New Books on Japanese Cinema and Pesaro F. F.

[Roberta Novielli]

Here are my notes on the symposium.

Okubo Ken introduced the discussion. He talked about the decline of the
majors and how the new directors'  background lays basically in different
media worlds (commercials, videos etc.). He also underlined the importance
of Image Forum and Pia FF in supporting new trends and young filmakers. He
noted how editing and narration style have changed in Japanese cinema in
these ten years.

Ichikawa Jun spoke about himself, of course -- his first steps in the
cinema world and his long career in the CM field. He also said nowadays
Japan lacks in intellectual vividness because of the long peace period, and
that this is one of the reasons for he needed to make a film such as Zawa
zawa Shimokitazawa.

Suwa Nobuhiro was asked to talk about his movies and Sento. (Dario Tomasi
had a hard job to do coordinating all them, trying to create a line of
discussion so to offer a complete panorama of Japanese cinema, but each of
them preferred talking about their own experiences). According to Suwa,
during the bubble economy there were no more stories to tell, no value in
the contents. Only in the 90s Japan has become a "normal" country with
ordinary people. When he began making movies he didn't want really to
narrate anything special, just portraing a love story between a man and a
woman when nothing special occurs. Narration comes from the story itself,
in a natural way. Regarding Sento, he explained he produces many films at
the same time, which allows many young directors to appear and often to be
successful.

Hara Masato explained how  new technologies (related to the camera, Super 8
Kodak, Single 8 Fuji)  make it possible for young and unknown directors to
make indipendent movies. Then he talked about 20th Century Nostalgia for a
while and about the new law in Japan which permit to sing Kimigayo as
school hymn (subject of Haratomic Letter).

Koreeda's aim when he makes a movie seems to be portraing the sense of
reality, creating images to communicate with others, making of memory the
centre of his world. He also said  he sometimes wonders  how Ozu would have
made some scens of his movies.

Roland gave a short but complete view of the pink world -- I wish he could
have had more time to speak about it. Sakamoto and Tajiri, like the other
directors, talked about their first steps as filmakers.

Tomiyama Katsue and Amano Mayumi gave a short survey of Japan's independent
cinema and both the Image Forum and Pia FF history and aims.

Stephen's talk was anything but boring. Without him, nobody would have
explained what is going on in the Japanese and Asian markets.

Olaf Moller gave the most hermetical talk, saying he just had nothing to say.

As for me, there's only one thing different from what Stephen wrote -- I
was speaking too quickly and the interpreter maybe misundertood it. I said
family become particularly significant in 1990s cinema as a way to escaping
from the group (see the kaisha etc.), and for the same reason I was
expecting there would have been many films related to children with stories
seen through their eyes. However, after Ohikkoshi there seem to be less
interest in this field.

And yes, questions from the audience were particularly bad. That strange
woman in the audience who got upset had also made the similar question the
evening before at the screening of Distance, when Spagnoletti introduced
Koreeda.







Roberta Novielli
Dipartimento di Studi sull'Asia Orientale
Universita' Ca' Foscari, Ca' Cappello, San Polo 2035
30125 VENEZIA (Italy)
tel. +39.041.52.85.801; fax  +39.041.52.42.397
e-mail: novielli at unive.it