aoyama shinji, roji-e & Viennale

[Robin Gatto]

Dear Kinajapaners

Before the forum is filled with analyses of Seijun Suzuki's Pistol Opera (I
guess it will soon be), just an anecdote about Shinji Aoyama and Roji-e

Shinji Aoyama was hailed as a new master with Eureka, and then gunned down
for Desert Moon this year. I discovered his work a bit late, in 1999, with
Shady Grove, at the Three Continents Nantes Film Festival.
Here is the anecdote: the copy of Shady Grove was blocked inside the hold of
the plane. The programme planner of the festival rushed to the airport,
climbed into the hold and extracted the copy. He managed to come back with
the film right before the screening.
The theatre was filled, waiting for this new Japanese film. But one hour
later, the audience booed a sequence of that film: a 3-minute still shot
inside a car running on the highway.
After the screening, while the audience was commenting the film negatively,
I could hear someone say: "Maybe they shouldn't have taken it out of the
plane".
The following year, I saw Roji-e in Locarno, and then again, there was this
still shot inside a car running on for more than one minute.
So when I finally met Shinji Aoyama, I couldn't resist asking him about this
kind of long shots, and whether he wasn't afraid of putting off the audience
"No, I'm not afraid!" he said laughing. "Journeys and cars are part of
myself, I couldn't make those films without this kind of sequences. I
apologize to the spectators who were bored. But these films are my films!"

By the way, the New Viennale will present eight examples from the new
Japanese ghost film genre selected by Alexandra Seitz and Andreas Ungerb?ck.

Cure, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997
Kakashi, Norio Tsuruta, 2001
Perfect Blue, Satoshi Kon, 1998
Pulse, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2001
The Ring, Hideo Nakata, 1998
The Spiral, J?ji Iida, 1998
Tomie, Ataru Oikawa, 1999
Versus, Ryuhei Kitamura, 2000

Interviews of Kiyoshi Kurosawa are to be found on Filmfestivals.com and
Midnighteye.com
http://www.midnighteye.com/interviews/kiyoshi_kurosawa.shtml
http://www.filmfestivals.com/locarno_2000/interview_kurosawa.htm
Interview of Hideo Nakata on Filmfestivals.com
http://www.filmfestivals.com/htm/archives/4apr01/people.html
Interview of Ryuhei Kitamura on Filmfestivals.com and Objectif-cinema.com
(in French)
http://www.filmfestivals.com/fr/htm/fest_01/gerardmer_01_kitamura.htm
http://www.objectif-cinema.com/webmag/champ/travelling/festival/h10a.htm

Robin Gatto