Focus: Japan

Approximately half of Cinema Pacific’s film selections are devoted to a Pacific Rim national cinema each year, and this year’s selections explore the dynamic cinema of Japan. A special festival prelude event will commemorate the devastating tsunami of 2011 with a screening of The Sketch of Mujo (Sunday, April 15, 2:00 p.m. at the Baker Downtown Center), cosponsored with the Japanese American Association of Lane County and the Asian Council. The festival will close on April 22 with the regional premiere of Jiro Dreams of Sushi, and a sushi dinner party at Kamitori Japanese Restaurant in downtown Eugene. In between will be a rich selection of films emphasizing music and sound in Japanese film, featuring guest filmmaker Matsue Tetsuaki and visiting scholar Jonathan Hall.

 

Playback: The Sounds of Japan

Featuring Festival Fellow Jonathan Hall and Guest Filmmaker Matsue Tetsuaki

Japanese film scholar and Cinema Pacific 2012 Festival Fellow Jonathan Hall has curated a selection of films addressing music and sound in contemporary Japanese film. The series looks to rock, rap, metal, noise, and cinematic sound effects themselves to hear the dynamic range of cultural expression and social debate within Japan today. Hall will launch the series on April 18 with a free lecture titled “IN THE DIN: Dissonance and Dissidence in Japanese Film Today.” The talk will include the presentation of three short films by Ishii Yuya, a rising Japanese auteur whose films Hall has helped subtitle in English.

Jonathan M. Hall is a film researcher and curator in Media Studies at Pomona College in Claremont, California. An expert in Japanese film culture, Jonathan’s research profile extends to avant-garde art and digital technology on the one hand and to film’s intersections with literature and history on the other.

In the Din: Lecture by Jonathan Hall
Wednesday, April 18, 3:00p.m., JSMA Lecture Room

Hall will be joined on April 19 by Japanese director Matsue Tetsuaki. Tetsuaki’s 2011 Tokyo Drifter follows street musician Maeno Kenta as he serenades the dark streets of Tokyo following the recent earthquake and nuclear disaster. For Matsue, the brief period of darkness and suspended consumption that followed the explosions at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear generator opened a space for direct vocal and filmic expression. On April 20, Tetsuaki will also present his 2009 debut film Annyong Kimchi, a funny, irreverent, and tough look at the repressed Korean side of his Korean-Japanese identity.

Tetsuaki Matsue is a young and exciting filmmaker of independent Japanese documentaries. Born in 1977 and raised in Japan, he is of Korean ancestry and often touches on the topic of identity in his films. Graduating from the University of Japan, his first feature was also his graduation project, the 1999 autobiographical documentary Annyong Kimchee, which tells of his deeply personal yet amusing journey of self-discovery between his Korean descent and his Japanese way of life. Annyong Kimchee won Matsue the New Asian Currents Special Award at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival and would pave the way for his next film, 2004’s aptly titled Identity, which takes a look at non-Japanese adult film actors working in the Japanese sex-film industry. His new film Tokyo Drifter is a touching documentary that sees his musician friend Kenta Maeno singing songs in a sullen Tokyo right after the 2011 tsunami.

Tokyo Drifter
Thursday, April 19, 7:00 p.m., Bijou
Annyong Kimchi
Friday, April 20, 1:00 p.m., TBA

Two additional music films in this year’s Cinema Pacific line-up, Abraxas and KanZeOn, raise the question of Japanese Buddhism’s relation to music and performance. A British documentary, KanZeOn focuses on three compelling individuals: Akinobu Tatsumi, a young Buddhist priest who moonlights as a hip-hop deejay by night; Eri Fujii, a woman masterful with the ancient Chinese bamboo wind instrument called the sho; and Akihiro Iitomi, a Noh theater and kotsuzumi drummer with a passion for jazz. The film’s blending of stunning images and sounds is, according to critic James Mudge, “less a documentary and more a spiritual experience.” A Japanese feature film, Abraxas tells the surprising tale of Jonen (played by real-life Japanese rock-star Suneohair), a former front-man of a thrash band, who has left rock and roll behind to become a Zen Buddhist monk of a village.
KanZeOn
Saturday, April 21, 1:00 p.m., Bijou

Abraxas
Saturday, April 21, 9:45 p.m., Bijou

Two selections emphasize the role of sound in Japanese animation. Keita Kurosaka’s surrealist Midori-Ko, completely hand-drawn and replete with Kurosaka’s unique sense of style and color, features an avant-garde score by cellist Sakamoto Hiromichi performed by some of Japan’s most celebrated musicians. The Echo of Astro Boy’s Footsteps is a documentary about the legendary animation sound engineer Ohno Matsuo (1930- ), most famous for his work on the anime classic, Astro Boy.

Midori-ko
Thursday, April 19, 9:30 p.m., Bijou

The Echo of Astro Boy’s Footsteps
Friday, April 20, 9:30 p.m., Bijou

The series is rounded out by the youth film Ringing in Their Ears by director Irie Yu, centering on real-life Japanese rock band Shinsei Kamattechan, playing themselves. A punk rock band is born from Internet popularity and attempts to resist the prescribed norms of growth, development, and mass entertainment.

Ringing in their Ears
Saturday, April 21, 4:00 p.m., Bijou