Japanese Underground Cinema at University of California Irvine, Thursday & Friday

Thu Nov 29 13:49:59 EST 2007

Thanks for the info Jonathon. Wish I could come to the States to see these great films.
Just got a quick question  - how does Great Society look projected from DVD? I assume you manage to retain the 6 screens in the film.

Jasper

Midnight Eyewww.midnighteye.com

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> Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 08:50:55 -0800
> From: jmhall at uci.edu
> To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> Subject: Japanese Underground Cinema at University of California Irvine, Thursday & Friday
> 
> The University of California Irvine Film and Video Center Presents:
> 
> "CINEMA/MOVEMENT: The Interaction between Artistic and Social Praxis  
> in Japanese Filmmaking"
> 
> Thursday AND Friday November 29 & 30 - HIB 100
> Screenings at 7:00pm both days
> 
> www.filmandvideocenter.com
> (949) 824-7418
> fvc at uci.edu
> 
> The FVC will host the West Coast screenings of "Cinema/Movement," a  
> program of Japanese underground cinema from the 1960s and 1970s that  
> is touring North America this autumn. "Cinema/Movement" is a project  
> that seeks to recover and redefine the relationship between  artistic  
> and social praxis in postwar Japanese film experiments of the 1960s  
> and 1970s, and to examine the legacy and possibilities of this  
> filmmaking practice for the present moment. These screenings re- 
> examine and re-establish the inseparable link between artistic
> experimentation and political movements in the postwar Japanese  
> context and trace this connection to the present moment where  
> progressive art and activism converge.  The Cinema/Movement series  
> has been organized by Sharon Hayashi (York Univeristy) and curated by  
> Hirasawa Go (Meiji Gakuin University).
> 
> The West Coast Screenings include a special screening on Friday of  
> Katoh Yoshihiro's White Hare of Inaba.  A screening of this film had  
> been planned initially for the Rajikaru series at the Getty Museum  
> but was cancelled due to concern over its content.  We are delighted  
> to finally screen this film in Southern California.  Dr. Rika Hiro,  
> Research Associate at the Getty Research Institute, will introduce  
> the film. The West Coast Screenings of Cinema/ Movement have been  
> organized by Jonathan M Hall.
> 
> 
> Thursday Program 1: Films by Oe Masanori
> 
> Oe Masanori moved to NY after graduating from college in 1966, working
> at the Third World film studio with Jonas Mekas, Stan Vanderbeek and
> others.  At the same time, he was drawn to the possibilities of the
> psychedelic movement through figures such as Timothy Leary.  Meeting
> up with Marvin Fishman at Studio M2, he entered film production
> beginning with S No. 1, a news footage collage that exposed the
> violence of American imperialism.  Head Games blithely follows soap
> bubbles blown by the wind at a be-in in Central Park, opposing the
> objectivity of recording an event with a more subjective and
> psychological approach.  Likewise No Game, Oe's film of the October
> 21st International Anti-War Day demonstrations at the Pentagon, while
> incorporating footage taken from planes of bombings over Vietnam, is
> focused much more on the actual experience of participants in the
> demonstration. For the psychedelically inspired Salome's Children,
> which utilized multiple exposures and extreme close-ups of a woman
> dancing to Indian music, Oe attached two strips of 8mm film to a
> single 16mm roll, projecting it onto two screens.  As with its title,
> Between the Frame concentrated on the space between the images on a
> film strip to reveal the author's inner experience.  The Great
> Society, made with Fishman, collaged newsreel footage of the Vietnam
> War, the psychedelic and civil rights movements, and other events to
> depict the America of the 1960s, projecting it in grand style on six
> different screens.  The concluding sequence of the testing of the
> hydrogen bomb is appropriately overwhelming.
> 
> "S No.1," 1967, Japan - 5 minutes - 16mm
> "Head Games," 1967, Japan - 10 minutes - 16mm
> "No Game," 1967, Japan - 17 minutes - 16mm
> "Salome's Children," 1968, Japan - 7 minutes - 16mm
> "Between the Frame," 1967, Japan - 10 minutes - 16mm
> "Great Society," 1967, Japan - 17 minutes - DVD transfer from multi- 
> projection 16mm
> 
> 
> Thursday Program 2:  Crazy Love
> 
> Okabe Michio began his career in the fine arts.  Inspired by the works
> of Kenneth Anger and the American underground, he gravitated towards
> filmmaking.  Crazy Love was his second work and the first feature
> length underground film in Japan. Eschewing narrative and meaning,
> Okabe instead layered the film with the music he liked from the
> Beatles and James Brown to Enka and Group Sounds and peopled it with
> friends and artists, inserting sequences of performances and
> happenings, making it a true document of the Shinjuku underground
> scene.  Okabe himself appears recreating his favorite roles from
> Bonnie and Clyde to Spaghetti Westerns, as well as incorporating
> quotations by inserting stills of Godard, Kennedy's assassination and
> the Vietnam War.  Correlated with Susan Sontag's theorization of
> kitsch as well as employing the queer lingo of "camp," the film's
> relentless equal opportunity pop-art montage shattered the foundations
> of conventional cinema, including the experiments of the early 60s,
> liberating infinite new possibilities.
> 
> "Crazy Love," Directed by Okabe Michio - 1968, Japan - 93 minutes
> -16mm (selected clips)
> 
> Friday Program 1: Films by Jonouchi Motoharu
> 
> Jonouchi was instrumental in the formation and gathering of multiple
> artistic and anti-art endeavors including the Nihon University Cinema
> Club, VAN film research center, and the Neo-Dadaists, often living and
> sharing work space with others to establish a space of creative
> exchange.  Hi Red Center Shelter Plan documented the formation of the
> Hi Red Center by visual artists Akasegawa Genpei, Nakanishi Natsuyuki
> and Takamatsu Jiro as they produced an individual shelter for the
> fallout of nuclear war.   Wols is composed of small fragments of shots
> by the Informel photographer and painter Wolfgang Otto Schulze
> (1913-1951), who called himself Wols.  Gewaltopia Trailer and Shinjuku
> Station, part of the Gewaltopia (gewalt=violence+utopia) series, are
> both born from the anti-establishment struggles at Nihon University.
> In their meticulous assemblage of individual shots of different spaces
> imbued with the symbolic significance of political confrontation, they
> rejected the theatrics of spectacle, instead establishing a radical
> materialism of spaces in both structure and methodology.
> 
> "Hi Red Center Shelter Plan," 1964, Japan - 18minutes - 16mm
> "Wols," 1964, Japan - 18minutes - 16mm
> "Gewaltpia Trailer," 1969, Japan - 13minutes - 16mm
> "Shinjuku Station," 1974, Japan - 14minutes - 16mm
> 
> Friday Program 2:
> "Inaba no shirousagi/White Hare of Inaba" Directed by Kato
> Yoshihiro. 1970, Japan - 132 minutes - 16mm and DVD (selected clips)
> 
> Cinema/Movement Organization by Sharon HAYASHI, York University
> Curation and program notes by HIRASAWA Go, Meiji Gakuin University
> Translation of program notes by Phil KAFFEN, New York University
> West Coast Screenings Organized by Jonathan M. Hall with Assistance  
> from Rika Hiro and the Getty Research Institute
> 
> 
> Ticket Prices:
> $3 Students w/ ID, $5 General Admission, $4 UCI Staff and Seniors
> Series Pass: $25 general/$20 UCI Staff & Seniors/$15 Students
> There are no advance ticket sales. Tickets are available in front of
> HIB 100 a half hour prior to the screening.
> 
> Driving Directions:
>  From the 405 or I-5, exit Jamboree and go WEST. Turn LEFT on Campus
> Dr. Turn RIGHT onto the UCI Campus at W. Peltason Drive. Turn LEFT
> onto Pereira Dr.  From SR73, exit University Dr. and go EAST. Turn
> RIGHT on Campus Dr. Turn RIGHT onto the UCI Campus at W. Peltason
> Drive. Turn LEFT onto Pereira Dr.
> The Pereira/Student Center Parking Structure is the first left on
> Pereira Dr. Parking is available for $5. Follow the "Film and Video
> Center" pedestrian signs to the bottom floor of the Humanities
> Instructional Building.
> Downloadable maps are available on the UCI web site:
> http://www.uci.edu/campusmaps.shtml
> 
> About the Film and Video Center:
> The Film and Video Center is UC Irvine and Orange County's premiere
> art house cinema, screening new, independent, experimental and
> groundbreaking films and videos. The FVC also presents much loved
> classic films and lesser known gems. Finally, the FVC co-sponsors film
> festivals representing a diverse range of international and
> multicultural themes each year. The mission of the FVC is to provide
> Orange County and surrounding communities with quality, original works
> of art unavailable anywhere else, promote independent film making and
> create a culture receptive to new and unique movie-going experiences.
> 
> -----
> Jonathan M. Hall
> Japanese Film, Media, and Modern Literature
> Assistant Professor, Comparative Literature / Film & Media Studies
> University of California Irvine
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> Asia-FMS at uci.edu
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