Cinema/Movement Tour

Tue Oct 30 17:36:54 EDT 2007

For those of you in the US close to New York, New Haven, Toronto, or Irvine, the Cinema/Movement tour, a collection of rare experimental and political films, is coming soon to a theater (or university) near you.

 CINEMA/MOVEMENT ON TOUR

 The Cinema/Movement traveling film series and conferences focus on the vibrant and controversial interaction between political action and experimental filmmaking in the 1960s and 1970s in Japan.  
 While the films of the Japanese New Wave, which emerged out of the studio system, are fairly well known, much of radical postwar Japanese film culture, including a considerable amount of independent work, remains unknown and unseen. This program attempts to address this gap by presenting a series of truly underground works inspired as much by political as by aesthetic events in Japan, the US, and the world. 
 Bringing together film scholars and activists, the Cinema/Movement conferences hope to inspire new perspectives on  ?movement cinema (the cinema of political movements)? and the ?cinema of movement (cinematic experimentation).? 

 The film program follows the list of dates and venues.

 The various incarnations of the Cinema/Movement film series and conferences were organized by Hirasawa Go, Sharon Hayashi (York University), Phil Kaffen (NYU), Harry Harootunian (NYU), Heather Keung (Reel Asian International Film Festival), Sabu Kohso, Wendy Dorsett (Anthology Film Archives), Jonathan Hall (UC Irvine), and Aaron Gerow (Yale University). For more information about the film series tour please contact Sharon Hayashi at hayashi at yorku.ca.

 CINEMA=MOVEMENT ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES 
 Intersections of Art and Politics in Underground and Radical Films from Japan in the 1960s
 Screenings and a one-day symposium
 November 2 ? 4, 2007
 (http://www.nyu.edu/pages/east.asian.studies/events.html)
 (http://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/)

 In collaboration with scholars from NYU and York University, Anthology Film Archives is pleased to present a series of 1960s underground and radical films from Japan. In addition to the screenings, there will be a one-day symposium addressing the problem of radical arts and politics in Japan during the 60s and 70s and the meaning of those struggles for our contemporary moment. 

 Symposium 
 November 4, 2007 3-5pm, Anthology Film Archives. Free and open to the public.

 CINEMA / MOVEMENT AT YALE
 The Interaction between Artistic and Social Praxis in Japanese Filmmaking
 Thursday, November 8, 2007 7:00 PM
 Room 106, 212 York Street
 (http://research.yale.edu/eastasianstudies/)

 In cooperation with York University and Anthology Film Archives, the Council on East Asian Studies and the Film Studies Program will present a portion of the "Cinema/Movement" film series focusing on the vibrant and controversial interactions between political action and experimental filmmaking in the 1960s and 1970s in Japan. Hirasawa Go will be in attendance at the Yale screenings to discuss the films shown.

 CINEMA/MOVEMENT AT YORK UNIVERSITY, TORONTO 
 The Interaction between Artistic and Social Praxis in Japanese Filmmaking
 Two-day conference and film series
 Nov 12-19, 2007
 (http://www.yorku.ca/finearts/film/events/events.htm)
 (http://www.reelasian.com/program_s.php?program_id=126)

 The Department of Film at York University, the Reel Asian International Film Festival, CineClub York and the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto present an international conference and film series focusing on the vibrant and controversial interaction between political action and experimental filmmaking in the 1960s and 1970s in Japan. Funding and support of the conference generously provided by the Japan Foundation.

 Conference Part I and II
 November 15, 2007 2-5pm, Nick Mirkopoulos Screening Room ACE 004, York University 
 November 16, 2007 10am-2pm, East Asian Studies Lounge, Robarts Library 14087, University of Toronto

 Film Screenings 
 November 12, 2007 6pm, Centre for Film and Theatre135, York University
 November 15, 2007 7pm, Nick Mirkopoulos Screening Room ACE 004, York University
 November 16, 2007 4pm, Toronto Reel Asian Int?l Film Festival, Innis Town Hall, University of Toronto
 November 19, 2007 6pm, Centre for Film and Theatre135, York University

 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE FILM and VIDEO CENTER
 Cinema/Movement: The Interaction between Artistic and Social Praxis in Japanese Filmmaking
 Thursday & Friday, November 29 ? 30 7pm
  (http://www.humanities.uci.edu/fvc/schedF07_08_cinemamovement.html)

 The FVC will host the West Coast screenings of ?Cinema/Movement.
 Dr. Rika Hiro, Research Assistant at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, will introduce Inaba no shirousagi/ White Hare of Inaba on Friday, November 30.

 CINEMA/MOVEMENT FILM PROGRAM
 PROGRAM 1:
 Jonouchi Motoharu:
 Hi Red Center Shelter Plan, 18min, 1964, 16mm
 Wols, 18min, 1964, 16mm
 Gewaltopia Trailer, 13min, 1969, 16mm
 Shinjuku Station, 14min, 1974, 16mm

 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.  

 PROGRAM 2:
 Oe Masanori
 S No.1, 5min, 1967, 16mm
 Head Games, 1967, 10min, 16mm
 No Game, 1967,17min, 16mm
 Salome's Children, 1968, 7min, 16mm
 Between the Frame, 1967,10min, 16mm
 Great Society, 1967, 17 min, 16mm-multi screen&#8594;DVD

 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.

 PROGRAM 3: 
 Nihon University Cinema Club
 Wan (Rice Bowl) 25min, 16mm 
 Sain (The Closed Vagina) 57min, 16mm

 The Nihon University Cinema Club (Nichidai Eiken) was an organization formed in 1957 by Hirano Katsumi, Kanbara Hiroshi, Ko Hiro, and Jonouchi Motoharu.  Employing a collective production method that eschewed the name of the author, the group mixed documentary and surrealist tendencies to confront the increasing political tensions arising in Japan.  Sparked by the security treaty with the US (Anpo) the group reformed and Wan (1961) was the first work by the newly formed collective.   Through a narrative of matricide in a country village, the film metaphorically critiqued the failure to prevent the security treaty, its restrained black and white compositions and lack of dialogue projecting the darkly oppressive spirit of the time.  Sain (63) took the metaphor of a closed vagina to symbolize these closed-off feelings, creating a narrative of ?love? in order to illuminate other possibilities.  The symbolism of cruelty and eroticism was fueled by recent sexological theories
 and the obscenity trials around the translation of the Marquis de Sade.  The screening of the film itself became an event, inspiring many up and coming filmmakers and expanding the frame on underground and independent cinema in Japan.  

 PROGRAM 4: 
 Adachi Masao, Matsuda Masao, Sasaki Mamoru, et al.
 AKA: Serial Killer, 1969, 90min, 35mm&#8594;DVD

 Nearly impossible to classify, AKA was a true underground film, screening only once until recently.  Beginning and ending with a brief voiceover, ?In the fall of last year, four murders took place in four cities using the same gun.  In the spring of this year, a 19-year-old youth was arrested.  He was called the serial killer? the film traces the imagined itinerary of this serial killer, Nagayama Norio.  On the one hand, it is an almost meditative journey across Japan with no characters or dialogue and only the sparse but evocative score provided by Yamashita Yosuke?s free jazz trio; but shot by shot, small details and the relentless homogeneity of the country?s landscapes reveal something far more sinister at work?the way in which state power was embodied in the suffocating landscape itself. Thus it was this landscape that had to be confronted and the film then served as a manifesto for this ?theory of landscape.? The theory was also debated in journals, making a big
 impact not only on other notable film radicals including Oshima Nagisa and Wakamatsu Koji, but across multiple fields of photography, literature, design, and theory. A rarely seen, quietly unsettling film experience.

 PROGRAM 5 
 Okabe Michio, Crazy Love, 1968, 93min, 16mm  
 Total running time  93 minutes.

 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.  

 Curation and program notes by Hirasawa Go. 
 Translation of program notes by Phil Kaffen.

 __________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/private/kinejapan/attachments/20071030/f7e61942/attachment.html