New Books on Japanese Cinema and Pesaro F. F.

[Roland Domenig]

> Well, if this was the plan, I cannot explain myself the absence in Pesaro of
> important directors who still have to be discovered in Italy: it’s hard to
> organize a discussion upon the renaissance of Japanese Cinema without the
> presence (whether in the flesh or with their movies) of Kurosawa Kiyoshi,
> Kawase Naomi, Shiota Akihiko, Miike Takashi, Fukasaku Kinji (yes, he’s 70, but
> his are films that shock, grab and disturb the viewer, in fact his last
> “Battle Royale” was originally scheduled in Pesaro). Spagnoletti himself
> mentioned this introducing the symposium; he spoke about some unexpected
> obstacles in receiving all the Japanese films planned for the festival.

Well, I think this criticism is a little carping. There will always be
important names missing in a program that tries to present a film nation as
productive and diverse as Japan with 20 films. Even if the retrospective had
comprised of twice as many films it would still have shown only a portion of
what is currently going on in Japanese cinema.
Considering the limitations of the festival - both logistically (there was
only one cinema available to show the films properly) and financially (all
foreign language films, even those with English subtitles, were shown with
electronic Italian subtitle projection and I guess that the translations had
consumed a considerable portion of the festival's budget) - and taking into
account how difficult it nowadays can be to get all the films you want to
show, it is off the point to complain that certain names or films were
missing. 

I for my part enjoyed the Pesaro festival exactly because the program was
not too extensive. If there are too many films, perhaps shown at the same
time, I often end up regretting to see the one film and not the other,
instead of just enjoying the films. True, some films are more interesting
than others, but that's only a question of personal preferences.

Beside the Japanese Cinema Today tribute and the retrospective of Mario
Monicelli, one of the masters of Italian comedy, who for more than five
decades convulsed Italian audiences but who is little known outside of his
country, this years program presented the films of Romuald Karmakar, one of
the most controversial and uncompromising young German filmmakers, and a
selection of video-works by British filmmaker Chris Petit (among others
'Negative spaces', a marvelous video with and about
painter/carpenter/filmcritic Manny Farber and the state of film criticism),
as well as a birthday-hommage to the french filmmagazine Cahier de Cinema
that also included two Japanese films, Oshima's Ninja bugeicho and
Teshigahara's Suna no onna (the last one in a deplorable 16 mm copy).

A last word to Hara Masato. He came with his little son and his wife who
also made the video Haratonic Letter, in which both discuss the (then) new
law concerning the national flag and anthem. Since the video had no
subtitles the inter-titles were read in Italian and the conversation of the
two reenacted by Hara and his wife themselves in (broken) English. It was a
very funny happening (they propose to make John Lennon's song Imagine the
new Japanese anthem) that the handful of visitors thoroughly enjoyed. After
the screening Hara was beaming as he was the day before when he was circling
the empty Piazza at noon with the tandem he had brought from the beach (two
friendly policemen pointed out that using the tandem is allowed only in the
beach area, but they finally gave up, probably because Hara was just too
happy).