JF Waste?

[Aaron Gerow]

Thanks Mark, again, for a long and on the mark response.

I posted my commentary to my blog (as I sometimes do, but after  
cleaning it up a bit) so it has been "published" in a very small  
fashion. And since I subscribe to an analytical service that tells me  
about site visitors, I know how small a fashion this is (not many  
people come to my site). But I did notice there there were a lot of  
people from the Japan Foundation accessing my site today for various  
reasons. At least someone is reading it.

As for publishing these issues, I certainly think something should be  
done. I have thought about trying to write up something for the Asahi  
or some other paper on problems of film study and corporate rights,  
but connections are always helpful.

And Mark, you are right that a big issue I didn't have time to get  
into is the nature of these contracts. From my understanding, the JF  
owns none of these prints. They merely house them under contract. In  
some cases, they help organizations show them, but only if the  
organization pays the copyright holder; in others--and this was the  
problem cited in the article--they use those films to show at their  
and related facilities. They thus assert few rights over them. But as  
I have said before, the JF should be pressuring these companies to  
facilitate the spread of Japanese film (by lowering screening fees or,  
as here, not requiring multiple screening contracts paid in advance).  
But it is clear that Japanese cultural institutions are largely  
subservient to the corporations. As I keep complaining, rights-- 
especially copyright--are something that can serious strangle Japanese  
cinema. And it is not only the JF: the FIlm Center basically ignores  
their and their users' fair use rights and often denies this or that  
use of a film by citing copyright or contract stipulations.

In many of these cases, only outside pressure (using the media) or  
decisions by higher ups (I think the Bunkachokan may be a good place  
to start) is going to get things moving.

Aaron Gerow
Associate Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University
53 Wall Street, Room 316
PO Box 208363
New Haven, CT 06520-8363
USA
Phone: 1-203-432-7082
Fax: 1-203-432-6764
e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu
site: www.aarongerow.com