The State of "Film Culture" (was Re: Yoshida etc)

[drainer@mpinet.net]

Insightful remarks; living near Tokyo gives one a distorted perspective (of course), but that is also one of its charms ? anything and everything that you want to do is available ? if you go through the right channels, there is always an event to attend. But that doesn?t [always] just hold true to the city as you pointed out. And from my experience here, I would expect that ? no matter how small the amount of people involved, those who *are* involved seem extremely dedicated. The only catch is that you have to know where to go (or have previous acquaintances). I only wonder how Japanese people themselves get involved to begin with.

I?m incoherent at work, so I have to re-read the post..

-df


-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Nornes <amnornes at umich.edu>
Sent: Sep 17, 2004 1:22 PM
To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
Cc: Kenji Ishizaka <Kenji_Ishizaka at jpf.go.jp>, Iwasaki <iwasy at acejapan.or.jp>
Subject: The State of "Film Culture" (was Re: Yoshida etc)

[Take a deep breath. This is a long one.]

So there have been a few messages about the wonderful film culture in 
Tokyo. And we've just gone through yet another exchange starting with 
someone saying the 'industry is dead' and ending with endless examples 
of how large and vibrant it actually is. However, these latter 
discussions usually equate the "industry" with production. When they 
bring the reception context into view it's usually only to point out 
that the number of total theaters is increasing thanks to the cinecon 
(cinema complex) phenom. But what of "film culture", such as it is, in 
the rest of Japan?
 
Markus