Japan and Cult

[Jasper Sharp]

This is of particular relevance to this discussion: Nikkatsu have just started up a new label called Sushi Typhoon which seems to be explicitly targeting this Western market previously tapped by the likes of Tokyo Gore Police et al, with a series of films by directors including Yoshihiro Nishimura, director of the aforementioned film. There seems to be a ready made festival audience for this type of film, especially in North America. 

There's more details on this label here: http://www.screendaily.com/festivals/afm/japans-nikkatsu-to-unleash-sushi-typhoon/5007653.article

There's something interesting worth mentioning here, which is that the studios themselves are intentionally trying to create 'cult' films, which for me goes against the implied definition of a cult film, i.e. one that finds its own audience.
Comparisons/distinctions might be drawn with Tartan's attempt at creating a cult around their 'Asian Extreme' label, and Ring-producer Tak Ichise's attempts at producing films also with his main eye on the Western market.

As an aside, one can probably say that the word 'cult' was first really applied to Japanese cinema with Thomas Weisser's magazine Asian Cult Cinema, first published under the title Asian Trash Cinema - this celebrated the more vernacular productions that Western critics had hitherto pretty much ignored before the 1990s.
When we kicked off Midnight Eye, our slogan was "Japanese Cult Cinema", which was quickly ditched as we realised it was too limiting and didn't really seem appropriate to a lot of the films by the likes of Shinji Aoyama and Naomi Kawase which we were covering at the beginning, nor older titles by directors such as Teinosuke Kinugasa and Keisuke Kinoshita. I think we changed it after about six months to "the latest and best in Japanese cinema".
Also, it might be worth checking up the archives of the old Mobius Home Video discussion forum (http://www.mhvf.net/), which was, around 1999-2000, one of the main websites discussing Asian cinema, in seperate forums to those of Sci-fi/Horror, Eurocult, Exploitation etc. You'll get an idea of the type of films that were falling under discussion.

Hope this helps,

Jasper



Midnight Eye: The Latest and Best in Japanese Cinema
www.midnighteye.com

More details about me on http://jaspersharp.com/




> Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 03:22:20 +0100
> From: berndstandhaft at gmx.de
> To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> Subject: Re: Japan and Cult
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Mark Mays wrote:
> 
> > Interesting. I think the notion speaks to how Japanese films make it to
> > the West (the US in my case) and how they play to certain expectations/
> > notions of Japanese cinema especially in the 18 to 34 demographic.
> 
> I think an interesting example of transnational film marketing can be experienced in the way some film producers in Japan tried to hop on the wave of Japanese Cult Cinema in the West and produce films with an international Cult Film Market in mind. I think of Machine Girl, Tokyo Gore Police, Chanbara Beauty, Samurai Princess, Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl... . Maybe the success of these films can explain why a film of the type of Hausu can appeal to certain audiences even more than 30 years after the original release in Japan and become Cult.
> 
> 
> Greetings
> Bernd
> 
 		 	   		  
_________________________________________________________________
Do you have a story that started on Hotmail? Tell us now
http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/195013117/direct/01/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/kinejapan/attachments/20100218/b70bbdbb/attachment.html