Shiota Tokitoshi lecture in Munich

[Sven Koerber]

Hello film fans

Yesterday Japanese ( independent- ) film critic
and part-time actor Shiota Tokitoshi held a lecture 
about the modern independent Japanese film in
Munich.

The main goal of his lecture was to show to the German
audience that there also are other movies than the
ones made by Kurosawa Akira and Ozu, so he introduced
films of Miike ( Dead or Alive 2 ), Tsukamoto ( Tetsuo ) and
other young film makers. 
Half of the audience were young students, who really enjoyed
the films and lecture.

But it seemed to me that the other half of the audience was not ...
ahm ... "prepared" for this kind of movies.
Originally this lecture was part-sponsored by the "German-
Japanese Society of Bavaria", where mostly 50-70 years
old Ikebana- and Kimono-loving Germans are members.
So in the discussion with Shiota there came questions like:
"Aren't there any serious movies in modern Japan ?"
"Which type of people do watch those movies ?" and so on.

I don't know how it is in other countires, but here in Munich
especially for the quite "aged" audience Japanese film still
means Samurai and Geishas, or storyless family-dramas.

The independent film only has succes with the young ones
here.... sadly enough.

Sven Koerber
Univ. of Munich, 
Japanese Studies

http://mitglied.lycos.de/popular_japan




-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/kinejapan/attachments/20020425/fe3993d5/attachment.html