Kawase Naomi's site

[Mark H Nornes]

Livia asked about

---collectives:  The most famous of them has been Ogawa Productions, which
folded back in the 1980s but is something of the test case against which
all other attempts are measured. [There are other prominent examples from
further back: Iwanami's Blue Group (Tsuchimoto, Kuroki, Higashi, Ogawa,
others), Nichidai's Eiken (Adachi and others), Prokino back in the late
20s/early 30s, countless eiken over the last 70 years or so.] The recent
ones that are interesting are Hara Kazuo's Cinema Juku and Tsuchiya Yutaka
et al's Video Act. Hara's group produced one feature length 16mm
documentary, and held all sorts of formal meetings across Japan.
Typically, they would invite one or two famous film figures and then spend
a weekend talking about whatever seemed pressing.  They also produced
quite a few substantial pamphlets. I'm not sure if they're still up and
running. Tsuchiya and other video activists created Video Act! to run
screenings and provide a web-based route for the distribution of
independent work (the address is on Kinema Club). They distribute
everything from Tsuchimoto's famous Minamata documentaries to little known
efforts by smaller collectives.

---Anyone like Women Make Movies?  Yes, Pandora. This is an outfit run by
Nakano Rie. They distribute and produce films, many of the controversial.
They also publish an impressive array of books that range from solid film
histories to non-film books on topics relating to the women's movement.
They are a very impressive outfit. Check out the website and you'll see
what I mean: www.pan-dora.co.jp


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