New Book by Roberta Novielli

[Mark Nornes]

Roberta Novielli has just published an open source book, one of the very first in Italy. Here is the description:

METAMORFOSI - SCHEGGE DI VIOLENZA NEL NUOVO CINEMA GIAPPONESE
In the last twenty years Japanese cinema has gained an international popularity with no precedent in its history. Many movies, often screened at the most prestigious film festivals, are now available on the internet in different formats, distributed on dvd and also broadcast on various TV channels. In recent years we have witnessed an increase of sites and blogs which have dedicated a huge space for reviews and comments to these movies, but it is however clear that they in some cases lack those elements useful to coherently connect these works to the Japanese cultural background, a gap this book partially has been trying to fill. 
The selection method followed for the contents and the works, here divided in four great spheres depending on the “monsters” who people them — horror and supernatural, psycho-horror, science and technology, B-movies on yakuza and erotic matters —, refers to the cinema known to the Western audience. Only after completing this book it became clear that the leitmotiv of the selected works is violence, often linked to a substratum of solitude and incommunicability to which the technological and productive race, together with the recent finalcial crisis, has exiled many individuals. From this point of view, they can be considered universal themes, and this helps us understand the reasons for the international success of this cinema.

Sounds great! But I'm afraid the book itself is in Italian. 

http://venus.unive.it/asiamed/vetrina/proposte/metamorfosi.html

Markus
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/kinejapan/attachments/20100809/ea76a5cf/attachment.html