SCMS CFP: Sogo Ishii

[Randolph Jordan]

Hello everyone.

Peter Rist and I are putting together a panel entitled "The  
Importance of Sogo Ishii" for SCMS in Tokyo 2009.  Here's the CFP as  
posted on the SCMS bulletin board:

This panel will address the work of Sogo Ishii who we believe to be  
one of Japan?s most important yet underappreciated filmmakers. One of  
the key members of the 1970s post-new wave generation of Japanese  
filmmakers, Ishii was a pioneering, school and university-based 8mm  
filmmaker, and the one most closely connected to the punk music scene  
in Japan. Arguably, he was, and is, the most significant film  
director to document musical performers and performances in Japan  
(e.g., 1/2 Mensch, 1986, on the German ?noise band? Einst?rzende  
Neubauten) and one of the foremost punk film aestheticians in the  
world (e.g., Koko Dai Panniku, Panic High School, 1977; Bakuretsu  
Toshi, Burst City, 1982). He was also a pioneering director of 1980s  
film comedy (Gyaku Funsha Kazoku, Crazy Family, 1984) and action  
(Shuffle, 1981), and was amoung the first to bridge Manga aesthetics  
with live action, creating a template for the recent surge in Manga- 
based film in Japan. Perhaps most importantly, we believe that Ishii  
is an innovative audiovisual stylist whose work has had a mostly- 
unrecognized influence on later generations of Japanese feature  
filmmakers that have become much better known and regarded in the  
West (e.g., Shinya Tsukamoto, Takeshi Kitano and Takashi Miike).

We invite papers on all aspects of Sogo Ishii?s film and media work,  
with a special interest in those that argue for his status as  
influential innovator. As Tom Mes suggested when writing for the  
online journal Midnight Eye in 2001: Ishii was ?the most important  
Japanese filmmaker of the last two decades.? Although not all  
presenters need agree with this statement, we are hopeful that this  
panel will present some substantial evidence and argumentation in  
support of the ?importance of Sogo Ishii.?

Please submit 300 word proposals (with short bios) by August 1st to:

Peter Rist - mhchair at alcor.concordia.ca

and

Randolph Jordan - rj at randolphjordan.com

Thank you,

Randolph.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/private/kinejapan/attachments/20080706/b0634669/attachment.html