This year's New York Film Festival seems to have fulfilled its brief so well you have to wonder what the programmers will come up with for its 50th anniversary edition next year. 2012 will also mark Richard Peña's 25th year as programming director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and chairman of the Nyff selection committee — and, as he's just announced, his last. "It's been a terrific ride," he told the New York Times' Larry Rohter on Saturday, "but I've had other interests, and it got to the point where I got to thinking about what I want to do with the rest of my working life. It's a good thing for me personally, and also for the organization, because change is good, and it will be good for the organization to have fresh eyes and ideas and new ways of doing things."
For now, though, the 49th edition.
For now, though, the 49th edition.
- 10/17/2011
- MUBI
Velvet Bullets and Steel Kisses: Celebrating the Nikkatsu Centennial was a sidebar at this year's New York Film Festival that Dan Sallitt, writing a couple of weeks ago, found "so exciting that it threatens to overshadow the main slate: a retrospective of the Japanese studio Nikkatsu, whose opportunistic shifts of focus always seemed to open doors for some of Japan's most creative filmmakers. Compare film magazine Kinema Junpo's 1999 and 2009 lists of all-time greatest Japanese films to the Lincoln Center series schedule, and count the overlaps." Last year in the Notebook, Dan reviewed one of the 37 films in the series, Tomu Uchida's Earth (1939).
"The sidebar is peppered with nearly impossible to see rediscoveries," notes Steve Dollar at GreenCine Daily: "early silent films like 1927's A Diary of Chuji's Travels and harshly realistic World War II dramas like Mud and Soldiers. Shot on location in China in 1939, the latter film blends...
"The sidebar is peppered with nearly impossible to see rediscoveries," notes Steve Dollar at GreenCine Daily: "early silent films like 1927's A Diary of Chuji's Travels and harshly realistic World War II dramas like Mud and Soldiers. Shot on location in China in 1939, the latter film blends...
- 10/16/2011
- MUBI
The New York Film Festival's retrospective Velvet, Bullets and Steel Kisses: Celebrating The Nikkatsu Centennial features a tremendous discovery: Tomotaka Tasaka's Mud and Soldiers, a Japanese war film made (or at least released) in 1939.
One must keep in mind that for the majority of Western film viewers, the idea of a war film from the Japanese side of the 15 Years War is probably restricted to the spare distribution of the startling but politically and aesthetically conventional The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malay. In contrast to that narrative of contemporary history and propaganda, Tasaka posits an experiential, borderline avant-garde combat film in Mud and Soldiers, where texture of the film frame blends with the texture of the daily life of the Japanese soldiers marching and fighting on the Chinese mainland.
The "story" is actually not one (there are no real characters, except for a beleaguered, pudgy corporal, no...
One must keep in mind that for the majority of Western film viewers, the idea of a war film from the Japanese side of the 15 Years War is probably restricted to the spare distribution of the startling but politically and aesthetically conventional The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malay. In contrast to that narrative of contemporary history and propaganda, Tasaka posits an experiential, borderline avant-garde combat film in Mud and Soldiers, where texture of the film frame blends with the texture of the daily life of the Japanese soldiers marching and fighting on the Chinese mainland.
The "story" is actually not one (there are no real characters, except for a beleaguered, pudgy corporal, no...
- 10/4/2011
- MUBI
Has another photo existed with so many great filmmakers in one shot? This was taken in 1936 on the occation of the creation of the Japan Film Directors Society.
Front row, from left:
Teinosuke Kinugasa (1896-1982)
Yoshinobu Ikeda (1892-1973)
Sadao Yamanaka (1909-1938)
Mansaku Itami (1900-1946)
Heinosuke Gosho (1902-1981)
Minoru Murata (1894-1937)
Shigeyoshi Suzuki (1900-1976)
Kenji Mizoguchi (1898-1956)
Second row, from left:
Tomotaka Tasaka (1902-1974)
Yasujiro Shimazu (1897-1945)
Hiroshi Shimizu (1903-1966)
Yutaka Abe (1895-1977)
Kiyohiko Ushihara (1897-1985)
Kajiro Yamamoto (1902-1974)
Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963)
Tomu Uchida (1898-1970)
Third row, from left:
Mikio Naruse (1905-1969)
Kintaro Inoue (1901-1954)
(Via Vermillion and One Nights.)...
Front row, from left:
Teinosuke Kinugasa (1896-1982)
Yoshinobu Ikeda (1892-1973)
Sadao Yamanaka (1909-1938)
Mansaku Itami (1900-1946)
Heinosuke Gosho (1902-1981)
Minoru Murata (1894-1937)
Shigeyoshi Suzuki (1900-1976)
Kenji Mizoguchi (1898-1956)
Second row, from left:
Tomotaka Tasaka (1902-1974)
Yasujiro Shimazu (1897-1945)
Hiroshi Shimizu (1903-1966)
Yutaka Abe (1895-1977)
Kiyohiko Ushihara (1897-1985)
Kajiro Yamamoto (1902-1974)
Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963)
Tomu Uchida (1898-1970)
Third row, from left:
Mikio Naruse (1905-1969)
Kintaro Inoue (1901-1954)
(Via Vermillion and One Nights.)...
- 9/25/2011
- MUBI
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