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

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.

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