The New God DVD, Adachi, Underground Archive

[Stephen Cremin]

As well as price, who's publishing it, Mike?  Be interesting to know which
label would handle something like this and subtitle it.  And to Pete who
asks what THE NEW GOD is ... just the finest documentary I've seen from
Japan in the past couple of years.  Love the idea of a Q&A column from
Amamiya and hearing the comments of Euro Space feedback.

Stephen

----------
>From: "M Arnold" <ma_iku at hotmail.com>
>To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
>Subject: The New God DVD, Adachi, Underground Archive
>Date: Wed, 09 May 2001 08:02:28 -0000
>

>I hope everyone had a good Golden Week holiday.
>
>On my way back from Tokyo I bought the new DVD of "The New God".  It's very 
>well done.  It's region-less (I believe) with fairly well done English 
>subtitles (in the film only), so overseas and English-speaking viewers 
>should be happy.  The disk has a number of special features, including 18 
>minutes of interviews from screenings at Euro Space, a Q&A section about the 
>film and production and a sort of "life advice" Q&A column with Amamiya 
>Karin that I'm not quite sure what to make of yet.  A number of the comments 
>in that section mention the Ehime Maru... incident (?), so it must have been 
>put together recently.  Amamiya's answers are fairly blunt and to the point, 
>condemning American insensitivity towards (only?) Japan, etc.
>
>I don't remember whom it was with, but during one of the interviews on the 
>disk the interviewer compared The New God to Blair Witch Project, and 
>Amamiya mentioned that some people who watched the film didn't realize it 
>was a documentary.
>
>There's also a website up for the film, including all sorts of information 
>about the movie, Amamiya's recent publications, her journal entries, concert 
>dates and so forth...  http://www.st.rim.or.jp/~yt_w-tv/home.htm
>
>I had a little bit of trouble finding the disk.  I checked a number of 
>stores but only saw it at Tower Records and Aoyama Book Center.  At ABC 
>there was one package on display with a note, "Display case only.  Come to 
>the counter to purchase."  I didn't see any other DVDs in the store getting 
>that treatment.
>
>The new issue of Eiga Geijutsu is also out, with a feature on Roman Porno 
>films.  There's a long "my favorite roman porn" section with opinions from a 
>number of critics and scholars, etc.  I liked "ichijo sayuri: nureta 
>yokujou" when I saw it several months ago so I ended up taking the advice of 
>the first column and renting two of Kumashiro's other 1973 films, "koibito 
>tachi wa nureta" and "yojohan fusuma no urabari."  "X X masu" indeed.
>
>In one other interesting section of the magazine there were a few responses 
>to Aaron Gerow and Abe Mark Nornes' "20 questions to Adachi Masao" that 
>appeared in the special issue around the time of the Adachi retrospective 
>last year.  Actually only 5 out of the 20 questions were answered, so it 
>will take a while before we get to see all of the director's comments, but I 
>was very interested to see this published.
>
>Apparently there's going to be a series called "Underground Archive 
>1958-1976" shown at Cinema Shimokitazawa from the 12th of this month to the 
>29th of June.  (http://www.cinekita.co.jp/lineup/lineup.html)  Among the 
>films are a couple of the Adachi movies that were shown at the retrospective 
>last year, along with 70+ other titles I know nothing about.  There's not a 
>lot of info on the films on the site or in the flyer, so can anyone out 
>there offer opinions on which of these are worth seeing?
>
>Mike Arnold
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