[KineJapan] History of admissions tickets for doc films in Tokyo

Wed Sep 27 02:44:54 EDT 2023

Hi Markus,

>From the passage you shared, I don't see any reason to suggest guilt is
strongly on the speaker's mind. Unless there is more textual evidence in
the preceding or succeeding passages, I would suggest it's just a factual
description. There are so many clear, even if subtle, ways to express
remorse, and they haven't been chosen. We may feel plenty of reasons, I can
imagine, that Iizuka should feel some guilt now, but there are also plenty
more to suggest the filmmakers felt and continue to feel their actions were
justified. We want to avoid projection.

Just my small addition to a fascinating conversation.

Jonathan M Hall
California State University San Bernardino

On Tue, Sep 26, 2023 at 8:05 PM Markus Nornes via KineJapan <
kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:

>
> Curious about the questions this thread was raising, I dropped a line to
> Iizuka Toshio to see what he remembers about Ogawa Pro practices. I have a
> few of these tickets in my own collection, but I'm not in Ann Arbor so
> can't pull them out. I believe they were for Summer in Sanrizuka and
> Prehistory of the Partisans, although it might have been early 70s revival
> screenings (which would land in the transition zone at question).
> Unfortunately, Iizuka doesn't have dates in his head. Quote follows.
>
>
>> 確かに、小川プロの映画はカンパと借金で作っていました。チケットは、上映会場の地域ごとに作っていましたが、そのチケットを基に借金したこともあったと思います。上映会にくるお客さんの数は多かったけれど、上映料金が安いので、とても制作費を賄うことはできませんでした。結局、製作費は返す当てのない借金で賄われていました。７０年前後は、学生運動が盛んでしたから、小川プロの映画を支えた主力は学生でした。私自身も、東北大学での学生運動から小川さんを支えるようになっていきました。74，5年あたりから、小川プロの映画作りは学生ではなく、農民や労働者など様々の階層の人たちに支えられるようになっていきました。
>
>
> Not surprisingly, what comes out strongest here are the feelings of guilt
> over making those movies with loans Ogawa never felt compelled to repay.
>
> Markus
>
>
> ---
>
> *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*
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 23, 2023 at 12:08 PM Roger Macy via KineJapan <
> kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:
>
>> Rather a side-point to your interesting discussion, but I wonder whether
>> Haneda’s positioning of charging for her documentaries as distinct from
>> before is connected to industry sponsorship and complimentary tickets.
>> Kumai Kei’s fictionalized feature on another large dam construction – *Kurobe
>> no taiyō*, 1968 – has a very ponderous start, where all the suits of the
>> companies (acted by very recognizable faces) physically dish out the
>> contracts. We shouldn’t assume, though, that this was quite the
>> audience-killer it seems. During this section, one of the suits remarks
>> that [a huge number – one million ?] people will be working on the
>> contracts throughout the country. Someone has surely written on attachment
>> to company in the post-war period largely replacing attachment to country.
>> Alex Zahlten even uses the film as an example of *Kurobe no taiyō*
>> squeezing the exhibition market by its being held over. At any rate, it
>> brings up the matter of *complimentary tickets* for families in the
>> sponsoring companies – something that would be absent from Haneda’s
>> audience for independent films, I think.
>>
>> Roger
>>
>> On Saturday, 23 September 2023 at 02:13:39 BST, matteoB via KineJapan <
>> kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:
>>
>>
>> no problem
>>
>> yes, that's me
>>
>> Matteo
>>
>> Il giorno sab 23 set 2023 alle ore 09:35 Anne via KineJapan <
>> kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> ha scritto:
>>
>> Thank you. This is super helpful!
>> Thanks also for the translations, on line!
>> Are you the person who lives near the "usuzumi no Sakura" tree?
>>
>> Anne
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 22, 2023, 16:50 matteoB via KineJapan <
>> kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Dear Anne,
>>
>> In the conversation and essay on Haneda published in 私のシネマライフ, Takano
>> states that the screening (自主上映) of Usuzumi no sakura was the first time
>> when the ticket for a documentary was charged the same amount of money as a
>> 劇映画
>>
>> I hope it helps
>>
>> Matteo
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, 23 Sep 2023, 08:30 Anne via KineJapan, <
>> kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Thanks, this is very helpful.  The essay is 1977, and Iwanami is still on
>> the verge of being Haneda's employer, so I do imagine her context is that
>> milieu.
>>
>> Iwanami Hall only opened in 1968, so it is possible that in 1971 she was
>> mostly referring to its screenings? I wonder if looking back at Iwanami’s
>> “Tomo” magazine could clear up some patterns about actual ticket prices, or
>> rental fees, since it was the Hall itself that published it. To see if only
>> established figures like Tsuchimoto with substantial audiences charged
>> money, if tickets were given away, to and by whom, how much regular
>> audiences actually paid, where Iwanami sat in the whole landscape. Related,
>> how exceptional was this case of charging admission, and how exceptional
>> was Takano Etsuko’s advocacy around it? Takano’s role as a
>> programmer/advocate might actually be as important here...
>>
>> Haneda calls the screening a “one-woman show,” which is hard not to read
>> as a statement of some sort, a bit like Saito Minako’s 『紅一点論』。The next
>> anecdote in the essay flashes forward to her being written up (at last) by
>> a major newspaper, and landing an essay in a textbook. She’s clearly on her
>> way up and out, and into more inspiring working conditions (based on
>> piecing things together from her other writings). The nature of the “flex”
>> or historical claim—or whatever rhetorical genre this is, naming a turning
>> point in the industry and not only her life—is what I am trying to figure
>> out…
>>
>> There is some wiggle room in Haneda’s writing, e.g. “it was the general
>> sentiment that documentaries don’t attract many people and so it was not
>> part of the thinking (論外)” …i.e. it’s not inconceivable that money is taken
>> (admissions charged) on some occasions, but I think she’s talking about
>> tendencies, not absolutes, out of the event of her screening. But she does
>> credit her film with turning the tide…
>>
>> It’s a tricky context, as first-person writing, as Haneda is
>> self-reporting, of course, and positions herself as an outsider (not a
>> “social documentarist” like Tsuchimoto)…Calling it a “one-woman show” which
>> tends to reproduce all the isolation of critical conversations she was
>> never part of, but also to redeem the isolation by this flash of
>> recognition.
>>
>> I find it harder to assess these first-person accounts, in many ways, by
>> the female filmmakers, because the gaps can be big and blurry, between
>> empirical reality, perception at the time, perception later, and critical
>> takes by people who are not the main subject. When memoir is most of what
>> there is, the points of reference can be hard to suss out, as opposed to
>> easily identifiable “ronsō,” debates, responses in taidans, and so on…
>>
>> Female filmmakers are rare presences in public discourse in the heady
>> dialectically-oriented, clashing 60s, but in their memoirs they write
>> frequently about some pretty bad stuff—e.g. not being allowed to go on the
>> production team for dam films because “there are no bathrooms.” I am pretty
>> sure I have read that more than once, and will have to dig it up. Always
>> the bathrooms!
>>
>>
>> On Sep 22, 2023, at 3:15 PM, Gerow Aaron via KineJapan <
>> kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:
>>
>> This probably needs some provisos. Maybe she’s talking about indie
>> documentaries after the 1960s, because documentaries had been enjoying
>> theatrical releases since before the war. That was true even of Iwanami
>> Eiga, where Haneda was working, which enjoyed big theatrical success with
>> films like Sakuma Dam in the 1950s. Even one of Tsuchimoto’s TV docs was
>> apparently given a theatrical release in the late 60s. I’d have to dig into
>> the archive, but it seems Tsuchimoto’s own documentaries could have
>> theatrical releases starting with Minamata Ikki in 1973.
>>
>> Aaron
>>
>> 9/22/23 午後4:53、Anne via KineJapan <kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu>のメール:
>>
>> Greetings~
>>
>> I’ve been reading occasional essays by Haneda Sumiko, and came across an
>> interesting historical claim. It’s in an essay Haneda published on a
>> chirashi for her Hōryūji film from 1971. It’s more about her slightly later
>> film, *Usuzumi no sakura*.
>>
>> The historical note comes from the way that Haneda frames a screening of
>> *Usuzumi* at Iwanami Hall, which happened with the support of Tsuchimoto
>> Noriaki and Uno Chiyo (the fiction-writer who also wrote a novel about the
>> same tree, published slightly earlier, and put Haneda in her novel, in a
>> small cameo). Haneda writes that at that time, because documentary films
>> didn’t tend to attract people, filmmakers basically crowd-sourced by
>> collecting funds through “kompa.” But Takano Etsuko encouraged her to
>> charge for tickets, basically saying “why would you let yourself work for
>> free?” Haneda ended up charging 800円 for tickets, and the hall was packed,
>> she writes. She says that basically (“it would not be excessive to say…”)
>> the screening set a new precedent for doc films charging admissions. It
>> also establishes a certain narrative of freelance legitimacy on her part,
>> apart from Iwanami. Seven years later, an essay she wrote on *Usuzumi*
>> would be anthologized in Kokugo textbooks; she would go freelance after
>> this film and form her own company.
>>
>> Does this turning point ring any bells for those familiar with screening
>> and exhibition practices in that era—in particular, the act of charging
>> rather than seeking contributions for documentaries?
>>
>> Thanks for any info or anecdotes!
>>
>> Anne
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