“THE RARE LANDSCAPES OF JAPANESE CINEMA”

The International Film Festival of Athens and the Embassy of Japan in Greece in cooperation with the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation coorganize a special tribute to “The Rare Landscapes of Japanese Cinema: from Tradition to Modernity”, from 14th to 20th of February 2013.

The tribute is also supported by the Embassy of Japan in Greece, the Japan Foundation and the Kawakita Memorial Film Institute and it includes the projection of 11 films. Some of these films are masterpieces of cinema, whereas some other films seem to be hidden treasures that are ready to be discovered. However, all the films -in their unique ways- have sealed the international recognition of the Japanese cultural influence during the 20th century.

Orestis Andreadakis, the art director of International Film Festival of Athens and director of “Cinema” magazine states: “The conception of the tribute was an idea of Michel Dimopoulos”. And he adds: “So, we gave him carte blanche to have the artistic supervision of the tribute, as long as his knowledge, taste and judgment are impressive. Besides, Michel has always something interesting to say with his cinematic choices.

Dimopoulos had a remarkable experience as a former director of Thessaloniki International Film Festival (1991-2004) and editor of the legendary magazine “Contemporary Cinema (Sigxronos Kinimatografos)” and he made an exceptional selection of films. “During the last decades, there has been a significant audience in Greece that adored Japanese Cinema and Culture.” he stated.

“Through the years, the great Japanese auteurs of the 7th Art seemed to gradually disappear. Nowadays,
their geographically and culturally remote, unthinkable and dazzling pathways -that had created wonderful narrations, eccentric styles and peculiar social and moral approaches- have been diminished.

Great directors such as Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Ozu and next generation’s auteurs such as Osima, Imamura have been the ultimate representatives of a cinematic expression on the verge of tradition and modernity.

However, a whole forest of other important directors was hidden by these trees. Unknown artists in Europe and United States have been waiting in order to be discovered by the experienced audience. Naruse, Gosho, Yoshida, Teshigahara, Masumura, Wakamatsu and Suzuki are only some directors that have been under the shadow of their ancestors.

Through the years, Japanese Cinema has changed from an industry dominated by the studios to an independent production. In our country, this transfiguration seems to be happening without the presence of any significant auteur. Only signals that are emitted by some festivals remind us the cinema of the country of the Rising Sun.

The program that is about to be presented at MCF can be considered as an attempt of an alternative homage to the post-war Japanese Cinema (with the exception of Gosho’s antebellum film). The tribute is defective, since the absence of great directors that is caused by the difficulties of production.

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Woman in the Mist
(Oboroyo no onna, 1936, 112′, Black and White)

Director: Heinosuke Gosho, Script: Tadao Ikeda. Cast: Chôko Iida, Shin Tokudaiji, Takeshi Sakamoto.

Pioneer -yet not so popular in Europe, Heinosuke Gosho (1902-1981) was the illegitimate child of a famous geisha. He was the obsessed painter of ordinary people’s lives and the characters of his films belonged to the middle-class. His films introduced a new way of describing the everyday life of ordinary people and these films were the cornerstone of the “shomin-geki” films. Since the shot of the first Japanese narrative film to fully employ sound in 1931 (The Neighbor’s Wife and Mine), Gosho affectively listened to the fate of his characters through his large filmography (approximately 100 films). His stories are based on personal experiences and the same thing happens with “Woman in the Mist”. Gosho is clearly the lost chain between Ozu and Naruse.

The Tales of Genji (Genji Monogatari, 1951, 124′, Black and White)

Director: Kôzaburô Yoshimura. Script: Kaneto Shindô, based on Shikibu Murasaki’s novel under the supervision of Junichirô Tanizaki.  Cinematography: Kôhei Sugiyama. Art Direction: Hiroshi Mizutani. Music: Akira Ifukube. Cast: Kazuo Hasegawa, Michiyo Kogure, Machiko Kyô.

For the adaptation of the homonym epic Japanese novel, the creators of the film –Yoshimura, Shindô (scriptwriter) and Sugiyama (director of photography) – had to surpass the obstacles of the pictorial references and the incomplete documentations of medieval customs. They chose the solution of a grandiose representation, instead of a detailed one. The gorgeous scenery, the charming cinematography, the direction of a virtuoso reveal to us the vital desire of a country to escape its destiny of destruction and extinction.

Libido (Kuroneko, 1967, 90′, Black and White)

Director-Script: Kaneto Shindô. Cinematography: Kiyomi Kuroda Music: Hikaru Hayashi Cast: Nobuko Otowa, Taiji Tonoyama, Kayo Matsuo.

During the medieval era, a woman and her daughter are raped and murdered by a group of wandering samurais. After that, at the crime scene, the phantoms of the two women make their appearance by killing the passing-by warriors. Shindô’s film adapts the vampire myth and embodies it in the Japanese tradition, which is full of demons, phantoms and spirits. The original fear in combination with the eroticism, the vivid contrast of the cinematography and the fabulously choreographed air-duels establish “Libido” as a masterpiece of the fantasy cinema.

The Idiot (Hakuchi, 1955, 166′, Black and White)

Direction: Akira Kurosawa. Script: Eijirô Hisaita, Akira Kurosawa based on the homonym novel by Dostoevsky, Cinematography: Toshio Ubukata, Music: Fumio Hayasaka, Cast: Toshirô Mifune, Setsuko Hara, Masayuki Mori

Kameda (Prince Myshkin) is the archetype of the purely good man. He is indifferen about social conventions and lies. He always confesses what he thinks and he always does what he says. All his reactions have as their basic angle the notion of love and that turns him an idiot. Kurosawa eliminates Dostoevsky’s metaphysical inquiries and he pays particular attention to the negative emotions that dominate human relations (jealousy, envy, malice, hatred, selfishness, intolerance) as the basic parameters of the modern social life. Injustice, cruelty and inequality are presented as the foundations of the contemporary world (and the Japanese society). “The Idiot” can be considered as the most remarkable adaptation of Dostoevsky’s novels. Toshirô Mifune is an extraordinary protagonist.

The Ceremony (Gishiki, 1971, 122′, Color)

Director: Nagisa Oshima Script: Tsutomu Tamura, Mamoru Sasaki, Nagisa Oshima Cinematography: Toichiro Narushima. Music: Toru Takemitsu. Cast: Kenzo Kawarasaki, Kei Sato, Atsuko Kaku, Atsuo Nakamura, Akiko Koyama, Fumio Watanabe, Kiyoshi Tsuchiya.

While Masuo travels to his birthplace to attend the funeral of his relative, he recalls past moments of his family life and he discovers that always a burial or a wedding ritual were the motive of these moments. The narration -through constant recursions- covers the recent history of Japan. Every single ritual reflects the spirit of its time and it is a way of criticizing the evolution of the contemporary Japanese society: the heavy shadows of the past oppress the present time of the characters and their relations. In addition, the film is a critique over the institution of the family, the hierarchical structures and their invisible -yet gruesome- faces.

Zegen (1987, 124′, Color)

Director: Shohei Imamura. Script: Kota Okabe, Lunio Takeshige, based on the autobiography of Icheigi Muraoka. Cinematography: Masao Tochizawa. Music: Shinichirô Ikebe. Cast: Ken Ogata, Mitsuko Baisho, Taiji Tonoyama.

Based on Muraoka’s “patriotic” autobiography, the film narrates Muraoka’s turbulent life: from 1901, when he first visited Hong-Kong, till his transformation from a Majurian spy into a “zegen” (procurer and owner of several brothels). The epicenter of the film is Muraoka and his story reflects the imperialistic policy of Japan, which led to the Second World War and the final defeat. The film has multiple faces resembling to its hero: a historical joke, a patriotic representation of an era, an epic romance. In addition, Imamura reserves his critical and heretic meditation on the demystification of his homeland’s myths.

Conflagration (Enjô, 1958, 99′, Black and White)

Director: Kon Ichikawa. Script: Nato Wadda and Keiji Hasebe, based on the novel “The Temple of the Golden Pavilion” by Yukio Mishima. Cinematography: Kazuo Miyagawa, Music: Toshirô Mayuzumi. Cast: Raizô Ichikawa, Ganjirô Nakamura, Tatsuya Nakadai

After the conflagration of the Buddhist Temple of Soukakou in Kyoto, also known as “the Golden Temple”, the police arrests and investigates a young man with the name Goitsi Mizogoutsi. He is an idealist and introverted apprentice monk coming from a distant province in order to be taught by the Buddhist monk Tayama. Ichikawa (1915-2008) was a mercurial and exuberant artist, who became famous through his anti-war dramas, his historical films, his satires and comedies and his terrific adaptations of novels. “Conflagration” is the adaptation of Mishima’s “The Temple of the Golden Pavilion”. In this film, Ichikawa juxtaposes the inner psychological conflicts of his character with the internal aesthetic purity of Mishima’s novel and all these are having as a background the moral decline of post-war Japan.

Muddy River (Doro no Kawa, 1981, 105′, Black and White)

Director: Kohei Oguri, Script: Takako Sighemori, based on the novel by Teru Miyamoto. Cinematoghraphy: Shōhei Andō. Music: Korudo Mori. Cast: Nobutaka Asahara, Takahiro Tamura, Mariko Kaga.

Osaka, 1956. The nine-year-old Nobuko lives with his father nearby the river. One day, the boy meets two siblings that live in a riverboat-brothel, while their mother is prostituting herself. Oguri’s film approaches with perspicacity the tough world of ordinary people: they are bound in the arena of subsistence and struggle for life, they are corrupted. Inside Nobuko’s gaze, we can see some reflections of the melancholic solitude of the childhood. In every scene, we can witness the open wound of the defeat, the frustration and resignation and the lost lives ready to be sacrificed on the altar of the reconstruction of postwar Japan.

Boy (Shonen, 1969, 97′, Color)

Director: Nagisa Oshima, Script: Tsutoma Tamura, inspired by real events. Cinematography: Yasuhiro Yoshioka, Seizo Sengen. Music: Hikaru Hayashi. Cast: Fumio Watanabe, Akiko Koyama, Tetsuo Abe

The main character in this film is a 10-year-old boy that lives in the streets with his family. They contrive accidents and they act like injured, in order to blackmail the drivers for not reporting them to the police. The film can be taken into consideration as a comment on the defeated of the post-war Japanese “miracle” and the marginal people. Here, Oshima’s filmic gaze is structured around the confused boy: on one hand, there is an obvious childlike innocence that tries to conform to parental will and on the other, there is a moral corruption in the family. Between these two tendencies, disobedience and rebellion are grown.

Ice Dream

Leaning on his window sill, our young friend sees an ice cream vendor across the street. Insurmountable obstacles appear that stand between his desire for an ice cream and the realization of that desire. Impatience muddies the attempt, obstinacy muddles the mind, and the goal, despite being right next to him, remains distant. How long can desire endure when faced with obstacles?
 

Fidel & Lucy

Fidel the mouse, returns home from the sewers and can hardly wait to go to sleep. But Lucy, the upstairs tenant, is in a very good mood and has different plans. Phone ringing, vacuum buzzing, radio blaring…
How far will Fidel go to put an end to this nightmare?!!

1. Woman in the Mist
By Heinosuke Gosho, Black and White, 111΄, 1936

2. The Tale of Genji
By Kozaburo Yoshimura, Black and White, 121΄, 1951

3. The Idiot
By Akira Kurosawa, Black and White, 166΄, 1951

4. Conflagration
By Kon Ichikawa, Black and White, 99΄, 1958

5. Libido
By Kaneto Shindo, Black and White, 90΄, 1967

6. Boy
By Nagisa Oshima, Black and White & Color, 97΄, 1969

7. Eros + Massacre
By Yoshishige Yoshida, Black and White, 168΄, 1969

8. The Ceremony
By Nagisa Oshima, Color, 122΄, 1971

9. Muddy River
By Kohei Oguri, Black and White, 105΄, 1981

10. Eijanaika
By Shohei Imamura, Color, 151΄, 1981

11. Zegen
By Shohei Imamura, Color, 124΄, 1987

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^{“The sponsor of the event is the Japanese cosmetics company Shiseido. One of the main characteristics inherent in the company’s philosophy is its affiliation with Art and all things artistic. It vigorously supports all cultural events and the
magic of Japanese cinema.}

On Friday, Saturday and Sunday all viewers will be able to use the special invitation they will receive and
book a free facial treatment in one of the exclusive places of the brand. At the same time they will have the opportunity to receive 1 set of Shiseido beauty products which will be drawn after every screening.”

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Media Sponsors:
ERT
MEGA TV
CINEMA magazine – cinemag.gr
KOSMOS 93.6

With the Support of:
Embassy of Japan in
Greece,
Japan
Foundation,
Kawakita Memorial Film Institute,
Cinemateque of
Thessaloniki.

and:
Shiseido

Art Director: Michel Dimopoulos