Japanese Film Blogathon, 2010

I don't have any content yet, but I have to post a link to this - the second Japanese Film Blogathon, hosted by Wildgrounds. It's probably no secret that Japanese film is one of my passions - I will have to contribute. And I will certain enjoy the reading.

I could start by answering the questions on this page (there is a poll - go answer, if you wish!):

1) What is your favorite era of Japanese cinema? Up to the end of the 30s? 40s and 50s? 60s? 70s and 80s? 90s and 00s?

If I have to answer - the 50s - the old guard (Mizoguchi, Ozu, Naruse, etc.) were still at the peak of the powers - the post-war generation (Kurosawa, Ichikawa, Kobayashi, etc.) came into their own, and were also at the height of their powers - younger filmmakers got their start (Imamura, Masumura, etc.); you had thriving genre cinema, along with art cinema, all of it - pop and art - capable of creating powerful, exciting work... It's an absolute golden age of film. And from an auteurist point of view - Ozu, Kurosawa and Naruse all produced a body of work in the 50s that will rank with any director's decade ever - Mizoguchi comes off below them only because he only survived half the decade. And Ichikawa's 50s work is not far off the mark.



Now - I imagine, if I were able to see as many films from the 30s as I have the 50s, it could challenge the later decade. Ozu, in the 30s, might have been even more impressive than he was in the 50s; the only other major director I have seen even a fair sampling of from the 30s is Naruse - his early work also holds up very well to the later... So I don't know. I do know - the 60s were a strange time - when pop cinema thrived; when the new wave directors created films as impressive as anyone anywhere - Imamura's 60s films can stand with anyone's, Oshima isn't far behind, and many others - Suzuki, Teshigahara, Shinoda, etc. - did fine work as well. The previous generation - Kurosawa, Ichikawa, etc. - continued to make good films, but started to drop off. Kurosawa dropped out of sight for half the decade - Ichikawa's films started to decline (roughly when Natto Wada stopped collaborating with him)... And - if I remember my history right - the film market collapsed utterly. A collapse that continued in the 70s, and knocked even the art film makers out of action - Imamura disappeared for most of the 70s, Oshima was forced abroad, Kurosawa could barely work.... Since 1980 - I think Japanese film has been revived - certainly, a lot of the old guard started making films again, and good ones; new talent emerged, and so on - but at a much more modest level than the past. Though even now, a number of my absolute favorite contemporary directors are Japanese....



2) What is your favorite genre? Jidai-geki/Chambara? Horror/Monster? Yakuza/gangster? Gendai-geki/shomin-geki? Pinku/roman-porno? Anime?

This is harder to answer - because in general, I am not so much a fan of genres as of films - I certainly like art films, and auteurist films - my favorite genres, you might say, are directors. So - Ozu, Mizoguchi, Naruse, Kurosawa, Ichikawa, Imamura, Oshima, Suzuki, Kurosawa, Miyazaki, Kore-Eda, Miike - working across the full range of genres, almost. Though for poll taking purposes, the answer is always Ozu.



But still - go read - and I hope to come up with something of my own for this... it is a subject very dear to my heart.