1. Modernity and African Cinema, some parts of Chap 2, Modernity and the African Cinema, Femi Okiremuete Shaka, 2004

2. Interview with Med Hondo, 57, Questioning African Cinema, Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike, 2002

♦Some Leading Filmmakers:

Ousmane Sembene (Senegal), Med Hondo (Mauritania), Safi Faye (Senegal), Chief Eddie Ugbomah(Nigeria), Haile Gerima (Ethiopia), Kwaw Ansah (Ghana), Jamie Uys (South Africa)

♦This Week Film Suggestions:

Borom Sarret( 1963), Black Girl (1966), Xala (1974), Mandabi (1968), Moolaade(2004) : Sembene

Sarraounia(1986), Letter from my Village (1975), Harvest: 3000 years (1974), Sankofa (1993), Love Brewed in the African Pot (1980)

The Gods must be Crazy(1980)

♦A documentary upon Nigerian film industry

Welcome to Nollywood

Mike Nichols, Robert Altman, Dennis Hopper, William Freidkin, Francis Coppola, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Peter Bogdanovich, Robert Zemeckis, James Cameron, Brian De Palma, Ridley Scott, Amy Heckerling, David Lynch, Spike Lee, Coen Brothers, Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, Wachowski Brothers, Hal Hartley

Mike Judge, Stephen Gaghan

♦This Week Film Suggestions:

The Graduate (1967), M*A*S*H* (1970), Easy Rider (1969), The Exorcist (1973), The Conversation (1974), Jaws(1975), American Graffiti (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), Hard Core (1979), What’s Up, Doc? (1972), Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), The Terminator (1984), Mission: Impossible (1996), Blade Runner (1982), Fast Times at Ridgemont High(1982), Ble Velvet (1986), Malcolm X (1992), Raising Arizona (1987), Pulp Fiction (1994), Fight Club (1999), The Matrix ( 1999), Trust (1990)

Idiocracy (2006), Syriana (2005)

♦Recommended Reading:

The New Hollywood and Independent Filmmaking, Film Art : An Introduction, Bordwell & Thompson

Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou, Tian Zhuangzhuang, Hu mei

Li Yang, Jia Zhangke, Zhang Yuan, Wang Xiaoshuai

♦ Film Suggestions:

One and Eight (1983), Yellow Earth (1984), Farewell My Concubine (1993), Red Sorghum (1987), Ju Dou (1991), Raise the Red Lantern (1992), The Blue Kite (1993), Not One Less (1999)

Blind Shaft (2003), Unknown Pleasures (2002), The World (2004), Seventeen Years (1999), Beijing Bicycle (2001), Devils on the Doorstep (2000)

♦ Readings:

1. Farewell My Concubine: History, Melodrama and Ideology in Contemporary Pan-Chinese Cinema

♦ An Essay on Fifth Generation

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A657236

The Cow (1969), Taste of Cherry (1997), Close-up (1990), Ten (2002), The Mirror (1997), The Circle (2000), Offside (2006), The Cyclist (1987), Hello Cinema (1994), A moment of Innocence (1996), Children of Heaven (1998), The Willow Tree (2005), The Apple (1998 )

♦ Some Leading Directors:

Dariush Mehrjui, Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Majid Majidi, Samira Makhmalbaf

Except Mehruji the latter are known for diffusing the cinema with facts and fiction or documentary and acting.

♦ A documentary on history of cinema in Iran:

Iran: A Cinematographic Revolution

♦ Modern Nation-States and Artistic Expression

US ban on visiting artists ( from http://irishantiwar.org/archives/forum/0001oE.html )

Ibrahim Ferrer – US officials considered the 76-year-old Buena Vista Social Club guitarist a security risk. Photo: Jose Goitia/AP

Panahi’s experience is extreme, but not rare. According to organisations connected with film, theatre, music, opera and dance, new American immigration and visa policies are making it extremely difficult, sometimes impossible, for foreign artists of all sorts to come to the US to perform and show their work.

No one, it seems, is exempt. Last week, at the Grammy awards, the Cuban guitarist Ibrahim Ferrer was supposed to have received an award – but he couldn’t get into the country. The 76-year-old was cited as a security risk. A Peking Opera company had to cancel an 18-city tour because the American consulate in China claimed not all of the musicians could adequately prove that they intended to return home after the tour ended. The South African anti-apartheid leader and singer Vusi Mahlasela had to cancel a good chunk of a US tour because his visa took months to get approved, as did the Spanish guitarist Paco de Lucia.

And in late 2002, in a disheartening precursor [follow-up] to the Panahi case, the Iranian film-maker Abbas Kiarostami, a Cannes Palme d’Or winner and one of the Middle East’s most acclaimed film-makers, couldn’t get to the New York film festival to show his latest work. “It really harms our image – not only in the Muslim world but around the world,” says Richard Pena, director of the NYFF and a professor at Columbia University. “Someone like Kiarostami is not just anyone; not letting him in is going to have a negative reverberation for America’s image around the world.”

Artists from Muslim countries and Cuba seem to have the most difficulty – since the 1980s, Iranians travelling to the US have been fingerprinted – but the trouble extends across the continents. Pena said that Polish film-makers have refused to come to his festival because of the way they were treated on previous visits. And according to Marc Scorca, president of Opera America, opera directors from countries as uncontroversial as Italy and Spain have begun avoiding US engagements. “They don’t want to put up with the hassle,” he says, “which then means that American opera singers are not getting the work abroad they used to.”

While the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 have, understandably, raised America’s concerns about border security, the visa problem did not begin then. Inconsistent standards and opacity seem to have been in place at least since Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1990, which set out a labyrinth of classifications and sub-classifications for visas. Foreign artists had to prove themselves to be of “extraordinary ability” to obtain an 01-type visa, or of “international renown” to get a P2. Few of them could tell exactly what those numbers and letters meant, much less those qualifications, and the same feeling, it seems, went for most of the examiners at the Immigration and Naturalisation Service. The rules were often benignly neglected.

None the less, by the late 1990s waiting periods for visas had gone from about two weeks to a month or more. In June 2001, the INS introduced a “premium processing” service, targeted mainly at Silicon Valley and its planeloads of south-east Asian and subcontinental computer programmers, whereby applicants in a rush could pay an extra $1,000 to ensure their visa would come through quickly, a fee few artists could afford.

And then September 11 occurred. It did not escape the government’s notice that several of the hijackers had been living in the US on expired student visas. With astonishing haste, Congress passed the Patriot Act and the benign neglect came to an abrupt halt.

Lengthy security checks were required for all those travellers unfortunate enough to be from countries stamped “State 7″, which denotes “known state sponsors of terrorism”, or from “countries of interest”, of which there are dozens. Interviews were mandatory for every temporary work visa, whether the applicant was a basketball player with his team, a computer programmer or a bass tenor. The fingerprinting of Iranians and people from other Muslim countries, previously avoidable, was strictly enforced. Making matters worse, when the Patriot Act went through, the INS (renamed the US Citizenship and Immigration Service and known as USCIS or, by its detractors, Useless), was in the midst of a computer overhaul. According to Jonathan Ginsburg, a Virginia immigration lawyer who specialises in the arts, its systems were in “miserable condition”. However, the main problem now, he says, is the FBI, which has the right to take passports and hold up visa applications for as long as it sees fit.

The insanely cumbersome process of entering America now goes something like this: first, the manager or producer or venue who wants to book a foreign artist must petition one of four USCIS service centres. They must prove the artist is unique, extraordinary or renowned, and that he or she intends to return to their home country after their work is done.

If the petition is accepted, it is then sent to the artist in their home country, and the artist in turn brings it to the US consulate, where he or she is fingerprinted and interviewed. After the interview, the waiting begins, as the consulate sends the application to the Department of Homeland Security and “all interested agencies”. It may take seven weeks, it may take seven months, but – and here the Kafkaesque institutional absurdity really takes hold – the law says that visas can be applied for, at the earliest, only six months in advance. Waits of up to 10 months are not uncommon.

Nor are visa applications that are never returned. “A case can disappear into the ozone,” says Ginsburg. The entire process normally runs from $2,000 to $4,000 per artist, depending on lawyers’ fees, and that does not include travelling expenses to and from consulates. In Iran, there is no American consulate, so someone like Kiarostami must travel to Syria and back – twice.

“We want people to come to the US to enjoy what we have,” says Chris Bentley, a USCIS spokesman. “But we need to balance that with ensuring that we don’t compromise security.”

The results of all this seem pretty clear. As Opera America’s Scorca puts it: “These procedures are leading to diminished exposure of American audiences to great artists and making it harder for US artists to get work abroad.” But the stakes, many believe, are even higher than that. “Art is cultural diplomacy,” says Sandra Gibson, president of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters in Washington, which lobbies Congress and USCIS on behalf of hundreds of members. “And it’s just as important as it was during the cold war. It’s as important as when [pianist] Van Cliburn went to the Soviet Union to perform and changed Khrushchev’s mind about the United States.”

———————————————————————–

The following is the full text of the open letter to the National Board of
Review of Motion Pictures and the international media from renowned Iranian film director Jafar Panahi. The letter recounts his harrowing experience at the hands of US immigration officials while attempting to travel from Hong Kong to film festivals in South America via New York City. Panahi is the director of The White Balloon (1995), The Mirror (1997) and The Circle (2000).

The National Board of Review bestowed its “Freedom of Expression” award on Panahi for The Circle in December 2000. The Board is a prestigious film-appreciation society (originally established in 1909 as a censorship organization) based in New York City.

April 30, 2001

To The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

As the winner of your Freedom of Expression Award for my film, The Circle, I would like to call your kind attention to what happened to me in your
country, an event which takes place every day in US. I look forward to
seeing your reaction to these inhuman events. Since you have seen fit to
honor freedom of expression, this is something you clearly value, so I would
like to call upon you to defend it. You have honored my film, and I hope
that you and all your colleagues in the US media will dare to condemn the
savage acts of US Immigration officials. I feel that such condemnation would
uphold the values of your Freedom of Expression Award. Otherwise, what would winning such an Award mean for me? And what honor would I have in keeping it? Perhaps if I have no freedom of expression, I should return this Award to you so you may find another figure who would be more appropriate.

In the booklet you kindly sent me together with your Award, I read that the
prestigious film personality, Orson Welles, has already received this Award.
Should I be happy that this great man is not among us now to hear how the
American police behave toward filmmakers and other people who enter your
country? As a filmmaker obsessed with social issues, my films deal with
social problems and limits, and naturally I cannot be indifferent to racist,
violent, insulting and inhuman acts in any place in the world. However, I
certainly do separate the acts of American police and politicians from
cultural institutions and figures, as well as the great people of the USA,
as I was informed my film was very well received by film critics and
audiences in your country. Nevertheless, I will inform the world media about
my unpleasant experience in New York and I hope you members of the National Board of Review, who honor freedom of expression, will join me in denouncing these policies.

* * *

On April 15, I left the Hong Kong Film Festival for the Montevideo and
Buenos Aires Festivals on United Airlines’ flight 820. This 30-hour trip was
via New York’s JFK airport, where I was to stay for two hours and board my
flight to Montevideo. Further to my requests, the staff of all the said
Festivals had previously checked if a transit visa is required, and they
assured me there is no need for such visa. Moreover, the airline issued me
the ticket via NY. Nevertheless, I too asked the United Airlines staff in
the Hong Kong Airport about the need for a transit visa, and I received the
same response. But as soon as I arrived at JFK airport, the American
immigration police took me to an office and asked that I be fingerprinted
and photographed because of my nationality. I refused to do it, and I showed
them my invitations from the Festivals. They threatened to put me in jail if
I would not be fingerprinted. I asked for an interpreter and to make a phone
call. They refused. Then, they chained me like the medieval prisoners and
put me in a police patrol and took me to another part of the airport. There
were many people, women and men from different countries. They handed me off to new policemen. They chained my feet and locked my chain to the others, all locked to a very dirty bench. For 10 hours, no questions and answers, I was forced to sit on that bench, pressed to the others. I could not move. I was suffering from an old illness. However, nobody noticed. Again, I
requested that they let me call someone in New York, but they refused. They
not only ignored my request, but also that of a boy from Sri Lanka who
wanted to call his mom. Everybody was moved by the crying of the boy, people from Mexico, Peru, Eastern Europe, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and … I was thinking that every country has its own law, but I just could not understand those inhuman acts.

At last, I saw the next morning. Another policeman came to me and said that
they have to take my photograph. I said, “never”. I offered to give them a
picture of myself that I had with me. They said no, they have to take my
photo (in the way criminals’ photos are taken) and do the fingerprinting. I
refused. An hour later, two other guys came to me and threatened to do the
fingerprinting and photography by computer, and again I refused and asked
for a phone. At last, they accepted and I could call Dr. Jamsheed Akrami,
Iranian film professor at Columbia University and I told him the whole
story. I asked him to convince them, since he knows me well, that I am not a
guy to do what they were looking for. Two hours later, a policeman came and took one of my own photos of myself. They chained me again and took me to a plane, a plane that was going back to Hong Kong.

In the plane and from my window, I could see New York. I knew my film, The Circle, was released there two days before, and I was told the film was very well received too. Perhaps, audiences would understand my film better if
they could know the director of the film was chained at the same time. They
would accept my belief that circles of human limits exist in all parts of
this world, but in different ratios. I saw the Statue of Liberty in the
waters, and I unconsciously smiled. I tried to draw the curtain and there
were scars of the chain on my hand. I could not stand the other travelers
gazing at me and I just wanted to stand up and cry that I’m not a thief! I’m
not a murderer! I’m not a drug dealer! I … I am just an Iranian, a
filmmaker. But how could I say this? In what language? In Chinese, Japanese or in the mother tongues of those people from Mexico, Peru, Russia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, … or in the language of that young boy from Sri Lanka? Really, in what language? I had not slept for 16 hours and I had to spend another 15 hours on the way back to Hong Kong. It was just a torture among all those watching eyes. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. But I could not. I could just see the images of those sleepless women and men who were still chained.

-Jafar Panahi

——————————————

And Abbas Kierostami’s letter, following the US rejection of his visa application in September, 2002:

Dear Richard, Bill and Bruce [organisers of the 2002 New York Film Festival - Padraig],

Thank you for inviting me and my film TEN to your festivals. The enclosed
letter will explain the reason why I shall not be attending.

As you see, I was refused an entry visa to the United States of America,
despite the exceptional circumstances and your kind attention as well as the
protection and help of many friends.

I certainly do not deserve an entry visa any more than the aged mother
hoping to visit her children in the US, perhaps for the last time in her
life, or myriads of other urgent cases.

I feel deeply about this unfortunate situation. I am not just sorry
because I was not granted a visa or can not attend your celebrations but as a privileged person with access to the means of public expression and media, I feel profoundly responsible for the tragic state of the world, for the
betterment of which we the public people have not done enough to insure.

For my part, I feel this decision is somehow what I deserve.

(Signed Abbas Kiarostami)

———————————————-

What is equally startling, though entirely predictable, is that the mainstream British print media – whatever about the US print media, much less the broadcast media in the UK and US – are only now getting round to reporting on all of this. Nothing in the Irish media, of course.

The Unvanquished (Aparajito) (1956), The Cloud-Capped Star (Meghe Dhaka Tara) (1960), Mr. Shome (Bhuvan Shome) (1969), The Seedling (Ankur) (1974), Salaam Bombay! (1988), Fire (1996), The Terrorist (Theeviravaathi) (1999)

Leading Directors:

1. Before 60s Post-Independence India, Not much difference between Commercial and Art Cinema :

Raj Kapoor, Bimal Roy, Mehboob Khan, Guru Dutt

2. 50s Auteurs and starters of Indian New Cinema:

Ritwik Ghatak, Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen

3. 70s and early 80s:

Shyam Benegal, Mani kaul, Kumar Sahni, M. S. Sathyu, Girish Karnad, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Buddhadeb Dasgupta, Aparna Sen, Govind Nihalani, Ketan Mehta, Saeed Mirza

4. Late 80s onwards:

Deepa Mehta, Kalpna Lazmi, Sudhir Mishra, Mira Nair

Bollywood: A Discussion

The Seductive World of Indian Cinema

Foreign Relations:

http://www.hindu.com/2008/05/29/stories/2008052950210100.htm

Interviews :

http://arthedains.com/indiaunplugged/2005/11/16/an-interview-with-mani-kaul/

An Interview With Mani Kaul

Q. Can you tell me something about your batch at FTII?
A. I was in the 1963-66 batch. Kumar Shahni was my batch mate, John Abraham was junior while Adoor Gopalakrishnan was a year senior to me. We lived in a very different era. The 1960s was a decade of great ferment and unrest. The environment at FTII was very loosely structured, perhaps it was something to do with the times. At the institute we all believed that we could make films expressing our individual vision. John worked with me on my first film Uski Roti.

Q. What was the narrative style of your first few films?
A. One of my major influences was the French film maker Robert Bresson. Bresson’s films reflected a particular strand of Christian belief called Jansenism which manifests itself in the way leading characters are acted upon and simply surrender themselves to their fate. I believe that cinema is not so much visual as it is temporal. But most film makers concentrate on the spatio-visual aspect. This has led to certain problems. What time reflects is more contemporary than the arrangement of a set of visuals. I do not want to focus on this visual aspect in my films, but want to make the temporal aspect primary.

Q. Did you use music in your films?
A. Film expresses itself through images and sound and to that extent I don’t believe that music is that important to the narrative. I have made a few movies that incorporate Indian classical music. I am inspired by the form of Indian classical music and have used this form in my films. Hindustani music is spontaneous and has highs and lows and climaxes. I like to elaborate on the narrative, just like music.

Q. Did you want to convey a certain message to your audience?
A. No. I made films because I wanted to make films. I didn’t do it with the intention of giving the audience a message. The act of making a film is a social act.

Q. You were part of the new-wave movement of films in India. What were the concerns of the movement and how far did the message penetrate the audience?
A. The new wave movement was a parallel movement to the mainstream cinema in India. We wanted to find a form that corresponded to contemporary reality. Usually, the mainstream films used a medieval idiom. So obviously there was a discrepancy. We tried to create something new.

Q. Were you disappointed that your films didn’t achieve mass appeal?
A. No, not at all. I was well aware that my films would have a limited audience. We were up against a distribution system that manufactured an audience by feeding them the same mainstream formulae. Though my films didn’t get released commercially, there were a number of film screenings.

Q. But there was a lot of debate about your films in the media.
A. Yes, at that time there were a lot of write-ups in the media about them. Journalists felt that it was important to let readers know about the parallel film movement, even though most people wouldn’t get to see my films commercially. Times are very different now. There is absolutely no debate or discussion about what kind of a world we are living in, no attempt to understand it. I was in America at the start of the Iraq war and I couldn’t find a single T.V. or radio station that spoke out in clear unambiguous terms against the war. The entire media toed the line of the American administration.

Q. Why did you stop making films?
A. For the last five years I’ve been teaching music, especially the dhrupad style, and exploring its form. I am thinking of getting back to film making now.

Q. You have also made documentaries. What difference do you see between your films and documentaries?
A. The dividing line between my films and documentaries is thin. Some of my films, like Siddheshwari, are like poetic documentaries. Another documentary, Arrival, is about labour migrating to cities.

Q. What do you have to say about Paheli?
A. The very meaning of a Paheli is that it can be solved whereas a Duvidha can’t be. In my film, the woman couldn’t choose between the material and the spiritual husband. So in that sense, for me the problem still continues. In Paheli, the woman makes a choice. I guess that’s why the film makers called it Paheli.

Woman in the Dunes (1964), The Ballad of Narayama (1983), In the Realm of the Senses (1976), The Pornographers (1966), Eros Plus Massacre (1970)

The Insect Woman (1963)

♣Introduction:

Some recent critical work has come to question the perhaps too easy and quick assignation of the term “New Wave” (Nuberu bagu, nouvelle vague) to a group of filmmakers who directed their first efforts at Shochiku Studios around 1960, in particular Nagisa Oshima (b. 1932), Masahiro Shinoda (b. 1931), and Yoshishige Yoshida (b. 1933). With some stylistic and thematic similarities to the French and Polish New Waves of this period, such a comparison made sense, if only from the perspective of public relations and pop journalism. Still, by adding in the contemporaneous efforts by the likes of Shohei Imamura (b. 1926) and Susumu Hani (b. 1928), one can safely claim a historical moment of a clear confluence of interests revolving around the political alignment of Japan with the United States; the alienated state of postwar youth; continued discrimination against Koreans, burakumin (untouchables), and the working poor; women’s liberation; and the freeing of film form from the Classical and Postwar masters. And while it has been common to claim this New Wave as cresting in 1960, greater historical distance may reveal that a more interesting and truer “wave” of radical filmmaking came about at the end of the decade, not at its beginning.

The very success of the mainstream Japanese cinema of the 1950s enabled studios like Shochiku, especially, but also Nikkatsu, to allow a greater sense of directorial freedom of expression and the breakdown of classic genres. This was exacerbated when the industry began a steep decline after 1963 due, mostly, to the introduction of television. This new medium rather quickly took away one of the industry’s stalwart audiences: middle-class women. One way to try and hold on to their remaining audience was the turn to younger directors and their favored theme of youth. With films like Seishun Zankoku Monogatari (Cruel Story of Youth, 1960), Furyo Shonen (Bad Boys, 1961), and Buta To Gunkan (Pigs and Battleships, 1961), among others, something like a new wave appeared. Alienated youngsters rebelling from middle-class society or unable to enter into the promise of economically resurgent Japan, and a film style characterized by neo-documentary techniques, hand-held camerawork, a rejection of the pictorial tradition, all sifted, many times, through a darkly comic lens, certainly marked a break even from those 1950s youth films that are the clear predecessors of the 1960s new wave. But as the decade wore on and the industry could no longer support the radical efforts of younger filmmakers, and as mainstream audiences continued to desert the Japanese cinema, the industry had reached a crisis by the late 1960s. The Art Theatre Guild (ATG) came to the rescue of many of the new wave filmmakers, introducing new production and distribution patterns into the Japanese cinema. It must be beyond coincidental that the best films of Hani, Shinoda, Yoshida, and even Oshima were made at the ATG, and that even most of their subsequent films take a backseat to the truly original works made there.

The ATG began in the early 1960s primarily as an exhibitor of foreign films—though it did produce Otoshiana (The Pitfall) in 1962, the first film of acclaimed independent filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara (1927–2001). The distribution and exhibition by the ATG of Oshima’s Ninja bugei-cho (Band of Ninja) in 1967, produced by Oshima’s own Sozosha Corporation, was something of a surprise hit. Oshima used no live action film footage, but “animated” actual manga (comic books/graphic novels) panels by enlarging, shrinking, and superimposing or merely through fast editing of stills. The fact that the audience was that greeted this film enthusiastically was largely young should have been a wake-up call to film producers everywhere, but the ATG was the first to heed it. At this same time, the already well-established Shohei Imamura co-produced Ningen Johatsu (A Man Vanishes, 1967) with the ATG. The film was a modest success—again with a young, restless audience very much ready to embrace underground art, theater, and cinema. By 1968 the ATG would provide that in abundance. Films like Oshima’s Koshikei (Death by Hanging, 1968 ) and Gishiki (The Ceremony, 1971) hit at the heart of Japan’s social and familial institutions; his Shinjuku dorobo nikki (Diary of a Shinjuku Thief, 1968 ) captured the Japanese 1960s as no other film; and Shinoda’s Shinju ten no amijima (Double Suicide, 1969) and Toshio Matsumoto’s (b. 1932) Bara no soretsu (Funeral Procession of Roses, 1969 ) and Shura (Pandemonium, 1971) combined the most traditional of Japanese arts—Bunraku and calligraphy, among others—with a decidedly Modernist approach to film.

The importance of the New Wave in the 1960s should not diminish the significance of more mainstream genres, in particular the male-oriented films directed at young and working-class men. If women had abandoned the cinema in favor of television and the overall more home-centered lifestyle mandated in economically successful Japan, filmmakers turned to the samurai film in increasing numbers. Under the impetus of director Kenji Misumi (1921–1975) and star Raizo Ichikawa (1931–1969), a new youth orientation was introduced into the already nihilistic tale of a possessed ronin in Daibosatsu Toge (Satan’s Sword, 1960) and two sequels (1960, 1961). This same story would be stylishly engaged later in the decade by Tatsuya Nakadai under the sure-handed direction of Kihachi Okamoto (1923–2005) in a version known as Dai-bosatsu tôge (The Sword of Doom, 1966 ). Akira Kurosawa contributed to this newly anarchic and violent tendency of the genre turn with Yojimbo (Yojimbô the Bodyguard, 1961) and Sanjuro (1962), with Toshiro Mifune (1920–1997) as the samurai-with-no-name. The star, Shintaro Katsu (1931–1997), would similarly bring a new dimension to the samurai film, appearing in over twenty films in the decade as the wandering, blind, masseur-master swordsman, Zatoichi. This new-style samurai film prospered into the early 1970s, but by then overexposure on television, the aging of the samurai stars, and the continued decline of the mainstream film industry put a halt to the routine production of these often startlingly original, beautifully realized, artistically surprising genre entries.

Coincident with the new-style samurai film was another male-oriented genre, often filled with more graphic violence than the samurai film. (Though few films can top the Kozure Okami series [Lone Wolf and Cub, 1970–1972] for sheer swordplay mayhem.) Known as the yakuza (gangster) genre film, it became the staple of Toei Pictures, formed in 1951. A complex morality, sometimes seen as conservative—feudalistic notions of duty, honor, and loyalty predominate—merges with a truly nihilistic flavor, as all values except male bonding and camaraderie are called into question by the time of the (inevitable) violent showdown. The superstar Ken Takakura (b. 1931) is a key figure in the genre, especially with his eighteen-part Abashiri Bangaichi (Abashiri prison series, 1965–1972), as is Bunta Sugawara (b. 1931), especially as guided by the wily veteran director Kinji Fukasaku (1930–2003) in the multi-part Battles without Honor and Humanity series (Jingi naki tatkai, 1973–1974). By the middle of the 1970s, overproduction, aging stars, and declining production values, as well as yakuza series on television, sheathed the sword of the gangster as it had the samurai earlier.

♣Prominent Directors:

• Nagisa Oshima, Yoshishige Yoshida, Masahiro Shinoda, Shohei Imamura, Susumu Hani

• Hiroshi Teshigahara, Seijun Suzuki, Yasuzo Masumura, Toshio Matsumoto, Shinsuke Ogawa, Tsuchimoto Noriaki, Koji Wakamatsu

]]> http://excocinema.wordpress.com/2008/07/06/japanese-new-wave/feed/ 0 excocinema http://excocinema.wordpress.com/2008/06/29/soviet-montage/ http://excocinema.wordpress.com/2008/06/29/soviet-montage/#comments Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:29:28 +0000 excocinema http://excocinema.wordpress.com/?p=32 ]]> Recommended Reading:

1. Soviet Montage (1924-1930), Chap 12, Film Art : An Introduction, Bordwell & Thompson, Sixth Edition (3 pages)

Some Leading Directors:

Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Vertov, Kuleshov

Film Suggestions:

Strike (1925), Battleship Potemkin (1925), October (1927), Storm Over Asia (1930), Man with a Movie Camera (1929), The End of St. Petersburg (1927)

YouTube:

Pudovkin’s Chess Fever, part 1, part 2

Eisenstein‘s Strike

Links:

1. Moving Explosions: Metaphors of Emotion in Sergei Eisenstein’s Writings, Greg M. Smith

2. Kuleshov Effect : Effect A, Effect B : One additional shot in Effect B

The French New Wave (1959-64), Chap 12, Film Art : An Introduction, Bordwell & Thompson, Sixth Edition (3 pages)

Additional Readings (not necessary):

Chap 1, Where Did the Wave Begin?, A History of the French New Wave Cinema, Richard Neupert, ,Second Edition, 2002 (41 pages)

Chap 8, Resnais and Varda, (41 pages)

An interview with Agnes Varda

Movie Suggestions:

YouTube Suggestions:

• Godard’s interviews : 1964, 1972,1980
• Movies: The 400 Blows, Le Weekend, Breathless, Hiroshima Mon Amour,Alphaville, Agnès Varda‘s

Links:

1. filmsdefrance.com
2. art and culture

Some readings:

1. Cesare Zavattini wrote a neorealist manifesto in 1953 outlining its idealist features which he called “Some Ideas on the Cinema“. Recommended.

2. Mark Shiel, a Lecturer in Film Studies at King’s College, University of London, has written a book “Italian Neorealism : Rebuilding The Cinematic City.” Read the Introduction and first chapter of the book where he describes the Italian neorealism and tries to find the origins of it. Recommended.

3. Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s paper – Fascism, Writing, and Memory: The Realist Aesthetic in Italy, 1930-1950 – discussing the effect of Fascism and World war II upon Italian literature.

There is no dearth of material for the neorealism.

Any link/material is welcome, please share it here.