American movies in Japan

[Mark Nornes]

On Wednesday, June 5, 2002, at 11:28  PM, Michael Raine wrote:

>
> Burch and Donald Richie's "presentational" Japanese culture (illusion, 
> it
> seems, was never the goal). Dubbing is a slightly different question,

As Aaron pointed out, low-budget documentary in the 1960s and 1970s did 
not use synch sound. And what's interesting is that this did not stop 
them from using long sequence shots of people talking, with the lip 
synch getting progressively worse as the shot goes on. Last week, I 
showed Ogawa's Summer in Sanrizuka at UC Irvine, and Ginna Kim (a video 
artist from Korea [Empty House, etc.]) commented how much she _liked_ 
the roughness. I often hear this comment, and it does seem to become an 
aesthetic in and of itself. However, if you talk to the filmmakers and 
sound editors, they were all frustrated by the non-synch gear and the 
way it grated against their drive for smoothness and documentary realism.

Markus