Yoshida etc (apologies with "content")

[Mark Nornes]

> On Sep 17, 2004, at 7:28 AM, M Arnold wrote:
>
>> Maybe the industry's "dead," but there's still plenty to see in Tokyo.

Sorry about that everyone. Twice in a week. Must be going insane. I 
realized it when I pressed "send" then struggled to disconnect my cord 
before it flew at you. Too late.

Let me make it up by adding something substantive to Michael's message.

First, to his list I'd add the current Yamagata International 
Documentary Film Festival event, which is actually quite huge.  Asako 
mentioned the Japanese films, but that's only scratching the surface. 
They are also screening many, many films from Asian independents, as 
well as major foreign docs like Stevie, War Room, etc. etc. Not to 
mention the historically important documentaries like Columbia Revolt 
and Black Panther, shown in the crazy dubbed versions produced by Ogawa 
Productions. They also have visitors the likes of Aoyama Shinji. I went 
to the Chinese epic West of Tracks the first day (in a 11:30 and out 
about 12 hours later). For the first half of the film there were as 
many people in the theater as the opening night of Lovers in Kabukicho. 
12 hours later there were still about 50 of us.  Amazing.

There's also neo neo-za, a micro-theater near Ochanomizu run by Fuseya 
Hiroo, the former producer for Ogawa Productions. They're going to 
doing what sounds like a complete series of Ogawa Productions starting 
this fall.

There's much more, let me tell you. Tokyo film culture is something 
else.

At the same time, the story is quite different in other parts of Japan. 
I want to write more about that, but I have to take my kid to school. 
I'll write one more post later in the day.

With apologies for contentless, meaningless, misdirected mail....

Markus