a japanese film of sixties

[stephanie deboer]

Greetings.  I loved your account of your 1960s experiences with Japanese film as well!  (though I'm sorry that I can't recognize the film that you describe)

And along these lines, if anyone is interested, Kinnia Yau Shuk-ting has a chapter in a book on the Shaw Studios that the HK Film Archive published last year.  The chapter is titled "Shaw's Japanese Collaboration and Competition as Seen Through the Asian Film Festival Evolution."  She's been doing a lot of work on exactly these kinds of intersections. While Nagata and Run Run Shaw (Daei and Shaw) were behind its establishment (1953) and promotion, the other four major Japanese studios were also participants, winning awards, for example (and by the way, the Asian FF was held in Jakarta in 1970 – the year that Japan did NOT win any awards!).  

Kinnia Yau also makes the point that the Festival was also a place through which liaisons could be made, resulting in such "co-productions" as Princess Yang Kwei Fei (1955, Daiei/Sh
aw), Madame White Snake (1956, Toho/Shaw), and Asia-Pol (1966, Nikkatsu/Shaw).  I've also read accounts of the HK actress Yu Min coming to Toho's attention by way of the Festival as well.  My sense is that similar links/liaisons could be found with other participants of the festival (it was originally called the Federation of Motion Picture Producers of Southeast Asia, which seems pretty telling).  These would be studio participants in such places as Indonesia (!), the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand...   A truly complex network.

As for Rashomon, my sense is that Rashomon's festival success has been understood by some as encouraging Japanese film producers to see the potential of overseas markets in general – not simply European festivals, but also the South East markets as well. 

And wasn't Shaw himself interested in distributing Japanese films?  I know that he secured the rights to show Rashomon in Hong Kong.  And given his SE Asian routes of distribution, he m
ight have distributed it elsewhere, as well.  (or perhaps I'm wrong about this last statement...?)

yours,
Stephanie DeBoer


----- Original Message -----
From: Mark Nornes <amnornes at umich.edu>
Date: Wednesday, August 4, 2004 11:46 pm
Subject: Re: a japanese film of sixties

> 
> On Aug 4, 2004, at 11:17 PM, Aaron Gerow wrote:
> 
> > One possible way of thinking about this is the role of Daiei, and 
> > particularly Nagata Masaichi, in such cinematic trade.
> 
> I was thinking the same thing, as Nagata was the mover and shaker 
> behind the Asia-Pacific Film Festival (or Asian Film Festival as it was 
> known back in the early 50s when it started). I once did some research 
> on this a while back when preparing a talk on film festivals, but 
> didn't get very far. It was a fascinating outfit, as it was basically 
> symptomatic of a local economy of film distribution. People in other 
> parts of the world never paid much attention to it, but participation 
> seems to have been
 a point of pride for many industries in SE Asia. 
> Jakarta was a regular host to the festival, and as far as I could tell 
> few Japanese were interested in it besides Nagata.....thus, the 
> Java-Daiei connection.
> 
> The other biggie behind the festival was Run Run Shaw, so I wonder how 
> many of the Hong Kong films that displaced Japanese films came from his 
> studio?
> 
> By the way, the festival and the international organization that runs 
> it is still around. The last one was apparently in Fukuoka last June. 
> No one I know went....
> 
> Markus
> 
>