Cinema/Movement Screenings

I am pleased to announce that Ciné Club, in conjunction with the Department of Film at York University, will be screening three 16mm prints of rare Japanese films. As a part of the Cinema/Movement conference and screening series being held 12 Nov-19 Nov, we have the fortune of access to three wonderful films, Rice Bowl, PouPou and Crazy Love.

This Monday 12 November we will be screening two films produced by the Nihon University Cinema Club, Rice Bowl and PouPou. Screenings will be held in Room 135 in the Centre for Film & Theatre beginning at 6:00 P.M.

The Nihon University Cinema Club (Nichidai Eiken) was an organization formed in 1957 by Hirano Katsumi, Kanbara Hiroshi, Ko Hiro, and Jonouchi Motoharu. Employing a collective production method that eschewed the name of the author, the group mixed documentary and surrealist tendencies to confront the increasing political tensions arising in Japan.

Sparked by the security treaty with the US (Anpo) the group reformed and Wan (1961) was the first work by the newly formed collective. Through a narrative of matricide in a country village, the film metaphorically critiqued the failure to prevent the security treaty, its restrained black and white compositions and lack of dialogue projecting the darkly oppres- sive spirit of the time. According to Iimura the surrealist poem-exercise Pou Pou is a “film describing some unusual acts by youths attempting to break out of the stifl ing patterns of culture... daydreaming that yields them nothing. A mob of children enact a burial rite; the place of the ‘corpse’ is taken by one of the rebellious youths... Beautiful and rare images... one of the best Japanese films.”

On Monday 19 November we will screen Crazy Love by director Okabe Michio at 6 P.M. in 135 CFT.

Okabe Michio began his career in the fine arts. Inspired by the works of Kenneth Anger and the American underground, he gravitated towards fi lmmaking. Crazy Love was his second work and the fi rst feature length underground fi lm in Japan. Eschewing narrative and meaning, Okabe instead layered the fi lm with the music he liked from the Beatles and James Brown to Enka and Group Sounds and peopled it with friends and artists, inserting sequences of performances and happenings, making it a true document of the Shinjuku underground scene. Okabe himself appears recreating his favorite roles from Bonnie and Clyde to Spaghetti Westerns, as well as incorporating quotations by inserting stills of Godard, Kennedy’s assassination and the Vietnam War. Correlated with Susan Sontag’s theorization of kitsch as well as employing the queer lingo of “camp,” the film’s relentless equal opportunity pop-art montage shattered the foundations of conventional cinema, including the experiments of the early 60s, liberating infinite new possibilities.

For a full list of conference and screening times and dates please click here.



Special thank you to Sharon Hayashi