Dim

[Mark Nornes]

Back at the 1993 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, 
Daishima Haruhiko and I built a theater from scratch for a program on 
First Nations film and video. We borrowed a parking lot across from the 
main theater, and created a theater out of heavy plumbing piping and 
canvas. It looked pretty good, with a theater-in-the-round structure 
around an irori, a music stage, a battery of every kind of projector, 
and Ainu kimono and religious fetishes decorating the walls. Outside, 
we painted the canvas, built a tower, and lined the entranceway with 
yatai. There were two problems. One was that it got a little cold at 
night. The other was that the fire inspectors were incredibly hard on 
us, so I can tell you with great certainty that there are strict rules 
out there about having WELL-LIT fire exits. It was painful to hang 
these conventional green fire exit signs next to our exits.  Once the 
festival was underway, they mysteriously stopped working.

At the same time, there were no regulations about keeping lights up. 
And if Kyoto has dispensed with lit exit signs, then it suggests that 
the regulations are local.

Markus




On Wednesday, July 9, 2003, at 03:08  AM, Aaron Gerow wrote:

>> Does anyone know why this practice was followed and if there was any 
>> legal
>> basis, has it been removed?
>
> I know there was a legal basis for this in prewar exhibition 
> regulations.
> For instance, the 1917 Tokyo moving picture regulations stipulated that
> there be enough light so that the faces of the spectators could be
> clearly distinguished. Since these regulations also had provisions
> requiring separate seating for men and women as well as authorizing a
> special seat for a police officer in the back, one can relate this
> regulation to fears about sexuality, the desire to control spectators
> through sight, as well as to a general phobia about what kind of things
> lone spectators were thinking and doing in the dark (light helping
> spectators remember they are members of a public with public
> responsibilities).
>
> I have not done research in postwar theater regulations, so I too would
> be curious about the requirements in this regard. Many theaters are
> annoyingly well-lit, but there are many which try to darken the theater
> as much as possible.
>
> 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
>
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