reply to Rajesh Balkrishnan and Jaspar Sharp

[J Rand]

Thanks for information about where to get videos.  I had tried to contact Shochiku but couldn't get in - so will try again another time.  I have friends in Holland who might be able to get copies for me - can you give me the names of the shops/distributors so I can get them to look for me.

Its great to find so many people interested in Japanese films.  I feel quite a novice compared with some of the contributors.  I saw Shindu's Onibaba years ago on the television and it stayed with me for years.  I now have a copy of it and have managed to see a few other of his films and any other films by Japanese directors that I come across.

I was really knocked out by Ozu's films when I went to the retrospective at the National in London.  The reason I decided to go to that was because he was an inflluence on a director that I was studying at the time, Wim Wenders, and I wanted to see for myself.  

The difficulty with having such a limited viewing experience of a national cinemas is trying to see whether there are any differences that appear across the cinema generally (rather than limited to an auteur) that you could say was a national difference in opposition to the American classic realism.  The reason I have started with Ozu is that I do feel that the simplicity of his narratives contain a depth and meaning that crosses cultural barriers and the very lack of action offers communication that is beyond the words of the narrative.  I have only just started on the bulk of the reading  and as yet have only read a couple of books by Ritchie, Noel Burch's "From a Distant Observer" and Joan Mellen's "Voices from the Japanese Cinema.  I am just starting on Bordwells book as I believe he is offering a different viewpoint from Ritchie.  I enjoyed the way in which Donald Ritchie wrote and felt he expressed a lot of the ideas and feelings that I had obtained from watching the films myself.  Its good to read the interviews in Joan Mellen's book with the directors themselves as well as I find it brings the films alive and actually makes me feel desparate to see a lot of the films when I read the way the directors speak about them.  I have also read some of the essays in Desser's book and have a pile of articles to get through in the next few weeks.  

I decided to concentrate on Ozu because I enjoyed the films so much and also because his films appeared to me to offer a different way of viewing the world.  I realise there are acadamic arguments around the influence of Zen and his Japaneseness, but speaking from a subjective and purely uninformed viewpoint that was the impression that I had from his films when I first saw them.  I thought therefore that if I tried to understand the essence that was there in his films then perhaps I would be able to see whether there werre aspects of this that appeared in other Japanese films.

I am interested in how Ozu and Kurosawa are received in Japan itself.  I understand fhat although they are recognised as being masters it is very hard for many other film makers to get their work shown in the shadow of these two.  Why do you think that Ozu and Kurosawa were so readily accepted here in the West  (the fact that they are brilliant films is not necessarily a guarantee of success!) 

Anway, its great to have a response from people.

Many thanks

Janet

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