TIFF highlights

[batgirl@tkb.att.ne.jp]

For any KineJapanners in Tokyo right now, or close enough to get to 
Shibuya by 12:50 this afternoon, one of the expected highlights of this 
year's TIFF is a set of postwar documentaries about the city of Tokyo 
showing this afternoon at Le Cinema at Bunkamura.

At 12:50, there's a screening of two 1962 Iwanami documentaries about 
Tokyo by Tsuchimoto Noriaki and Kakumu Yoichi made for the television 
station NET (now Tele Asahi). The two were part of a series sponsored 
by Fuji Steel that were to promote each of Japan's prefectures, but 
Tsuchimoto's was never aired, and Kakumu's got re-edited before it was 
shown. These are screening with Tokyo 1958, a 1959 documentary by 
Teshigawara Hiroshi made to promote "modern Japanese life" to foreign 
audiences.

Then at 15:50, TIFF is showing another Tsuchimoto documentary, 1964's 
Dokyumento Rojo, along with Nijunengo no Tokyo, a 1947 discussion of 
how Tokyo should be rebuilt after the fire-bombing.

Both programmes are part of the Tokyo in Focus sub-section of TIFF, a 
look at postwar representations of Tokyo on film with everything from 
the 1947 reconstruction documentary  and Tsuchimoto to a wonderfully 
frothy 1992 comedy about job-hunting in the late (and pre-keitai) 
bubble years, Patlabor, and Sans Soleil.

Sarah Teasley

On 2007/10/26, at 10:54, cecilia.collaoni3 at tin.it wrote:

> I couldn't have a pass for all the selection I'm in Tokyo just for a
> trip, but I was there for both Tears of Kitty and Beauty, I completely
> agree with Mister Davis, Tears of Kitty was a little better, but I
> found Beauty sometimes irritating, even the Kabuki performances hadn't
> the fascination I expected. Has somebody something to say about
> Nakae's" Bloody snake under the sun"? I couldn't watch it and Im
> curious to hear some critic's opinion.
> Best Regards, hoping to have
> more luck at TOKYO FILM EX.
>
> Cecilia Collaoni
>
> ----Messaggio
> originale----
> Da: rwdavisjr at ca.rr.com
> Data: 25-ott-2007 2.40 PM
> A:
> <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
> Cc: "Massa Alice"<kingyo02 at hotmail.
> com>
> Ogg: Re: more TIFF
>
> Greetings from Tokyo!
>
> Alice Massa wrote
>
>> I
> met Mr Wakamatsu some weeks ago and he told me the initial score Jim
> O'Rourke composed was almost totally reworked to set the kind of music
> Wakamatsu himself wanted for his film. He said: Jim hasn't heard the
> final
> score yet, but I bet he won't like it at all...!!!!!!!
>
> That
> makes a lot of sense, as it seemed to me there were, at least in the
> second half of the film, few cues used over and over again.
>
> This is my
> first TIFF, btw. I used my guest lecture at Waseda U on Monday as an
> excuse to stay in Tokyo 10 days and attend the fest. TIFF seems well
> organized - the small army of volunteers seems to outnumber the press
> (I got a credential because I sometimes write for American
> Cinematographer magazine) by about three to one, but the selection,
> especially of Japanese films, seems surprisingly weak.
>
> Unlike the
> Wakamatsu film we've been discussing, "Beauty" and "Tears of Kitty"
> seem to have zero artistic aspirations. And the most exciting thing
> about "Peeping Tom" was that Kurosawa Kiyoshi was sitting (sleeping?)
> in the row in front of me. The movie I most anticipated, Kobayashi
> Masahiro's "Ai no yokan", was the incredibly rigorously executed
> "story" of the father and mother of a 14-year-old murder victim and her
> 14-year-old assailant, respectively. And though the premise sounds
> promising, the film consists of a dozen or more scenes of said father
> (Kobayashi himself) eating dinner and said mother doing the dishes, and
> little else. Today I saw Miike's "Crows Zero", apparently a kind of
> prequel to the manga. Miike spoke briefly before the film. One of my
> former students, now back at Waseda, a Miike fan, sensed from the talk
> that the director wasn't that enthusiastic about the film and indeed
> the TBS sponsored film (the figure 400,000,000 Y was mentioned re the
> budget) was non-stop fighting but uninspired, not particularly Miike-
> esque in any one of Miike's many incarnations. My student thought it
> was a "Blue Spring" rehash on steroids, which seems a reasonable
> capsule assessment.
>
> For my money, the most interesting film I've seen
> in Tokyo this week was Aoyama's "Sad Vacation" which was still playing
> at Shinjuku's Musashinokan. The movie seemed to have a real voice, a
> much more mature and distinctive rhythm than any of Aoyama's previous
> work (though I should perhaps say that I'm certainly not as big a fan
> of his "Eureka" as many probably are, so ...).
>
> Others who're attending
> the fest may have more detailed comments, which I look forward to
> hearing. Ja mata.
>
> Bob Davis
>
>
>