Aoyama's ROJI E.

[Jasper Sharp]

Michael Arnold asked about Shinji Aoyama's ROJI-E in an earlier post. I 
caught this earlier this year at Rotterdam, and wasn't quite sure why it was 
being screened outside of Japan, because it doesn't really hold much 
interest for those not versed in its subject. Has this really got a 
theatrical release in Japan? If so, then its really no wonder that, as I've 
heard so many people recently say, cinema is becoming increasingly 
marginalised as an artform in Japan. Here's some notes I wrote about it:


A personal project from the director of Eureka about the poet-writer Kenji 
Nakagemi whose work focussed on his own harbour town of Shingu. The title, 
translating as 'To the Alley' refers to a small alley featured in some of 
his works which was demolished in 1978, with only a few meters of 8mm 
footage remaining. This forms the starting point of Aoyama's 50 minute film, 
which features lots and lots of realtime footage of the film maker Izuchi 
Kisshu driving around the town interspersed with him reading aloud passages 
of Nakagemi's work in various locations.
After its screening, the director announced it was his intention to explore 
the link between Nakagemi's words and his images, but without the necessary 
background in Japanese literature, this self-indulgent film makes very 
little concessions to its audience. The unedited long takes of the various 
locations in Shingu did give me a nostalgic pang of my last trip to Japan, 
but as I was only one of ten people remaining at the screening, I guess this 
must have been the only thing keeping me there.




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