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: 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.

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