Naomi Kawase - impressions

[Aaron Gerow]

>It does seem that Kawase is not very articulate in talking about her work,or 
>about cinema in general.

This was definitely the impression I had when I first met Kawase back in 
1994. And even today, compared to directors like Aoyama, Suwa, Zeze, 
Kurosawa, etc. who actually write theory and/or criticism, Kawase does 
not intellectually articulate her films that well. Yet at the same time, 
Kawase is definitely much more articulate than she was, having aged a 
bit, learned a bit (from others, like Fukuda Katsuhiko), and had the 
experience of talking a lot about her films. Thus her "cinema lesson" in 
Alba, in which she talked by herself for 3 hours and fielded about 3 
hours of questions, was actually very illuminating, even for a scholar 
like myself.

Aaron Gerow
Associate Professor
International Student Center
Yokohama National University
79-1 Tokiwadai
Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama 240-8501
JAPAN
E-mail: gerow at ynu.ac.jp
Phone: 81-45-339-3170
Fax: 81-45-339-3171