Report on Cinema/Movement by Jaime Ardon
Sorry for the delayed blog, but I could never for the life of me login to the blog. Thank you Sharon for posting this up for me. There is so much potential ground to cover, but for the sake of the time I have kept this blog relatively brief.
The Conference on Experimental Cinema in Japan and its correlation with radical political movements of the 1960’s and 70’s was full of insightful and engrossing opinions and commentaries from leading scholars from this unique field. I for one am glad that I went, because I actually felt like my tuition was going towards something useful and rewarding. Congratulations to Sharon on hosting such an interesting and eye opening conference that exposes other currents Japanese Cinema. As Sharon mentioned, much of the information and research given during the conference is relatively new, which makes Underground Experimental Japanese Cinema an exciting topic to study and analyze.
I would first like to mention some of the interesting points brought up by Prof. Johnathan Hall during his introduction to the screenings. I should also note that Prof. Hall was very enthusiastic about his research and you could see how content he was to be discussing Experimental Japanese Cinema. His mentioning of Japanese Cinema as being ‘non-terrological’ in its mode of self- representation is something that I feel binds many of the films we have seen in class. Part of self-recognition is the modes of resistance to corporate and cultural strands of thought, which in turn allows many of the Shinjiku and 1960-70’s Experimental films to being tools for social reform. Even last week’s film Branded to Kill touched base on this notion of non-terrological modes of self representation, by having a protagonist struggles with his past and emotions in order to discover a sense of humanity. It becomes a film where the body becomes the landscape and the actual landscape is subverted and radicalized into the psyche of the main character. This is a trend that I have noticed throughout a couple of the films we have screened in class. I would like if anyone has anything to add to this, or perhaps if anyone sees something else entirely please free to discuss.
The idea of city landscape and the spatiality within urban centers is what makes the Shinjuku cinema such an exciting topic of discussion, which Prof. Domenig discussed in his presentation. The murky cinema grounds added to the overall experience of the moviegoers, which in itself creates an ‘alternative’ culture that would often be associated to hippie movements as mentioned by Prof. Domenig. Even in his articule Prof. Domenig relates the ATG and Shinkuku Cinema to proliferating the development of the Japanese New Wave, which paralleled with the French Nouvelle Vague. ATG allowed for new introspective and artistic voices that challenged the norms of the art form and of society itself. This was reflected in the film snippets that Sharon shared with us and also lends itself well to her fascinating discussion on pink eiga flms and the sexual and gender politics between male and female during this radicalized time in Japanese history.
Overall the conference provided an interesting and unique in a field of study that I feel will only continue to grow in the upcoming years. A discussion question that I would like to ask would be, how do you (the class) feel about the relation between ATG and the social political reform of the time; and how it allowed for a widespread of artistic creativity that challenged the social landscape of the time???