JF Waste?

Nornes, Markus amnornes at umich.edu
Mon Nov 9 12:35:44 EST 2009


If there were prints laying around sleeping when their rights were  
cleared, this is indeed unfortunate.

But I have to say that my own experience with the film section of JF  
has been very good. If our programming at Michigan ever has problems,  
it has to do with studios and rights holders. True, the local branches  
do not have staff with expertise in film. But their purchasing  
patterns betray some smarts when it comes to choosing films. I have  
also written reviews for them and had a chance to interrogate (!) the  
main office at length about their holdings when programming films for  
Kinema Club in Tokyo. This is an impressively heterogeneous list.  If  
there ID one pressing problem it is that they keep the list secret.  
MANY of the films they have are not the kind of work you would  
immediately think of and put on an inquiry list. But if you saw the  
depth of what is there you could certainly do some fun and innovative  
programming. There is no good reason not to make that list public.

Markus

(Sent from my iPod, so please excuse the brevity and mistakes.)

On Nov 9, 2009, at 8:06 AM, "Aaron Gerow" <aaron.gerow at yale.edu> wrote:

> Mark,
>
> Thanks for all the suggestions and comments. I think you are right
> that, beyond public pressure via the media, government pressure is the
> main avenue for change. The problem is getting access. The JF
> partially has such access, so it is good the JF is thinking about this
> problem and not just kowtowing to the position the Asahi promotes. But
> it is also in an inferior position, so approaches have to be made to
> higher ups like the Bunkacho chokan. I liked the previous one, Aoki
> Tamotsu, who was a scholar in his own right, but I wonder about the
> current one, Tamai Hideo, who was head of the board of education of
> Kitakyushu.
>
> One thing should be said about rights holders, however. Over the last
> 15 years, I've written kaisetsu for literally hundreds of the films
> the JF has in its collection, so I have a good sense of what they
> have. It should be stressed that the majority of the films in their
> collection are from smaller or independent production companies,
> including quite a number of films that were never commercially
> released but only sent around the country to show at public halls,
> etc. I think it would be a mistake to think that the JF is simply
> buckling under to pressure from powerful rights holders. In fact, I
> think the JF has relatively few films from Toho, which is now the most
> annoying about rights (though that might also have to do with the fact
> that Toho doesn't show much interest in showing its catalog abroad
> unless big money is involved). Big companies like Toho, Shochiku and
> Toei may make some of these demands, but I also had the feeling when I
> learned of the practice the Asahi described that some of these
> contracts may be backdoor attempts to subsidize independent producers.
> I can't confirm the intention, but that has probably been the effect
> in some cases. This does not obviate your arguments about rights, but
> it does complicate the history of this practice, and underline that
> the government subsidy system itself is rather haphazard and illogical
> (for instance, to get Bunkacho money, you have to have a distributor
> beforehand, but that eliminates the vast majority of independent
> producers). And it does compel us to consider what rights could mean
> for independent producers as well. It was great that when we showed
> one of the dokuritsu pro films from the 1950s at Yale, the rights
> holder was so happy he let us have it for just the cost of shipping.
> But I don't think independent producers are all like that. Where do
> they fit in the picture?
>
> By the way, I ran into someone from the JF at a party over the
> weekend. He thanked me for the blog piece, but also mentioned that a
> few other news organizations are planning articles along the same
> lines of the Asahi one. He heaved a great sigh....
>
> That kind of media attitude needs to be changed as well.
>
>
> Aaron Gerow
> Associate Professor
> Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
> Yale University
> 53 Wall Street, Room 316
> PO Box 208363
> New Hav



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