As Japan Cuts Open, Programmer Jamier Talks Asian Film Trends, Fests & Stars

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Interviews

Published on Tuesday, 10 July 2012 23:52

Written by Renzo Adler

The Japan Society's (333 East 47th St.) Japan Cuts film series (July 12 - 28, 2012), in conjunction with Subway Cinema's New York Asian Film Festival, is a daring film series assembling some truly unique examples of Japanese cinema. Japan Cuts as a film series excels at having a little something for everyone. You have standbys like Takashi Miike (Ace Attorney), veteran actors like Koji Yakusho and Yoshio Harada along with a new breed of filmmakers that look to turn their lens on a post 3/11 Japan.

Japan Cuts is the sort of series that does a great job of attracting both experts on Japanese cinema as well as new viewers. And it wouldn't be possible without the guidance of Japan Society's film programmer, Samuel Jamier. 

Sam joined The Japan Society in 2009 after a stint as Senior Program Officer at The Korea Society, where he conducted lectures, film series, and organized the New York Korean Film Festival. At the Japan Society he recently organized the Love Will Tear Us Apart film series, a cavalcade of toxic romances and erotic thrillers throughout Japanese cinematic history.

I sat down with Sam to discuss his role at the Japan Society, the rigors of chosing the right films to show, and the state of the film industry in Asia.

Q: From reading your Twitter feed I can see you’ve been very busy lately with the New York Asian Film Fest and the Japan Society.

SJ: The Twitter doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Q: How did you get involved at the Japan Society?

SJ: I was at the Korea Society for about two years. I was running the lecture programs, cultural programs, and corporate programs. Then the position opened at the Japan Society and I thought it would be interesting to focus on the cinema  specifically. And we have a nice theater here. I joined about three years ago, September 2009.

Q: What’s your role in the Japan Cuts Festival?

SJ: I am the main programmer of the festival. The festival was set up in 2007 as part of the 100th anniversary of the Japan Society. They decided to start a large scale festival, but that was before my time. When I joined that became one of the operations I focused the most on. It is arguably the biggest operation at the Japan Society focused on film.

It’s been exciting ever since. I try to diversify the lineup, bring more and more prestigious guests. Strike a balance between commercial cinema and cinema from Japan.

Q: What goes into the selection process?

SJ: A lot of things. It’s all about balance. Try to have a bit of this a bit of that. The last thing you want to do is just show nothing but the same. That’s the issue of being a programmer of films from one national culture, it can get boring easily. You might just focus on one genre. I like genre films.

I always try to include a few genre heavy titles, a few art-house titles, a balance of interesting titles. Not everything in the lineup is meant to appeal to just me. One particular film doesn’t appeal profoundly to my sensibilities, but I thought it was pretty interesting. I also try to think about the audience and what they like.

I try to get a sense of what audiences are looking for. Sometimes you program something you think is great and not many people show up. And sometimes something you have no expectations for does really well. T

here’s no real formula behind this. But no matter how great a film is, it doesn’t really exist without an audience. So I try to find an audience for these films and I think there is to an extent.

Q: What films interest you personally?

SJ: I’m a pretty big Wong Kar Wai fan. I like a lot of art-house directors like Tarkovskiy. It’s pretty hard to define what interests me actually. Everything has its function.

Sometimes you just want to watch a recent Hollywood blockbuster or a big fat spectacle with special effects. I don’t want to be bored; I like to be entertained. I don’t usually go for comedies actually. That’s not usually a natural choice for me.

I tend to like stuff that is more on the dark side or the extreme side. The  most personal festival series I ever organized was the Love Will Tear Us Apart series. That’s pretty close to what I like; erotic dramas with a lot of danger.

Crying Fist is one of my favorite Korean films. I like Oldboy, movies like that are the kind of cinema I’m deeply interested in.  Mostly Asian stuff.

 Q: Akira Kurosawa is very good at translating Russian stories to Japanese settings.

SJ: Something Kurosawa is very good at doing is refitting elements of story and refitting them to work in Japanese. He did the same with Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky of course. He’s very good at adapting material, but then again that might be a Japanese quality.

Q: Some people said these are tough times for Japanese films and it’s like in the US right now with nothing but remakes and adaptations, but this festival seems to have a good variety.

SJ: Yeah, but you really have to go look for it, it’s not easy. This year was a bit of a challenge. Long story short, it’s difficult to find these films. We’re facing tough times ahead for the industry, that’s pretty obvious.

Theatrical sales are not looking great overall. There is a crisis of commercial cinema.  The fact that the industry is adapting systematically from manga or already popular novels is not that great of a sign. But you can say the same thing about the US.

Everything that’s a popular comic book or video game has been optioned. In the case of Japan the tsunami had a financial impact that affected the film industry, like all industries were that affected by that.

But  these amazing filmmakers, through thick and thin they will find a way to have their story told. That’s pretty amazing.

Q: Speaking of the tsunami, Japan Cuts is showing several films related to the March 11 tsunami and earthquake, including No Man's Zone by Toshi Fujiwara.  Are they popular? How prevalent are these films in Japan. 

SJ: There’s a whole variety of these films that came out. Some of them naturally integrate what happened into their narrative. Some of the films we’re showing are not directly related to the earthquake, they’re all different stories in which all of a sudden the tsunami becomes central to the plot because it’s such a huge event. 

How they receive these films really depends on the titles, but it’s really clear that there is pre and post 3/11 films in terms of how a lot of fiction titles integrate what happened into their narrative.

Q: Has Japan changed since 3/11?

SJ: I was in Japan last October, it was only maybe six months after and people were still in shock, but life goes on. Japan has absolutely changed. There’s stuff going on, the protests, the re-launch of nuclear reactors. Stuff has changed profoundly.

Q: Are film makers taking notice? Is this only a small sampling of films addressing the disaster?

SJ: Yeah, it’s a small sampling, it’s not everything. When you have this phenomenon where all sorts of people are suddenly picking up cameras and want to document what happened, it branches out to all sorts of directions; political, emotional, there’s all kinds of stuff in there. Sometimes it’s as simple as “oh, I know this guy whose whole family was swept away.”

The nuclear issue is very, very sensitive. A film can be about the destruction left behind and filmed in a very ghostly manner, and sometimes it can be straight forward [in its narrative]. I wouldn’t say these stories have absorbed all of the film industry, but it’s obviously very important.

If you’re a film maker, you’re obviously also a human being, you live in that society. So it affects what you do in that sense and how you see the world. It changed a lot of people’s perspectives and how they deal with their lives.

Q: What do you think of the films in the Japan Cuts fest that are based on manga, videogames, and novels?

SJ: I take it for granted that we’re going to have a lot of stuff that is based on manga, and frankly, I fell out of manga a while ago. I used to read manga a lot more, but I’m really more focused on the films than how close they are to the original material.

Asura was based on a manga by George Akiyama which was a bit of a shocker at the time, it’s about a kid who’s a cannibal after all, that’s not exactly standard manga fare. I never read it, I just know about the original story. Gyo, I went to the manga after watching the film and I thought it’s pretty interesting what they did with it.

Q: They made quite a few changes with Gyo.

SJ: They did some radical switches which I thought were quite adeptly done. The problem with manga readers is that they have this almost religious reverence to the material and think the film is supposed to adapt every aspect of the original story.

They might change a few things [in Gyo], but I think the essence of the Junji Ito manga is preserved.  To tell you the truth, I didn’t even know it was based on a Junji Ito manga, even though I have read quite a few of his manga.

A programmer friend of mine from Fantasia Film Fest said I should watch it. So I watched it and thought “this is a lot like a Junji ito narrative.” After I read the press release I was like “oh, that makes sense.” After that I picked up the original manga and read the story to make comparisons, but I don’t care all that much about the original material.

Like with Ace Attorney, I have no idea about the original video game, I just see the film as films. They don’t exist in a vacuum, but I see them as standalone pieces.

Q: Takashi Miike is very interesting with the wide range of films he does and adaptations. How does he navigate high brow and low brow film.

SJ: Miike is a craftsman. You give him a narrative and he tries to make it work. Some consider Miike as an auteur of sorts, and he is a great filmmaker, but he’s a craftsman fundamentally. I don’t think it represents him accurately by trying to attribute to him a specific vision, I don’t think he has one in a way.

He has a particular style, it’s true, and he fits things to his needs, but I don’t think it’s accurate to say he has an overall vision. But this is a guy I immensely respect. You give him any story and he tries to make it work, and god knows he has dabbled in a lot of different material. Stuff like Yatterman, to his most recent film Ai to Makoto, which is a musical.

His capacity to serve a narrative that is given is pretty amazing. He’s like an amazing carpenter. You can give him a piece of wood and he can turn it into anything he wants.

In the case of Ace Attorney, it’s pretty interesting. You can tell it is a little video game-ish, but it’s pretty fun and doesn’t suffer from the various flaws of US adaptations of videogames. Any time there’s a film based on a videogame in the US it’s quite crappy.

Q: There are two retrospectives going on, Koji Yakusho and Yoshio Harada. Why were these actors chosen?

SJ: Harada died in July 19 2011, so that’s the anniversary of his death. I thought it’d be a good thing to pay homage to his work. He is one of the greatest actors in Japanese cinema and will go down in Japanese cinematic history as a very important figure.

So I thought thatwe could show a couple of his films. We’re showing the last film he appeared him, Someday, and another film, 9 Souls, which I think is one of his best roles, and since we had director Toshiaki Toyoda as a guest earlier, I thought it was timely to do.

I picked Koji Yakusho because he’s at a really rich point in his career where he can be considered Japan’s leading actor. He’s at the peak of his career right now and he just received the Medal with Purple Ribbon from the Japanese Emperor which is one of the highest distinctions that can be given to an artist. He appeared in a lot of… I don’t want to use the word exciting, but for lack of a better word, interesting films this year. It seemed like something to do.

Q: I never realized that he was in 13 Assassins and played the man in the white suit in Tampopo. I think he lends himself to extreme characters.

SJ: I see him as more with an everyman quality. Good looks, but not like an idol. He’s quite versatile. What you can see from these six films we’re showing is that there’s quite a variety. The righteous samurai that’s leading a group of assassins in 13 Assassins, while in The Woodsman and the Rain he’s this kind of everyman.

I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s extreme, but he can do extreme parts. He’s a guy with natural good looks, not overly handsome or overly tough, but he can play tough characters when he wants to. He reminds me of Gary Oldman in a way. Maybe not as chameleon-like, but definitely gets into very different roles while being a very charismatic actor.

Q: Isn't Anyone Alive? is an end of the world film, but isn’t as cataclysmic as a lot of the end of the world movies out in the US right now. Is Japan as fixated? 

SJ: Absolutely. If there’s one thing in common, culturally and beyond, it’s that Japan and the US have a shared fascination with fantasies of self-annihilation. Particularly in animation, if you watch Gyo as an example of that, in anime Tokyo gets blown, destroyed, and burned all the time. Same thing in the US. They love to destroy all these big monuments.It seems like in these apocalyptic films they [the monuments] are only there to get blown to bits.

There are many reasons why that is. In the US there is an apocalyptic imagination that has its role in this puritanical religious view that the world is coming to an end. Then you get into fantasies of regression, you go back to basics, re-claiming and conquering land. It’s very American. You go back to basics and fight for your food.

In the case of Japan, geographically, it almost is already a post-apocalyptic country. Tokyo is right on the fault-line and you know what just happened, it’s certainly very dangerous. It’s natural that this anguish would translate to the screen and that films like Isn’t Anyone Alive? is a consequence of that. There is a proliferation of films and animation featuring Tokyo burning.

Q: And that Japan has frequently experienced destruction, whether man-made or from natural forces.

SJ: Natural and unnatural. Yes, they’ve already experienced it, so it makes its way onto the screen.

Q: A while back I recall you talking about a possible end of the world themed film series at the Japan Society in 2013 with giant monster [kaiju] movies. Is that still happening?

SJ: I might do it, but I’m not so sure. It’s a bit early to tell. We have one film in our Atrocity Exhibition series that’s sort of a kaiju movie called Henge.

Q: Has the western perception of Japanese films changed at all?

SJ: Things have changed a little bit, but I think people mostly just stick with what they know. To a large extent, the mainstream view of Japanese cinema, if there is such a thing, is Kurosawa and Ozu, that kind of stuff. At the same time there has been a growing number of fans of genre cinema and emergence of people like Takashi Miike, so you have the emergence of a public that knows cinema really well and that’s amazing.

I wouldn’t say the mainstream has changed so much, but you see the development of a different kind of audience as well.

Q: I remember having to watch the trailer for Battle Royale on dialup in 1999 and now you can just get it at Best Buy.  What do you think will be the next cinematic import from Japan to become popular in the US?

SJ: It’s pretty complicated in the sense that on one hand you do have a lot of exposure of Japanese cinema in the international film festival circuit. There weren’t a whole lot of Asian films in the big festivals in the past year, but the ones that make it there are Japanese. So if you consider Japan as part of Asian cinema in general, it still does really well and it makes it regularly in the lineup of major festivals.

Q:  Is Japan leading the way in Asian cinema? What about Korean cinema?

SJ: Japan is not leading the way in Asian cinema. That for sure I can tell you. I don’t think anyone can claim that. It’s hard to tell because Korean films have been doing very well. They get regularly picked up for theatrical release.

When it comes to theatrical releases of Japanese films, it’s declined quite a bit, but there has been an explosion of Video On Demand when it comes to Japanese films. Specifically, genre titles are doing pretty well. It’s a pretty complicated situation to analyze.

 Q: What about Chinese cinema?

There’s the problem of political censorship and controlled and films have to be approved by the Film Bureau before it gets out into the open, but I think you can safely say mainland China is on the rise. Korean films are still doing really well, too. Mainland China and Hong Kong are still surviving. Hong Kong was declining for a while but now it seems to be back on the scene.

I’ve seen some really great Cantonese language films at Lincoln Center with New York Asian Film Festival. Japan still lives on a very, very good brand and a persistence of good genre titles.

This year we have Hard Romanticker, it’s not a yakuza film per-se, but it does a good job of looking like one. It has all the bad-assery…is that even a word? It has all the bad-ass aspects, coolness, and brutality of a 1970’s Toei film.

Q: Is Hard Romanticker meant for old fans of Yakuza movies or a new younger audience?

SJ: A lot of Japanese people have seen the 1960’s classics on TV, so they’re really trying to update and find a new audience there. Hard Romanticker has the characteristics of a yakuza film but is not a yakuza film itself. Yakuza films are still popular, Outrage was a pretty big success for Kitano, and I think Outrage 2 is back on track. So the genre is still kind of popular.

I would say if you compare with Korea, to go back to the home market versus theatrical releases, what Korea and China have going for them is a pretty huge theatrical market. It’s not doing as well as it used to a few years ago, but in the case of China, there’s a massive rise. It will be the largest theatrical market. Clearly that influences filmmakers and everything.

Korea is still pretty huge because tickets are much cheaper; it’s just a different way of seeing films. There’s a genuine cinephile culture in Korea whereas cinephelia in Japan is more of an otaku phenomenon, it’s not on such a massive scale.

That makes for a style of film making [in Japan] that is more niche, more specific, more extreme in a way, and that’s why it’s also interesting.  Whether that makes it unique, there’s also the angle of just being from Japan, but it’s not just that.

Film making in Japan is also really difficult. Not that it’s easy in China, Korea, or the US, but it’s particularly hard to make a film there right now. So that has an impact on how you make your film. If you’re an indie filmmaker in Japan, the tendency is to do it the hard way. I find that quite interesting.

Q: Why is it so difficult for indie film makers in Japan right now?

SJ: Money, also finding an audience. There’s a lot of pre-packaging. Like a book is doing really well so they option it. Everything is pretty integrated so that it gets predictable now. But there are still some interesting films.

Love Strikes, for example, is meant to be a popular film. It’s based on a really popular TV show and a manga, so it’s pre-prepared. They paved the way for it. But it’s fun, it does come from a place where they say “we want to be as popular as possible” and it’s undeniable that they made a fun movie.

In terms of funding, it’s become pretty difficult and in the end there’s a sense that these films, one way or another, end up on the small screen. So it affects the way you make a film from the start with that in mind. It is hard to put that together.

Q: How big of a driving force is VOD in Asia?

SJ: It’s not like here. Koreans really go to theaters. Whenever I go there it’s really shocking. I usually come back from there feeling really enthusiastic. Even though it’s not what it used to be, it’s still really impressive. You get a sense that you’re going to a social event. On the other hand, one of the things that isn’t positive in Korea and is a bit like Japan is the role of the megaplex over there.

I don’t think this dominance of a few chains over the market is that great. It’s hegemony.  Very few companies control the market. They have that problem, but artistic opportunities are still really good.

Everything in Japan is really expensive, so that’s a big deterrent. When you want to spend that much money to see a movie, you’re more likely to see something like The Avengers.

But again, the resilience of the industry is pretty amazing. It’s interesting to see what they come up with to counter that. Fundamentally in Korea and China it feels like you’re doing your part to counter Hollywood culture [when you go to the movies], whereas in Japan it’s a little less so.

Korea really wants to sell to a foreign market and they’re quite aggressive about it. Sometimes it fails quite spectacularly. I won’t say any specific films, but there have been some co-productions between China and Korea that just don’t work and the films end up sucking pretty badly. But when they come up with a concept, and they really have their eyes set on a different market, they really can look outside.

In Japan when they make a film, they think primarily of the locals, but then they’re happy if you show it somewhere else. New York is always a target, but it seems kind of optional in a way. They don’t really think of Western or foreign audiences.

Q: Even though Japanese films are necessarily always marketed to the West, I think Japanese filmmakers are still heavily influenced by the west.

SJ: Definitely, you get a lot of stuff from the outside, but then they have a particular view and perspective and they get adapted differently. A thing about cinema I find fascinating is how Korea is adapting Japanese films and vice versa. The cultural crossover is interesting.

There’s one [Korean] film being shown at the New York Asian Film Festival this year that’s really interesting called Couples that’s a remake of a Japanese film called A Stranger of Mine, a pretty tricky fun comedy from director Kenji  Uchida. So the Korean version is like a copy of the original and is very strong in similarities, but they add a little something to it that’s great. It was really great how they twisted it to make it fit in Korea.

Q: What do you think about the movie Zombie Ass?

SJ: Oh my god, are we going to be talking about Zombie Ass? It’s a fun film, it’s pretty extreme. Who else is going to have the balls to show it? It raises curiosity.

Q: The studio that made it, Nikkatsu, has made exploitation films for a long time. Are they carrying on a proud tradition?

SJ: Well you’re not talking about the same company. You talk to some of the younger employees and they don’t know what came before. It’s a very, very old company. It’s changed a lot. But I’m interested in exploitation.

I don’t think Zombie Ass is exactly a masterpiece, but sometimes the grindhouse of today is the art-house of tomorrow. Who would have thought back in the day that spaghetti westerns like The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly would be in the Criterion Collection and such? A lot of the Kurosawa stuff was meant to be popular but was never really considered by Japanese critics as refined art-house titles, per-se, they were seen as action stuff.

Zombie Ass is an extreme title and fun in its own right and I try to think of all types of audiences and there’s a place for everyone in there. It’s an extremely fringe film. I like fringe films. It’s an interesting piece in its own right.

Low brow, high brow, it doesn’t matter; there’s a time for everything. Sometimes on a Tuesday night you want to see a scat zombie movie and sometimes you want to see a much more serious title like Rebirth. You’d have a hard time finding a pattern in the films being shown at Japan Cuts this year.

Q: Do you have any personal projects you are working on like a book or lecture series?

SJ: I’ve thought of that. I often speak in public. A book is in the works, I just had a new idea for a book, but I have to finish what I’m working on right now. I’ve written a few screenplays that I’d like to see at some point.

Q: Can you say anything about them?

SJ: I’d rather keep it on the down-low. But it’s a genre movie, but it’s not like Zombie Ass and it doesn’t have scat. It’s similar to the kind of films I’ve programmed in the past.

Q: Where would you like to film -- China, Japan, Korea, US, Europe?

 SJ: All of the above. People travel these days. Your story can take place in several places, though that does make it complicated. I’m interested in all these places, but obviously my sensibility is closer to Asian style films, if there is such a thing.

Your idea of a Japanese film might be a samurai film or melodrama, but there’s more to it than one might think. I try to pull people’s attention to more things than costume dramas.

Q: What would attract you to making a film in Japan? You mentioned being interested in the sort of films that were in the Love Tears Us Apart series.

SJ: I have my own stories to tell as well. Things that I, as a person, have seen, that I think I could put on screen as well. I’ve been working on stories.

Right now I’ve had little time to think about it though. I’ve been working for a few months on a screenplay, but it’s at a fairly early stage.

The problem with Japan is that you might fall into the trap of a foreign film maker in Japan, which a lot of really good film makers have. I’d like to do something that is in Japan, and has to do with Japan, but isn’t going to be a Japanese film at the same time.

Q: Like Paul Schrader’s Mishima.

SJ: Yeah, that’s an interesting film, definitely. I don’t know if I could find the budget to do that though.

To learn more, go to http://www.japansociety.org

Japan Society
333 East 47th Street
New York, NY 10017

Japan Cuts
July 12-28, 2012

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