Cannes competition

Aaron Gerow gerowaaron at sbcglobal.net
Tue Apr 19 08:42:25 EDT 2005


The Cannes selection committee announced the twenty films that will vie 
for the Palme d'Or in the Competition and only one Japanese film made 
it, Kobayashi Masahiro's Basing. I heard that films by much more famous 
contemporary Japanese directors were turned down. Asia as a whole did 
not do great in this year's selection.

I haven't seen Basing yet, but find the selection curious. Kobayashi is 
someone who has shown consistently at Cannes for many years (out of 
competition), but has made barely a blip on the screen in Japan (many 
of his films have a hard time even getting released). Reviews are 
pretty bad and I, for one, found the two films I have seen (both of 
which showed at Cannes) to be some of the worst films I've seen in 
recent years (I found them to be not only poorly made, but 
pretentiously emulative of French cinema). Most of my colleagues in 
Japan voice only dislike for his cinema and I've always heard rumors 
that the only reason he gets into Cannes is because of back room 
connections.

Again, I have not seen Basing--maybe he finally has made a good 
film--but perhaps this again should make us think about how these major 
festivals operate, especially how they try to decide which Japanese 
cinema gets shown abroad.

Aaron Gerow
KineJapan owner

Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University

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