[KineJapan] D. Richie Retro at Ann Arbor Film Festival

[Markus Nornes]

Hi all,

I programmed a retrospective of films by Donald Richie for the Ann Arbor
Film Festival, one of the world's great venues for experimental cinema
(Sunday, March 26 at 12:30). All the 16mm films will be shown on almost-new
prints. The video projections are a selection of Richie's rarely seen 8mm
films. If your image of DR is all Ozu and Kurosawa, you'll meet his quirky,
dirty, queer side.

If you are anywhere close, please come!

Markus


Life ⇋ Ritual ⇋ Cinema
The Experimental Films of Donald Richie

Donald Richie (1924-2013) is credited with introducing the world to
Japanese cinema. Born in Ohio, Richie arrived in Tokyo in 1947 to work in
the American Occupation force. Aside from brief return trips to the US for
graduate school and a stint as the film curator at MOMA (1969-1972), he
remained in Japan. Richie was a dilettante of sorts who wrote novels,
painted, and composed music and is best known as a prolific author of
nonfiction essays and books on Japan. His studies on Japanese film history,
Ozu and Kurosawa are considered classics. Richie also wrote on topics such
as Japanese fiction, ikebana, architecture, street culture, famous
personages, and more.

Richie’s public image, however, sometimes bordered on cliché, perhaps
because he occasionally traded on stereotypes of a long-gone “traditional”
Japan. In fact, Richie was paradoxically perverse. A queer man who found a
safe haven in Japan, he delighted in the surreal. This particularly comes
out in his experimental cinema, which he began making in the 1940s. By the
1960s, Richie was known as an organizer on the Japanese experimental film
scene who introduced Japanese artists to developments abroad and
programming their work around the world. This program introduces the other
Richie who was always sexy, strange, dirty and quite amusing. Curated by
Markus Nornes and Hannah Glass-Chapman.



FILMS

Boy with Cat (Neko to shonen)

Tokyo, Japan | 1967 | 5 | 16mm

Lovingly shot on Kodachrome and processed as monochrome, a young man
lounges on tatami on a hot summer day viewing photos—the sound of cicadas
and the neighbor practicing piano in the background. The mood is spoiled by
an awkward “Moonlight Sonata” and an obnoxious black cat.

The Dead Boy (Shinda shonen)

Tokyo, Japan | 1967 | 13 | 16mm

“I’m a boy who, not knowing love, suddenly has fallen from the summit of
frightening infancy into the darkness of a well.” Based on a powerful poem
by the gay poet Takahashi Mutsuo and shifting between multiple realities
and times, it is the most complex and touching of Richie’s works.

Stillness—Suspension—Motion (Sei—chu—do)

Tokyo, Japan | 1959 | 5 | 8mm

Richie captures the strange rhythm of sumo, where the wrestlers quietly and
repeatedly face off—eye to eye—before smashing into each other. He also
focuses on the rippling muscles of the bodies, suspended, then in furious
motion.

Atami Blues

Tokyo, Japan | 1962, 1967 abridged version | 20 | 16mm

Co-written with then-wife Mary, this winking story about flirting takes
place against the backdrop of a famous hot springs, ubiquitous movie
posters, and sumptuous jazz by Richie’s friend Takemitsu Toru. It may look
conventional, but a sly and slightly dirty ending betrays a sensibility
excluded from the mainstream films on all the posters.

Life Life Life

Tokyo, Japan | 1953 | 6 | 8mm

Fifteen years before Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Richie anticipated the
animation of Terry Gilliam in this early 8mm film. He cut up Life magazine
and animated the clippings through clever use of strings and editing. These
“Four American Fables” offer up a slicing critique of gender and 1950s
consumerism.

Life (Jinsei)

Tokyo, Japan | 1965 | 4 | 16mm

In 1964, Richie and friends wrote a manifesto that kicked off a small film
movement called Film Independent. They called for 2.5 min shorts on the
theme, “An Advertisement for Myself.” Richie’s humorous contribution, which
he “scored” himself, tells the story of a life from birth to death. This is
Richie’s “long” version.

War Games (Senso gokko)

Tokyo, Japan | 1962 | 20 | 16mm

Richie’s most famous film was shot during a typhoon with butoh dancer
Hijikata, whose antics behind the camera provoked the delight of their
child subjects. It is a parable of raw power and very human antagonism—and
our ability to step back and out of the fray.

Human Sacrifice (Gisei)

Tokyo, Japan | 1959 | 10 | 8mm

Richie met the great founder of butoh dance, Hijikata, through mutual
friend Mishima Yukio. They decided to collaborate on a film about
segregation. Richie memorialized the film in his diary: “It is more than
ever about the death of an individual, a distinct kind of human sacrifice.”

Cybele: A Pastoral Ritual in Five Scenes

Tokyo, Japan | 1968 | 20 | 16mm

Programmers in Paris and New York refused to show this film, arguing it was
a tasteless recreation of the Holocaust; Richie thought he was making the
blackest of comedies about mystery-goddess Cybele—mediator of the civilized
and the wild, living and the dead—and her following of ecstatic,
self-emasculating devotees. Shot with Zero Jigen.

---

*Markus Nornes*
*Professor of Asian Cinema*

Department of Film, Television and Media, Department of Asian Languages and
Cultures, Penny Stamps School of Art & Design




*Homepage: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nornes/
<http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nornes/>*
*Department of Film, Television and Media*
*6348 North Quad*
*105 S. State Street**Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285*
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