[KineJapan] New Uchida Tomu club and website

[johndavidbaldwin at aol.com]

I would like to draw this list’s attention to the creation of a new organization and website in honor of the great Japanese director Uchida Tomu (1898-1970). It is called IUTAS: The International Uchida Tomu Appreciation Society, located at www.uchidatomu.com. 

The website is at once an information resource, a blog and a club. (Note: the site is only for educational and social, not marketing, purposes.) Here is a brief summary of what can already be found there.    
   - An Introduction post that explains how I became aware of Uchida Tomu and in which I make a case for him as a major artist   

   - A long Biography page which is, as far as I know, the most complete bio of Uchida ever published in the English-speaking world   

   - A blog that now includes extensive reviews of five Uchida films: A Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji (1955), Police Officer (1933), The Mad Fox (1962), Twilight Saloon (1955) and a work of animation, Tale of Crab Temple (1924 or 1925), which is Uchida’s earliest extant film. There are many more reviews of Uchida’s movies for which I’ve composed the first drafts, and these will be posted in finished form in the coming weeks.   

   - A complete Filmography of the director, with notes   

   - A Members page where IUTAS members can contribute their personal bios and share their testimony about discovering Uchida and the experience of seeing his films   

   - An Uchida Reviews page, on which I and others will post reviews of DVDs, Blu-Rays, books and other Uchida-related items   

   - An About Us page with links to recommended Japanese Cinema sites
   - A Contact page, including a brief video clip from Earth (1939).
Among those who are currently IUTAS members are film critic and author Akasaka Daisuke, Dan Sallitt, the creator of A Mikio Naruse Companion online and Hayley Scanlon, creator of the Windows on Worlds site.

Uchida Tomu’s achievements have been neglected for far too long. It's time to give him the recognition his stature in Japanese film history deserves. 

It's also time for those film fans who are not Japanese film scholars to begin to grasp the richness of Japanese Cinema beyond the work of the “Big Three” – Mizoguchi, Ozu and Kurosawa – and this site can be considered a small step in that direction.
www.uchidatomu.com
David Baldwin
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/kinejapan/attachments/20210728/898eb4ef/attachment.html>