[KineJapan] Kawase to direct Olympics doc

Mon Oct 29 12:29:35 EDT 2018

Dear Roger,
It’s not a comparison of the two films scene by scene, but you will find it
in Politics and the Olympic film documentary: The Legacies of Berlin
Olympia and Tokyo Olympiad’ in Sports & Society vol. 12(6): 811-21.
I thi.      I think a careful analysis of the two would be interesting.
Yours, Lola

On Monday, 29 October 2018, Roger Macy <macyroger at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Thanks Lola,
>
> I was trying to pin down where you wrote on Ichikawa’s *Olympiad*. Is
> that in your forthcoming ‘Media and Politics of Memory in Japan’ ?
>
> I think what particularly interests me is *which* Riefenstahl *Olympia*
> Ichikawa saw. She made a number of films for different national markets,
> including Japan, but I’m not sure what would have been archived, or easily
> available to Ichikawa. For $400 on Criterion, I would have wanted more on
> that.
>
> Anyway, isn’t it worth crediting that, unlike Riefenstahl, Ichikawa
> presented one global version ? I wonder what will happen in 2020 with our
> runaway fragmentation of audiences and politics.
>
> Roger
>
>
> On Sunday, 28 October 2018, 13:13:25 GMT, Dolores Martinez <dm6 at soas.ac.uk>
> wrote:
>
>
> Dear all,
> although I love much about Ishikawa's Tokyo Olympiad, having researched
> and written about it, I would argue that some aspects of it are somewhat
> less politically correct than we might like.  Aside from the photos of
> Ishiskawa and Riefenstahl warmly greeting and chatting on various
> occasions,  a careful analysis of his camera work and editing shows him
> paying homage to her (I am grudgingly having to admit this) pioneering
> technical innovations in making her documentary.  Igarashi, for example,
> has an interesting analysis of the Japanese women's volleyball win, while I
> find Ishikawa's editing of the marathon most indebted to her work.
> Just saying...
> Lola
>
> Dr Lola Martinez
> Reviews Editor, JRAI
> Emeritus Reader, SOAS
> Research Associate, ISCA, University of Oxford
>
>
>
> On Sun, 28 Oct 2018 at 04:03, Markus Nornes <nornes at umich.edu> wrote:
>
> I've never had problems with Kawase, who I've known since she showed some
> Yamagata staff Ni Tsusumarete in some classroom shortly after it was done.
> But I've heard plenty of stories of misbehavior over the years. It's
> disheartening.
>
> The comparison to Leni Riefenstahl is really unfair. Aside from the fact
> that one was an actor and the other is a prominent director, the LDP are
> not Nazis and Abe is hardly Hitler. The historical contexts are also
> entirely different.
>
> The only real comparison to make has to do with collaboration. But
> collaboration means something very different in today's Japan than Germany,
> even in the early 30s. I am writing up something up about the tough
> position of Chinese filmmakers today. A new film law went into effect
> recently that is as pernicious as anything the Nazis drew up (I'm teaching
> the latter right now). It has effectively destroyed any space for
> independent cinema. Anything made now must be integrated into official
> culture and structures, starting with censorship. I just got back from
> Hanzhou's West Lake Film Festival, where "collaboration" was a point of
> huge concern. The choice is as stark as collaborate, quit or go into exile.
>
> I like the way Aaron puts the issue vis a vis the Olympics "boondoggle."
> How Kawase comports herself vis a vis the nationalistic BS the games are
> embedded in will be the question. I'm glad she's doing it, and think it's a
> great choice. Here's an accomplished fiction filmmaker, and a woman
> director, who has shown a deep commitment to the documentary. I've dipped
> into the massive Criterion Collection 100 Years of Olympic Documentaries.
> They really aren't very good, despite a slew of major names (almost all
> men, and mainly fiction feature filmmakers). I hope she lets loose
> form-wise and does an Olympics film like no other. If she doesn't the
> judgement will be far more severe than what's being written now, that's for
> sure.
>
> Markus
> ---
>
> *Markus Nornes*
> *Professor of Asian Cinema*
> Department of Screen Arts and Cultures, Department of Asian Languages and
> Cultures, Penny Stamps School of Art & Design
>
> *Department of Screen Arts and Cultures*
> *6348 North Quad*
> *105 S. State Street*
> *Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285*
>
>
>
> On Sat, Oct 27, 2018 at 11:07 PM Frederick Veith <notreconciled at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Aaron,
>
> Thanks for the detailed reply. Being in complete opposition to the
> Olympics myself, that makes sense to me, and isn't surprising. I admit to
> having been morbidly curious about Kawase's reception for a long time now,
> but even leaving aside responses to Kawase the person, I'm not sure I see
> the mismatch that Ishitobi-san (from what little I could see) seemed to be
> concerned about, which is partly why I was curious about other responses. I
> don't find Kawase's films to be at all apolitical, but even without getting
> into the fraught territory of the implicit politics of some of her work,
> there's an approach to spectacle already in a work like Sharasoujyu which
> seems to me not at all uncongenial to the task of "officially" documenting
> the Olympics, whatever else I may think of the politics either of the
> filmmaker, the event itself, or the propriety of that task.
>
> Fred.
>
> On Sun, Oct 28, 2018 at 11:25 AM Gerow Aaron <aaron.gerow at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> Fred,
>
> First and foremost is that many of the people I am connected to are
> against the Olympics itself. Kawase, to them, should be filming the
> neglected people of Fukushima, Okinawa, or Kumamoto and not latch onto the
> officialdom who is neglecting those people. (In some ways, this reminds me
> of the furor over Expo 70, when some filmmakers objected to Matsumoto
> Toshio and others deciding to collaborate with the Expo.) One friend on FB
> said it would be great if Kawase slyly put in messages about how the
> Olympics are actually hurting the people of Fukushima in her documentary,
> but that friend very much doubts that will happen: Kawase has been largely
> a-political in her filmmaking and has often been willing to serve on
> government committees.
>
> Some colleagues suggested the comparison between Kawase and Leni
> Riefenstahl, perhaps implying that this is a woman filmmaker interested in
> art who doesn’t have a problem working for a regime with fascist tendencies
> if it can allow her to make films.
>
> Also, some have speculated about why Kawase got the nod. One rumor that
> was reported—and all I can say is that it is a rumor—is that Abe Akie, the
> wife of the prime minister, is a big fan of Sweet Bean, and has often cited
> it in speeches.
>
> And frankly, there are a lot of people out there who don’t like Kawase
> personally. Earl has just mentioned one of many incidents news of which has
> spread through the grapevine.
>
> I should stress that I am here just reporting some of what I have read. I
> don’t attest to the veracity of all of it, or agree with all of it. But I
> do think the first one is a major issue: collaborating with a godawful
> boondoggle that is literally hurting people is problem. If she could turn
> that around and criticize the Olympics in her own documentary, that would
> be wonderful. But I very much doubt that will happen.
>
> Aaron
>
>
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