Kinema Club 4, Panel 3

sharon hayashi shh
Sun Oct 24 12:22:26 EDT 2004


Perhaps this delayed but brief report on Kinema Club 4 will serve to 
remind us of an event fast receding into the horizon of oblivion?

This reincarnation of Kinema Club (Oct 8-9,2004) was held at the 
CineSalon, a downtown Montreal loft-gallery with an eclectic mix of 
chairs and comfortable leopard skin sofas that provided a screening 
space especially conducive to thinking through questions of 
spectatorship and identification brought up by the third panel, 
?Reality Plus, Reality Minus: Models of Identification and Detachment.?

After subjecting the audience to an appropriately lengthy, 
discomfort-inducing clip from Miike Takashi?s Audition, Justin 
Armstrong analyzed the film as a cultural anthropological text on 
violence and sex in contemporary Japan. He focused particularly on the 
body as a place of inscription of the Real in what he sees as a 
hyperreal society of simulacra. The ensuing discussion brought up 
questions of the use, expectations and enjoyment of pain in specific 
genres; the practice and ethics of reading film; the disjunction 
between the subcultural phenomenon of Miike as a cult director versus 
the mass cultural modes of reproduction thematized within his films; 
and the narrative containment of the threat of femininity to homosocial 
structures seeking replication.?

Continuing on the theme of calculated audience discomfort, Phil Kaffen 
discussed the impossibility of easy identification in Hara Kazuo?s 
documentary about cerebral palsy, Sayonara CP. After describing how 
Hara approached the task of developing a relationship to the other and 
to difference without resorting to easy humanism or identification 
(implicating spectators in a space without allowing them to identify 
with the protagonists of the film), Phil brought up the question of 
whether excess could indeed be used, and if so, if an ethics of excess 
was possible.?This led to a lively discussion on the possibility of 
translation, identification, exchange, or even representation when 
films are predicated on singularity and not nonsingularity.?

The theme of excess in different genres inspired thoughtful and 
provocative presentations by all of the panelists over the two days of 
the workshop. As an operating logic, however, the topic of excess 
wasn?t fully broached until the ?finale? which provided a much needed 
moment to reflect upon the implications of excess for thinking beyond 
the film as an autonomous work of art and as part of an increasingly 
globalized market of multiple but sometimes incommensurable 
audiences.?I look forward to a continuation of this discussion at a 
future incarnation of Kinema Club.

Cheers,
Sharon Hayashi.


On 2004/10/19, at 22:29, Thomas Lamarre wrote:

> KINEJAPAN IV PANEL 2
>
> The second day of events was as enjoyable as the first, and I?d like to
> thank Anne McKnight for her care in organizing this workshop, not only 
> at
> the level of intellectual engagement but with respect to food and 
> ambiance.
> Thanks, too, to the speakers for sharing their research and fielding
> questions patiently. Here?s a brief account of the first panel of the 
> second
> day.
>
> First Presentation
>
> Mark Driscoll?s paper, ?Another Image World is Possible,? not only 
> presented
> a defense of philosophical dualism (and a critique of monism) but also
> offered a new dualism ? ?verimatic? versus ?anim?tic? ? in order to 
> rethink
> fundamental questions about cinema and animation.
>
> Mark first took issue with the monism implicit in the politics of 
> immanence,
> that is, what he sees a Spinozan turn in media theory.  The basic 
> problem,
> in his opinion, is that those who adopt a monist theory of media are
> ultimately forced to see media in terms of an underlying ontology.  
> Mark
> suggests that the result is a sort of teleological, linear determinism,
> which he sees in evidence in Deleuze?s account of the time-image.
>
> Then, in a series of insightful film analyses (especially of The 
> Matrix and
> Tampopo), Mark shows how one might effectively use a dualistic stance 
> to
> push beyond a simple opposition between cinema and animation without 
> losing
> a sense of very real tensions within films (live action or animated or
> both).  Ultimately, he wishes to link such tensions to the production 
> of
> another world image related specifically to capitalism in East Asia 
> (the
> development of overdevelopment).
>
> Some theoretical questions first arose about Mark?s discussion of 
> monism and
> dualism.
>
> What does it mean to reduce various philosophies of media to an 
> opposition
> between monism and dualism?   Is monism necessarily linear and 
> teleological?
> Is monism at stake in Deleuze?s Cinema books?  Isn?t he interested in 
> very
> different kinds of movement (and entelechies)?  How can the relation 
> between
> body and soul be described as linear?  What happens to the distinction
> between determination and determinism?  Isn?t determination more 
> complicated
> than determinism?
>
> Such questions led to a simpler one: if the goal is to get at the
> materiality of media, what kind of non-linear relation to materiality 
> does
> Mark envision via dualism?
>
> Mark agreed that these are precisely the problems that are at the 
> heart of
> his inquiry.
>
> Another question arose about technologies in relation to the dualism of
> verimatic and anim?tic.  Is Mark suggesting a new way to think 
> technology
> through this dualism?
>
> Mark replied that it is really important to avoid falling back on 
> apparatus
> theory, on technologically-driven model of media.
>
> Finally, a couple questions addressed the problem of modernism: is 
> there
> nostalgia for modernism in this project?   Does this give us a new way 
> to
> talk about modernism?
>
>
> Second Presentation
>
>     Nagayama Chikako?s paper, ?Excess of Bilingual Body in Ri Koh-Ran?s
> Cinema,? dealt with the ways in which Ri Koh-Ran?s perfect fluency in
> Chinese and Japanese was used in a series of films from the late 1930s 
> and
> early 1940s.  Chikako called attention to how bilingualism in these 
> films
> tends to produce hybrid spaces and encounters, but only in order to 
> sort
> them out for the audience.  She related such strategies to 
> transformations
> in Japanese empire, arguing that hybridity was crucial to imperial
> formations insofar as it allowed the Japanese to equalize and 
> interiorize
> other nations.
>
>     She also suggested that Ri Koh-Ran?s body provided a visual 
> spectacle
> that allowed viewers to reconcile the tensions implicit in hybridity.
> Moments of visual excess centered on the female body and on its 
> melodramatic
> relations allowed spectators to overcome the very real contradictions.
>
>     A series of questions and comments addressed the historical 
> context of
> film and empire.  It was pointed out, for instance, that one of the Ri
> Koh-Ran films, Shina no yoru, had three endings, each intended for a
> different target audience (Korean, Chinese and Japanese).  In other 
> words,
> studios deliberately produced for a multiethnic audience, an account of
> which might further Chikako?s discussion.  In addition, some questions 
> arose
> about the relation between military policy (that is, subsides to 
> Japanese
> soldiers who married Chinese or Korean women in order to encourage
> assimilation).
>
> Attention was called to Yomota?s work on Japanese war cinema as well.  
> In
> brief, discussion turned on the historical context for this cinema, as 
> an
> imperial context, which is a timely, even urgent topic.
>
>
>





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