Re: NFC

Sat Sep 13 22:14:22 EDT 2008

I've also followed the discussion with curiosity as someone who worked at the NFC for a while as a visting curator. As for the NFC's problems, as many have already mentioned, one of the main reasons is an institutional issue: the NFC is a branch of National Museum, and that makes things very hard for them to move flexbile. But it's getting better, thanks to curators who are very willing to accommodate as much as they can within the limited terms and conditions. 

I won't go into details, but also I wanted to point out that the NFC's raison d'etre as a film archive which priotizes preservation and restoration rather than collection and exhibition is a complex issue as well. As Michael righly metioned, when the FNC started as a film library (with Kawakita Kashiko and others collaboration), it was designed as a cinematheque (like Cinematheque Francaise), following Henri Langlois, who basically collected films and showed them as much as possible (that's one of the reasons why in the 1970s the NFC screened most of its foreign film collections without any subtitles--especially old collections,  CF, like  unless the prints they acquired are permanent loans from mainly TOWA, actually whose collection are now screened as Kawakita Kashiko retrospective). There was a big debate between Langlois and Earnest Lindgren who was a long time curator of National Film Acrhive, BFI, who decided to put more emphasis on preservation and restoration. This d!
 ebate between Langlois and Lindgren has been a big important issue for every archive, I think. The NFC changed its direction, perhaps after the tragic fire and also it's decision to participate in the FIAF in the early 1990s. So, as many archives, the NFC started as an old-school cinematheque and then shifted its emphasis on preservation (which suits probably bettwe with the purpose of a governmental institution). So I just wanted to say that the issue between preservation/exhbition is an ongoing issue, an essential issue for many film archives. Unfortunately, it's very true, as Aaron said, the NFC's concern with academic research is rather low on the list. Yet, I have to say that they really don't have the human and financial resources for making itself more accessible to academic research even if they would like to be otherwise (also there are some unfortunate occasions when some scholars unwrongly attacked the NFC publically for their activities--of course, people can cr!
 iticize the institution but if they do it should be in a productive ma
nner but some cases were soley mean attacks, that must have put the NFC off more). Anyway, Michael is very right in saying that "how much we can expect governments to sponsor the "critical" study of film history". 

Sorry about this long posting.

Ayako Saito

> -----???????-----
???: "Michael Raine" <mjraine at uchicago.edu>
???: "'Alex Zahlten'" <Alex.Zahlten at gmx.de>,<KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
??: 08/09/14 07:32
??: NFC
>
>Alex asks an interesting question about the NFC's raison d'etre. I've been trying to trace how the film library / archive movement began in Japan. Roland probably already knows, and the NFC probably has a book on this -- if anyone has any leads, I'd be happy to hear them! Anyway, here's some of what little I think I know ...
> 
> It seems to me that the idea of a Japanese film library / archive, at least from the late 1950s, was explicitly set up around the non-commercial exhibition of the films. There were debates in 1950s journals about how to do film history: should it be left to the older critics (Iijima Tadashi et al) or could young critics see enough films to make their own arguments (Sato Tadao and others)? Critics, at least, talked about a film archive as a way of publicizing and understanding film history through primary texts. There were a bunch of "national museum of modern art old film special appreciation society," "film history study group special screening society," "silent film appreciation monthly exhibition society" and the like even before the Museum opened its new screening room in 1962. Shimizu Akira wrote an excited description of the new space: 210 seats, raked seating, 35mm and 16mm projection at all frame rates and aspect ratios, and a glass booth for commentary (this is ho!
 w unsubtitled films were sometimes shown). As Shimizu wrote, it was the "ideal place to study living film history." 
> 
> The first retrospective was the French film festival where Rules of the Game was shown, as discussed a few days ago (in response to Ayako: I don't know whether the film was subtitled or not: other films on "permanent loan" were; the rest definitely were not. Apparently Maruo Sadamu, Sadoul's translator who was in France at the time, supplied details on the films that was sold in book form at the festival). The French film festival was the brainchild of Henri Langlois, the idea being two-fold: to preserve film in case of a Third World War by distributing them around the world (!) and to educate people about film history. As Shimizu again enthused: it's as if the screening room had been converted into the (French) Cinematheque for four months! 
> 
> So I think the idea of public exhibition was one of the principles of the Japan film library / archive movement, similar to the "rescue, collection, preservation and screening" principles of the International Federation of Film Archives. It does seem that the NFC in Kyobashi (opened in 1970, I think) was built to further those goals. Which doesn't excuse the lack of research facilities attached to the archive, such a those at peer institutions like the BFI, but even the BFI's open library and "mediatheque" are relatively recent developments, and are justified precisely as a move away from stuffy research toward "public access." I suppose the real question is how much we can expect governments to sponsor the "critical" study of film history when their interests like more in publicity and popularity, and the economic center of gravity has shifted so far toward TV and other media. 
> 
> Michael
> 
> Michael Raine
> Assistant Professor in Japanese Cinema
> The University of Chicago
> mjraine at uchicago.edu
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alex Zahlten [mailto:Alex.Zahlten at gmx.de] 
> Sent: Friday, September 05, 2008 6:03 AM
> To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> Subject: Japanese governmental agencies/film
> 
> 
> Hi everyone, this discussion is very interesting, I think.
> 
> ....
> 
> As for the NFC and its staff, to be fair it must be said that they ARE constantly stripped for funds, constantly overworked and stretching their limits. The NFC's original raison d'etre was preserving film, and I don't even believe (anyone who knows for sure can weigh in) that promoting film culture i.e. screenings was in their original charter. So a bit bizarrely, as I understand it, it was originally conceived as an institution for the preserving of films, which weren't necessarily planned to be shown. The whole structure of the institution today is still shaped by this. 
> 
> ...
> 
> Alex
> -- 
> alex at nipponconnection.de
> 
> Psssst! Schon das coole Video vom GMX MultiMessenger gesehen?
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>