[KineJapan] 'Eternnal Zero' wins audience prize at Udine

[Stephen Cremin]

I haven't seen the ETERNAL ZERO screener, but I received another DVD of a high profile Japanese film last year: it was like watching through a six-inch thick window that hadn't been cleaned in thirty years. I'm sure it's the same process. The subtitles were also on the other side of that glass and impossible to read.


Meanwhile, South Korean sales companies will give out lightly watermarked screeners to festivals, buyers and reviewers before they open theatrically, including for blockbusters that make US$50m. For animations from China, for example, I sometimes get screeners in black and white that are still watchable.



The Japanese film industry wants to play both sides of the fence. It wants to be treated like a business outside of the responsibilities ("fair use", etc, cough!) of a cultural industry. And it wants to be treated as a cultural industry when it comes to support at film markets, tapping into Cool Japan funds, etc.




I suspect we'll never see anything useful emerge from that US$300 million Cool Japan fund. I'd like to see 1% set aside for subtitling (because pay is crashing, which will lead to less sell-able films), 1% to set up a an alternative to Kawakita Film Institute (that doesn't work on a "grace-and-favours" system), etc.




Returning to those two suggestions.




Subtitling. Sales agents tell me that people walk out of screenings at markets when there is poor subtitles. Just two or three mistakes creates a distance between the viewer and the film. One told me it was the key reason for walk-outs, irrespective of the quality of the film. (She handles non-Japanese films.)




On an alternative to Kawakita. When the majority of Asian films at Cannes come from South Korea, and we've seen the same trend in Berlin, one reason is that the Korean Film Council has a screening room for festivals that operates on a much more transparent system than Kawakita. And it has much more money.




There are good people at UniJapan, now and historically. (I started using them in the mid-1990s when the old Ginza office had three people, including a projectionist, a manual typewriter, and a one-woman dictionary of Japanese cinema.) I'm sure they are frustrated and know where money could be spent.





I haven't seen the Japanese films that were rejected by Cannes, but I would bet money that they stand up well next to the Korean films that were accepted. We won't know for six months. And I've heard that the Bae Du-na-starring A GIRL AT MY DOOR is strong enough to be in competition. Kawase, I'm not so sure.




So, in conclusion, the Japanese film industry insists on writing itself out of world film history, despite the wealth of film-making talent, the hard work of lots of good people at sales companies, festivals like Nippon Connection and Japan Cuts that find ways to smuggle cinematic cultural artifacts out of Tokyo, etc.




Eternal zero and all that.




Roger, if you're attending Cannes, and have a badge, there is a market screening of ETERNAL ZERO at 4:30pm on May 18 in Lerins 1. It won't be a better screen than the one in Udine, but it will be better than the screen the film showed at during the Berlin film market (at the same time as CROWS:EXPLODE).





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On Tue, May 6, 2014 at 1:30 AM, Roger Macy <macyroger at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Dear KineJapaners,
> I see that 'The Eternal Zero' won the audience prize at Udine this year.
> http://www.fareastfilm.com/EasyNe2/LYT.aspx?Code=FEFJ&IDLYT=13308&ST=SQL&SQL=ID_Documento=4397
> I can't add more as it was the only Japanese film there I didn't see.  That wasn't my deliberate choice - it clashed against a round table for  'Cinema Impact' and then, went I went to view it in the media room, the digital screener from Toho looked as if it was smeared with porridge (it was only Toho's that were like that).  I couldn't see the point in seeing an action spectacular under such conditions.  But, in retrospect, I would have liked to understand if there was an Italian dimension to this war-film's reception.
> Roger
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