Visa problems

[Roger Macy]

Firstly, if anyone was heading down to the ICA in London this evening to hear Tian Zhuangzhang speak of his experience of making 'The Go Master' in Japan, it ain't gonna happen due to 'visa problems'.

There have been a number of directors billed to appear at the ICA from a variety of asian countries who did not appear, often due to 'visa problems', sounding more like the cold war era.  This prompts me to reflect upon difficulties in dissemination of Japanese films in the period I am looking at, around 1930.  There's a tangled web of language problems, political resistance, cultural incomprehension, prejudice and mis-matched commercial ambitions that each masquerade as each other.  Which makes it all the more surprising that no-one seems at this time to have used 'visa problems' as a reason or excuse.  All the more so when they were a real problem for Soviet directors of this period.  Pudovkin's three-day visa to the UK couldn't be extended by the Film Society despite impressive string-pulling and Eisenstein famously encountered visa problems in the US.  But these obstructions ultimately had little effect, I suggest, on film penetration, mainly due to the visibility of the obstruction.

But has anyone noticed a pre-war figure from the Japanese film industry cite visa problems as a difficulty, either real or not?

Finally, someone asked a while back whether 'Nippon Modern' was available yet.  My copy, ordered airmail from Honolulu, has turned up today, second class surface post from the Lebanon.  In the meantime, I see, it has become easily available on Amazon.   One of the joys of film studies is that I can look at the nice pictures in a book and claim to be doing research.  And no, there are no matches with the mis-labelled stills in 'Close Up',.
Roger
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