Shiota Tokitoshi lecture in Munich

[=%iso-8859-1?Q?Ekkehard_Kn=F6rer?=]

Hi,

I guess this reception gap is an interesting phenomenon - that's maybe why Shiota's talk at Nippon Connection was so utterly pointless: the films he wanted to introduce were exactly those shown at the festival (Ichi the Killer, City of Lost Souls, Blue Spring etc.). The audience was extremely young - and ignorant, one could guess, rather of traditional Japanese movies -  and Shiota, confronted with that fact, turned out to have absolutely nothing to say, except that those directors (their films and their origins) werde different. Which made me want to ask those who know: is Shiota really an accepted critic in Japan? Is his writing better than the performance of mumbling of names and titles he gave in Frankfurt?

Ekkehard
Jump Cut Magazin
www.jump-cut.de

To those who read German: My article on Nippon Connection can be found at:
 http://www.jump-cut.de/festival-nipponconnection2002.html
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Sven Koerber 
  To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu 
  Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2002 3:26 PM
  Subject: Shiota Tokitoshi lecture in Munich


  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
   
   
   
   
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