nishing Points: The Films of Shohei Imamura at the Harvard Film Archive

[tetsuwan@comcast.net]

For those in Tennessee and border states, something like this would usually pass us by. However, the Belcourt theater in Nashville, TN is participating in the Vanishing Points retro and will be giving 6 films starting at the end of December (I helped select those six, it was a tough choice, however the programmers wanted to leave out the Cannes winners unfortunately). I hope anyone in the area comes out to support the program, as it will encourage programmers around Nashville to pick more Japanese cinema.

Here's the planned schedule:
PIGS AND BATTLESHIPS (1961) 
> Wed, 12/26 @ 7:30 
> Fri, 12/28 @ 5:00 
> Sat, 12/29 @ 2:40 
> 
> INSECT WOMAN (1963) 
> Thu, 12/27 @ 7:30 
> Sat, 12/29 @ 5:00 
> Tue, 1/1 @ 1:30 
> 
> THE PORNOGRAPHERS (1966) 
> Fri, 12/28 @ 7:30, 9:50 
> Sat-Sun, 12/29-30 @ 12:00pm 
> 
> THE PROFOUND DESIRE OF THE GODS (1968) 
> Sat, 12/29 @ 7:30 
> Sun, 12/30 @ 2:35 
> Tue, 1/1 @ 4:00 
> 
> VENGEANCE IS MINE (1979) 
> Tue, 1/1 @ 7:30 
> Wed, 1/2 @ 4:45, 9:50 
> Thu, 1/3 @ 8:00 
> 
> BLACK RAIN (1989) 
> Wed, 1/2 @ 7:30 
> Thu, 1/3 @ 5:30 

--
Mark 


-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: Aaron Gerow <aaron.gerow at yale.edu> 

> Vanishing Points: The Films of Shohei Imamura at the Harvard Film 
> Archive 
> December 1 - December 14, 2007 
> 
> ???I am interested in the relationship of the lower part of the human 
> body and the lower part of the social structure on which the reality 
> of daily Japanese life supports itself.??? ??? Shohei Imamura 
> 
> Shohei Imamura is widely recognized today as one of the most 
> important directors to emerge from the Japanese New Wave of the 
> 1960s, together with Oshima, Suzuki, and Shinoda. While Imamura???s 
> work quickly gained recognition on the international festival 
> circuit, box office success overseas proved elusive, with Western 
> audiences seeming to prefer the exquisite melodrama of Ozu and 
> Mizoguchi, the action of Kurosawa or, eventually, the modernist art 
> films of Oshima. 
> 
> Imamura???s work is typically ribald, bawdy, and earthy, revealing and 
> reveling in the underpinnings of Japanese society: not the code of 
> the samurai or the rigor of the tea ceremony, but something more 
> primal and fecund. Imamura discovers this primal element in the 
> coarser side of life ??? not the working class so much as the sub- 
> proletariat (similarly beloved by Pasolini) made up of criminals, 
> pimps, and pornographers ??? and especially in his indomitable, and 
> decidedly unelegant, heroines. This search for the primal gives 
> Imamura???s films both an anthropological aspect and an implicit 
> critique of modernity and consumer capitalism. While Imamura???s 1960s 
> films are now acknowldged as bracingly idiosyncratic masterpieces, 
> many of them bewildered critics and alienated audiences at the time, 
> rendering Imamura???s career especially vulnerable to the recession 
> that struck the Japanese film industry in the 1970s. No longer able 
> to make features, he founded a film school and made television 
> documentaries before his triumphant comeback to the big screen with 
> Vengeance Is Mine. In the last decades of his life, Imamura made 
> films irregularly, but each film was regarded as an event. 
> 
> This retrospective, which includes almost all of Imamura???s 
> theatrical features, was organized by Adam Sekuler, Northwest Film 
> Forum, and Tom Vick, Freer and Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian 
> Institution. Special thanks to Mari Hiruta, The Japan Foundation 
> (Tokyo); Yoshihiro Nihei, The Japan Foundation (Los Angeles); Imamura 
> Productions; and Brian Belovarac, Janus Films. Selected text adapted 
> from program notes by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. 
> 
> Vengeance Is Mine (Fukushu suru wa ware ni are) 
> Saturday December 1 at 7pm 
> 
> A Man Vanishes (Ningen johatsu) 
> Saturday December 1 at 9:30pm 
> 
> The Profound Desire of the Gods (Kamigami no fukaki yokubo) 
> Sunday December 2 at 3pm 
> 
> Why Not? (Eijanaika) 
> Sunday December 2 at 7:30pm 
> 
> The Pornographers (Jinruigaku nyumon) 
> Monday December 3 at 7pm 
> 
> Karayuki-San, The Making of a Prostitute (Karayuki-san) 
> Monday December 3 at 9:30pm 
> 
> The Ballad of Narayama (Narayama-bushi ko) 
> Friday December 7 at 7pm 
> 
> Zegen 
> Friday December 7 at 9:30pm 
> 
> Pigs and Battleships (Buta to gunkan) 
> Saturday December 8 at 7pm 
> 
> The Insect Woman (Nippon konchuki) 
> Saturday December 8 at 9:15pm 
> 
> Lights of Night (Nishi Ginza eki-mae) and My Second Brother (Nianchan) 
> Sunday December 9 at 3pm 
> 
> Stolen Desire (Nusumareta yokujo) 
> Sunday December 9 at 7pm 
> 
> Endless Desire (Hateshi naki yokubo) 
> Sunday December 9 at 9pm 
> 
> Black Rain (Kuroi ame) 
> Monday December 10 at 7pm 
> 
> The Eel (Unagi) 
> Monday December 10 at 9:15pm 
> 
> Intentions of Murder (Akai satsui) 
> Friday December 14 at 7pm 
> 
> A History of Postwar Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess (Nippon sengo- 
> shi: Madamu Omboro no seikatsu) 
> Friday December 14 at 9:45pm 
> 
> The Harvard Film Archive is located in the Carpenter Center for the 
> Arts, 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 
> For a complete listing of films, please visit: http://hcl.harvard.edu/ 
> hfa/films/2007novedec/imamura.html 
> Admission is $8 General, $6 Students and Seniors http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa or 617-795-4700 for information 
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