Viennale 2000

[Aaron Gerow]

I just came back from the Vienna Film Festival yesterday, where I was 
treated to a wonderful time by the festival organizers, as well as 
KineJapan members Roland Domenig and Birgit Kellner.

The occasion for my attending was the tribute to Aoyama Shinji.  They 
showed all of his films (though not his two made-for-video 
movies--because of problems with the production company, Aoyama did not 
want those shown), I contributed the main essay for the catalog (very 
carefully translated into German by Birgit), and the catalog also had a 
discussion between Aoyama and Suwa Nobuhiro (translated into English by 
Michael Raine).  There was also a roundtable discussion between Aoyama, 
me, and Roland which, while not having enough time to go far enough, was 
quite interesting.  Beyond us discussing the general situation of current 
Japanese film, Aoyama entered into an interesting talk on the 
relationship between cinema and the emperor system, going so far as to 
use the close up as an example.  He basically made the analogy between 
the "as if" ("no yona") nature of the close up (the close up seeming "as 
if" it gives us a sense of what a character is thinking and feeling) and 
the "as if" nature of Japanese society elaborated by Maruyama Masao 
(where it is "as if" people take responsibility for their actions when it 
is actually just passed on down the line).  (This is theoretically 
sketchy, if not problematic, but it is very suggestive.)  This should 
offer a good background for our previous discussion on KineJapan of 
"minimalism," showing us one other reason a director like Aoyama would 
prefer long shots to close ups: the rejection of a system which pretends 
to offer access to the other when that is in fact impossible.  Aoyama 
also dicussed his depiction of violence, placing it in the history of 
violence in Japanese cinema.  Whereas early film made the object of 
entertainment, or while Oshima and Fukusaku made it the means of opposing 
power, post-Takeshi violence makes violence something that simply occurs 
without explanation.  Aoyama finds himself working in or confronting this 
situation.  I asked him about the role of repetition (cicularity) in his 
films, and he tried to relate it, on the one hand, to the circle of 
irresponsibility in postwar Japanese society and to the effort to rebuild 
a notion of responsibility that can break the circle of violence.

The Viennale also gave me a chance to re-view Eureka, and beyond being 
further impressed by the film (I got to see it on a much bigger screen 
than at Imagica), I did note how narratively it is quite different from 
the "minimalism" we have been discussing.  While it is true he uses lots 
of long shots and long takes, he does not do what Koreeda or Timeless 
Melody do and cut on an empty frame after characters have left it.  In 
fact, one could say that the first half in particular is quite 
economically edited, with a skilled use of ellipsis and narrative flow 
from shot to shot.  There is in fact a lot of use of different devices 
(even some close ups!), quite unlike the paring down of a true minimalist 
film.  True, towards the end there are some shots that could have been 
shorter, but I was still left feeling that this was neither a 
dedramatized or an unexciting film.

One could contrast it with Blue Tower (Ao no to), a two and a half hour 
film by Sakaguchi Katsumi that received its world premiere at the 
festival.  A truly make-it-yourself film about hikikomori (the problem of 
mostly young people locking themselves up their rooms and refusing to 
interact with society), Blue Tower uses a long shot, long take style for 
realist reasons: Sakaguchi comes out of documentary, the discourses about 
the film stress the fact some of the amateur actors have some real-life 
connection to hikikomori, and Sakaguchi underlined in talking to me that 
his choice of style was dictated by the actions of his actors.  Therefore 
unlike Aoyama, Sakaguchi is not very economical in his editing, showing 
whole actions in order, without too much use of ellipsis.  I'd prefer to 
leave judgement on the film for later (though I think technical issues 
can be raised against the film), but I do want to note a different 
attitude towards cinema here: one that stresses realism versus Aoyama's 
firm stance that he is still working in film.

Overall, it was quite a nice festival: not too big and not too small, 
lots of discussions after the films, and a congenial atmosphere between 
guests and staff (especially over dinner!).





Aaron Gerow
Associate Professor
International Student Center
Yokohama National University
79-1 Tokiwadai
Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama 240-8501
JAPAN
E-mail: gerow at ynu.ac.jp
Phone: 81-45-339-3170
Fax: 81-45-339-3171