Asian Invasion

[A.M. Nornes]

At 12:11 PM +0900 1/18/01, @allnet.ne.jp wrote:

> I think Kehr is a conscientious critic who may well slap his forehead with
> dismay when he gets e-mail from Kine-Japan members pointing out his various
> sins, but I wouldn't read too much into his "Japan passing." January just
> doesn't happen to be our month.

I think it's more that this, and that's why I brought this up in the first
place. For example, I've noticed over the last couple years that lists of
"essential movies," "top ten films of all time" lists...you know the
genre...have started to drop Japanese films and directors and replaced them
with directors from other Asian countries. I'm not offering these examples
because I'm kuyashii. Rather, I'm suggesting we're seeing a shift in popular
and academic canons. This will influence many things, not least of which is
film and video distribution in the US (that members of this list are getting
their Japanese films from Hong Kong VCD companies says a lot).

Markus