[KineJapan] theatrical release of 祇園祭 outside of Japan

[Markus Nornes]

I love this kind of thing......A quick search of the newspaper databases
produced several reviews and ads and mentions.

The Bijou in NY showed it as half of a double bill with Gosha's *Wolves. *
The theater goes back to 1917, but between 1963 and 1965 it was Toho's NY
outpost. Obviously, that experiment wasn't all that successful, but I guess
it was good enough to revert to a Japanese film specialty house in 1973
after a period of switching between first run films and legit theater. *The
Day the Sun Rose* double bill was to kick off a new strategy of exclusively
showing Japanese films. Apparently, this was their strategy to tide
themselves over until the property was razed to build the Marriot Marquis
Hotel. (Cinema Treasures has great photos and some ads; man, they showed a
lot of great films! http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/2932).

Kevin Thomas, who was always a big supporter of Japanese releases, reviewed
it for LA Times in 1969; it played at the Kabuki. It had a release in 1971
as the second film in a *Pale Flower* double bill.

The Japan Information Centre in Delhi showed it in 1977.

The Cinemateque in Jerusalem showed it through the Japanese embassy in
1973.

It was included as a Japanese selection along with Gamera vs. Jigar at a
international film festival that was part of the 1972 Munich Olympics.

That's what comes up.

I don't have their email at hand, but if you send it to me I can send them
PDFs for the info above.

Markus





Box Office reviewed it that year, too.




---

*Markus Nornes*
*Professor of Asian Cinema*
Department of Film, Television and Media, Department of Asian Languages and
Cultures, Penny Stamps School of Art & Design

*Department of Film, Television and Media*
*6348 North Quad*
*105 S. State Street*
*Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285*



On Fri, Jul 24, 2020 at 10:00 AM Gerow Aaron via KineJapan <
kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:

> Wow, Roger reviewed it!
>
> Roger Greenspan was one of my teachers in grad school at Columbia.
>
> Aaron
>
> 2020/07/24 午後10:41、William C. Thompson via KineJapan <
> kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu>のメール:
>
> Roger Greenspun reviewed the film in the New York Times on August 30,
> 1973, when the film was opening at the Bijou Theater here.  The Bijou
> showed Japanese films almost exclusively at one time.  I had not yet moved
> to New York at that time.
>
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/1973/08/30/archives/day-the-sun-rose-kyoto-drama.html?searchResultPosition=1
>
> Bill Thompson
> wct1 at columbia.edu
>
>
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