pinpointed at the journal Cinema 68, which Hasumi, 
Hatano Tetsuro, and others edited. I have a very vague question about this 
ironic situation that a magazine with a name like this is associated with the 
purging of ideology from Japanese film studies. 

I have started reading more from the late 60s and early 1970s, but have to 
admit I haven't looked at Cinema 68 yet. However, there is no question that 
in journals like Eiga Hyoron, Eiga Geijutsu, and Eiga Hihyo (#2) there was a 
massive discourse on ideology and it was interconnected with these journals, 
events, incidents, and the films themselves (not to mention the proliferation 
of "movements" at the time). 

I've started to come across special issues dedicated to SLOAN, the South 
American and Cuban innovations in filmmaking and film theory, and the early 
feminist interventions. So it's not as though they didn't have access to what 
was going on in the rest of the world at precisely the time that film studies 
in other national contexts became politicized. I guess what I'm getting at is 
that it's clearly a very complicated situation that cannot be reduced to the 
prestige of Hasumi's activities. 

Is it that film studies is still struggling for a foothold in the academy?
Is it that Hasumi writes more than anyone else (and from a position with 
Todai)?
Is it that the more radical writers of the earlier era have not been writing, 
or have given up their politics?
Is it too simple to suggest something like  "post-Hasumi" film studies which 
cannot account for people like Kato Mikiro who are thoroughly familiar with 
its configuration in other national contexts? 
If the 1968 parting of ways that's implicit in your post is an 
over-simplification, is that because it is serving a certain agenda within 
film studies in Japan?

I'm interested in these kinds of questions for completely selfish reasons, 
but I also find it difficult to imagine how to approach all the issues you've 
raised about "meiro jidaigeki" without being self-conscious about where to 
place the issues in the first place.

Markus