Susumu Hani's always experimented in his films, frequently muddying the borders between his fiction and his documentary works, with his movies including terms such as film-about-film, mockumentary, meta, and found footage long before they became widely known. “The Morning Schedule” highlights his style quite eloquently, with the freedom he enjoined from Atg resulting in a film where he has truly left himself loose.
Follow our coverage of Atg by clicking on the link below
After Kusako commits suicide, two of her closest friends, Tsuji and Reiko, one man and one woman, try to understand the reasons behind her actions, by visiting her Super-8 films and clips from the summer trips they took together.
Describing “The Morning Schedule” is quite a difficult endeavor, considering how unusual and complicated the narrative is. The film-about-film concept is probably the most prevalent, with the two watching a number of Kusako's movies, and reminiscing about their youth together,...
Follow our coverage of Atg by clicking on the link below
After Kusako commits suicide, two of her closest friends, Tsuji and Reiko, one man and one woman, try to understand the reasons behind her actions, by visiting her Super-8 films and clips from the summer trips they took together.
Describing “The Morning Schedule” is quite a difficult endeavor, considering how unusual and complicated the narrative is. The film-about-film concept is probably the most prevalent, with the two watching a number of Kusako's movies, and reminiscing about their youth together,...
- 9/8/2023
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
The movies produced by the Art Theatre Guild form one of the most interesting part of Japanese movie history, particularly because the filmmakers involved enjoyed unprecedented creative and artistic freedom, which resulted in a series of truly unique films. This is the main reason that we decided to deal with the particular titles for our February and March tribute, one that will definitely continue until we manage to have articles for all. Until then, however, and in a tactic we will continue with the rest of our tributes, we decided to also publish a synopsizing list of the movies we already wrote about, one that will expand as more articles come in. Here is what we have as of now, in chronological order.
1. A Man Vanishes (1967) by Shohei Imamura
Right from the beginning, we get an impression of an utterly chaotic experiment, while, as the story unfolds, we can figure...
1. A Man Vanishes (1967) by Shohei Imamura
Right from the beginning, we get an impression of an utterly chaotic experiment, while, as the story unfolds, we can figure...
- 3/28/2022
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
Considered by many as Susumu Hani’s best work, co-produced by Art Theatre Guild and co-written by Shuji Terayama “Nanami: The Inferno of First Love” is a movie that highlights the artistic freedom filmmakers of the Guild had in the 60s, in a title that would very difficult pass from any kind of censorship committee nowadays. Despite its occasionally offensive premises, the movie screened in the US with a 20 minutes cut, grossed over $1 million in Japan and competed for the Golden Bear award at the 18th Berlin International Film Festival in 1968.
The story revolves around Shun, a virgin 17-year-old who works as a goldsmith in his stepfather’s workshop, and Nanami, a young nude dancer. As the film begins, the two meet in the club she works at and immediately fall in love with each other, ending up in a love hotel. Shun is unable to have sex with her,...
The story revolves around Shun, a virgin 17-year-old who works as a goldsmith in his stepfather’s workshop, and Nanami, a young nude dancer. As the film begins, the two meet in the club she works at and immediately fall in love with each other, ending up in a love hotel. Shun is unable to have sex with her,...
- 3/2/2022
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
Japanese Avant-garde and Experimental Film Festival announces full programme for Jaeff 2021: Bodies in advance of ticket sales on 22 July. Jaeff 2021: Bodies will be held at The Barbican from 16-19th September, and online from 20th-30th September.
Jaeff 2021: Bodies explores how we interact with other beings, spaces around us, and how expressions of the unutterable become vital means of communication and connection.
This third edition of the Japanese Avant-garde and Experimental Film Festival considers the body and sensation, and features work from directors Kon Ichikawa, Toshio Matsumoto, Susumu Hani, Chiaki Nagano, Takahiko Iimura, Tatsumi Kumashiro, Shuji Terayama and more.
In a time where words, facts and logic are increasingly ineffectual, powerless and absurd, this year’s programme attempts to make sense of the nonsensical. Finding that sometimes, the most powerful form of expression is often what we feel, rather than what we can say, write, or even think.
Jaeff 2021: Bodies explores how we interact with other beings, spaces around us, and how expressions of the unutterable become vital means of communication and connection.
This third edition of the Japanese Avant-garde and Experimental Film Festival considers the body and sensation, and features work from directors Kon Ichikawa, Toshio Matsumoto, Susumu Hani, Chiaki Nagano, Takahiko Iimura, Tatsumi Kumashiro, Shuji Terayama and more.
In a time where words, facts and logic are increasingly ineffectual, powerless and absurd, this year’s programme attempts to make sense of the nonsensical. Finding that sometimes, the most powerful form of expression is often what we feel, rather than what we can say, write, or even think.
- 7/19/2021
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
Japanese Avant-garde and Experimental Film Festival are very excited to announce their full programme for Jaeff 2021: Bodies. Curated alongside the delayed 2020 Olympics, this year’s festival aims to explore the human body – in motion, at rest, in agony and in ecstasy.
Tickets go on sale to Barbican Members on 21 July, and to the general public on the 22nd. Stay tuned to our socials for further info (and links!).
Jaeff look forward to seeing you this Autumn!
Thursday 16/9
18:00 – Nanami: The Inferno of First Love + A.I. Mama
Friday 17/9
18:00 Portrait of Mr O + Anma + Rose Color Dance + In Passing
20:30 – Lovers are Wet
Saturday 18/9
Navel and a Bomb
17:50 – Boxer + Transparent, the world is.
Sunday 19/9
11:00 – Japan’s Cinematic Body (Panel Discussion)
13:20 Nippon Express Carries the Olympics to Tokyo + Tokyo Story
16:00 – Tokyo Olympiad...
Tickets go on sale to Barbican Members on 21 July, and to the general public on the 22nd. Stay tuned to our socials for further info (and links!).
Jaeff look forward to seeing you this Autumn!
Thursday 16/9
18:00 – Nanami: The Inferno of First Love + A.I. Mama
Friday 17/9
18:00 Portrait of Mr O + Anma + Rose Color Dance + In Passing
20:30 – Lovers are Wet
Saturday 18/9
Navel and a Bomb
17:50 – Boxer + Transparent, the world is.
Sunday 19/9
11:00 – Japan’s Cinematic Body (Panel Discussion)
13:20 Nippon Express Carries the Olympics to Tokyo + Tokyo Story
16:00 – Tokyo Olympiad...
- 7/18/2021
- by Rhythm Zaveri
- AsianMoviePulse
An important event of the 19th New Horizons festival will be Poland’s first retrospective of works by Terayama Shūji (1935-1983), one of the most prominent avant-garde reformers of Japanese cinema and theater.
Selected filmography:
Short films
1964 Ori / Kanshū (The Cage / Klatka / Więzień w klatce)
1971 Tomato Kecchappu Kōtei (Emperor Tomato Ketchup / Cesarz Tomato Ketchiup)
1974 Chōfuku-ki (Butterfly Dress Pledge / Motyl)
1974 Seishōnen no tame no eiga nyūmon (The young people’s guide to film / Wstęp dla młodzieży do wiedzy o filmie)
1974 Rōra (Laura / Laura)
1975 Shinpan (The Trial / Proces)
1975 Hōsō-tan (A Tale of Smallpox / Opowieść o ospie)
1977 Marudororu no uta (Les Chants de Maldoror / Pieśni Maldorora)
1979 Kusa meikyū (Grass Labyrinth / Labirynt Traw)
Features films
1971 Sho o suteyo machi e deyō (Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets / Rzućmy książki, wyjdźmy na ulice!)
1974 Den’en ni shisu (Pastoral: To Die in the Country <aka Pastoral Hide and Seek> / Wiejska ciuciubabka)
1977 Bokusā (Boxer / Bokser)
1981 Shanhai Ijin Shōkan (Fruits of Passion...
Selected filmography:
Short films
1964 Ori / Kanshū (The Cage / Klatka / Więzień w klatce)
1971 Tomato Kecchappu Kōtei (Emperor Tomato Ketchup / Cesarz Tomato Ketchiup)
1974 Chōfuku-ki (Butterfly Dress Pledge / Motyl)
1974 Seishōnen no tame no eiga nyūmon (The young people’s guide to film / Wstęp dla młodzieży do wiedzy o filmie)
1974 Rōra (Laura / Laura)
1975 Shinpan (The Trial / Proces)
1975 Hōsō-tan (A Tale of Smallpox / Opowieść o ospie)
1977 Marudororu no uta (Les Chants de Maldoror / Pieśni Maldorora)
1979 Kusa meikyū (Grass Labyrinth / Labirynt Traw)
Features films
1971 Sho o suteyo machi e deyō (Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets / Rzućmy książki, wyjdźmy na ulice!)
1974 Den’en ni shisu (Pastoral: To Die in the Country <aka Pastoral Hide and Seek> / Wiejska ciuciubabka)
1977 Bokusā (Boxer / Bokser)
1981 Shanhai Ijin Shōkan (Fruits of Passion...
- 7/20/2019
- by Rhythm Zaveri
- AsianMoviePulse
Joshua Smith graduated from King’s College London with an Ma in Film Studies and Philosophy, taking modules in post-war Japanese film genres and the avant-garde, and transnational Japanese cinema at Soas. He has worked in independent cinemas, in distribution (Terracotta) and on festivals including the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme and London Short Film Festival. He founded the Japanese Avant-garde and Experimental Film Festival in 2017.
George Crosthwait is currently finishing a PhD at King’s College London. His film-philosophy focused research explores self-reflexivity in contemporary cinema. He teaches undergraduate film studies at Kcl, has taught on Met Film School’s filmmaking Ma course, and currently teaches adult education film courses for Picturehouse Education. He co-founded the Japanese Avant-garde and Experimental Film Festival in 2017 with Joshua.
We speak with them about Jaeff and the reasons that led to its creation, Japanese cinema and particularly Avant-Garde and experimental productions
Why did you...
George Crosthwait is currently finishing a PhD at King’s College London. His film-philosophy focused research explores self-reflexivity in contemporary cinema. He teaches undergraduate film studies at Kcl, has taught on Met Film School’s filmmaking Ma course, and currently teaches adult education film courses for Picturehouse Education. He co-founded the Japanese Avant-garde and Experimental Film Festival in 2017 with Joshua.
We speak with them about Jaeff and the reasons that led to its creation, Japanese cinema and particularly Avant-Garde and experimental productions
Why did you...
- 9/14/2018
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
From Friday 21 September until Sunday 23 September, Jaeff will be screening 5 classic feature-length films paired with 4 outstanding contemporary shorts rarely screened in the UK. Join us for a weekend of discovery, as we focus on themes of youth and protest in Japanese cinema from the new wave period of the 1960s and 70s to today.
Friday and Saturday screenings will be revealed shorty, but we’re happy to announce that Sunday tickets are now on sale! We’ll be at the Barbican Centre on 23 September. Do not miss the opportunity to attend our screenings as well as our free admission panel discussion with world renowned experts in Japanese cinema including film historians, academics, and curators!
Sunday 23 September 2018 – Barbican Cinema 3
Panel Discussion – The Tremors of the Japanese New Wave
A special discussion event in support of the Japanese Avant-garde and Experimental Film Festival’s programme of youth orientated films from the new...
Friday and Saturday screenings will be revealed shorty, but we’re happy to announce that Sunday tickets are now on sale! We’ll be at the Barbican Centre on 23 September. Do not miss the opportunity to attend our screenings as well as our free admission panel discussion with world renowned experts in Japanese cinema including film historians, academics, and curators!
Sunday 23 September 2018 – Barbican Cinema 3
Panel Discussion – The Tremors of the Japanese New Wave
A special discussion event in support of the Japanese Avant-garde and Experimental Film Festival’s programme of youth orientated films from the new...
- 7/21/2018
- by Adriana Rosati
- AsianMoviePulse
Above: Poster signed “coo” for Nikudan [The Human Bullet] (Kihachi Okamoto, Japan, 1968).
For the past two months, and concluding this weekend, the Museum of Modern Art in New York has been screening the films of Japan’s Art Theater Guild. Programmed in conjunction with the gallery exhibition Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant-Garde, the series Art Theater Guild and Japanese Underground Cinema 1960-1986 was “the most comprehensive U.S. retrospective ever devoted to...the independent film company that radically transformed Japanese cinema by producing and distributing experimental, transgressive, and genre-shattering films from the early 1960s until the mid-1980s.”
Posters for the Atg were harder to find than I expected, at least in good high-quality scans, so I have concentrated on a handful of masterful designs from the late 60s, all of which use a combination of photo montage and illustration (a couple of which I have featured in this column before.)
According...
For the past two months, and concluding this weekend, the Museum of Modern Art in New York has been screening the films of Japan’s Art Theater Guild. Programmed in conjunction with the gallery exhibition Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant-Garde, the series Art Theater Guild and Japanese Underground Cinema 1960-1986 was “the most comprehensive U.S. retrospective ever devoted to...the independent film company that radically transformed Japanese cinema by producing and distributing experimental, transgressive, and genre-shattering films from the early 1960s until the mid-1980s.”
Posters for the Atg were harder to find than I expected, at least in good high-quality scans, so I have concentrated on a handful of masterful designs from the late 60s, all of which use a combination of photo montage and illustration (a couple of which I have featured in this column before.)
According...
- 2/8/2013
- by Adrian Curry
- MUBI
The latest issue from the Art Theatre Guild Pamphlet Project that Nihon Cine Art is making freely available is #16, devoted to Susumu Hani's She and He (1963).
Lists. "After a year overstuffed with cinematic bounty like 2011, isn't it somewhat churlish to spend time and energy meditating on the various failures, idiocies, and lapses in judgment and taste that marred the silver screen over the past twelve months? Why yes, yes it is!" Reverse Shot presents its "11 Offenses of 2011." In a similar vein, the Philadelphia Weekly's Sean Burns lists his "10 Worst Films of 2011" and, in a not-so-similar vein, there's Armond White's "2011 Better-Than List" in City Arts.
Back to the bests, though. You won't need German to scroll up and down Cargo's chart.
From Austin: "Melancholia is the movie that eclipsed them all among the Chronicle's three regular film reviewers (Marc Savlov, Kimberley Jones, and myself, Marjorie Baumgarten)…. It is the only film,...
Lists. "After a year overstuffed with cinematic bounty like 2011, isn't it somewhat churlish to spend time and energy meditating on the various failures, idiocies, and lapses in judgment and taste that marred the silver screen over the past twelve months? Why yes, yes it is!" Reverse Shot presents its "11 Offenses of 2011." In a similar vein, the Philadelphia Weekly's Sean Burns lists his "10 Worst Films of 2011" and, in a not-so-similar vein, there's Armond White's "2011 Better-Than List" in City Arts.
Back to the bests, though. You won't need German to scroll up and down Cargo's chart.
From Austin: "Melancholia is the movie that eclipsed them all among the Chronicle's three regular film reviewers (Marc Savlov, Kimberley Jones, and myself, Marjorie Baumgarten)…. It is the only film,...
- 1/5/2012
- MUBI
Reviewing Masahiro Shinoda's Pale Flower is not an easy task for me. I wasn't even aware of the Japanese New Wave movement before watching it, but once I learned it drew from similar inspirations as the French New Wave I wasn't in the least bit surprised considering the one name that never escaped me while watching Pale Flower was Jean-Luc Godard. The comparison, however, was more of a feeling, more of a sense of directorial presence and control and the styles seem to simply match up. I also noticed hints of The Third Man and Sweet Smell of Success in the noir atmosphere, wet stone and dark shadowy corners of the night.
The experimental score by Toru Takemitsu also stands out and as you begin to make your way through the slim, but informative special features even more corners of this world will begin to reveal themselves that you hadn't even noticed before.
The experimental score by Toru Takemitsu also stands out and as you begin to make your way through the slim, but informative special features even more corners of this world will begin to reveal themselves that you hadn't even noticed before.
- 6/9/2011
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
We at Mubi think that celebrating the films of 2010 should be a celebration of film viewing in 2010. Since all film and video is "old" one way or another, we present Out of a Past, a small (re-) collection of some of our favorite of 2010's retrospective viewings.
***
This is a list of older movies I saw for the first time in 2010—not necessarily the best, but the ones that gave me the greatest sense of discovery. It’s a sad commentary on contemporary film culture that only five of the twelve films I mention are available on Netflix.
Routine Pleasures (Jean-Pierre Gorin, USA, 1986)
An essay film from the Godard’s former collaborator during his leftist Dziga Vertov Group days. The movie begins as a documentary about a group of model train enthusiasts in San Diego who have constructed an elaborate imaginary world with enormous and minutely detailed landscapes and a...
***
This is a list of older movies I saw for the first time in 2010—not necessarily the best, but the ones that gave me the greatest sense of discovery. It’s a sad commentary on contemporary film culture that only five of the twelve films I mention are available on Netflix.
Routine Pleasures (Jean-Pierre Gorin, USA, 1986)
An essay film from the Godard’s former collaborator during his leftist Dziga Vertov Group days. The movie begins as a documentary about a group of model train enthusiasts in San Diego who have constructed an elaborate imaginary world with enormous and minutely detailed landscapes and a...
- 1/5/2011
- MUBI
Takemitsu Toru's "End Credits" from his soundtrack to Akira Kurosawa's Ran (1985):
Gustav Mahler's "Der Abschied" (The Farewell) from Das Lied von der Erde [The Song of the Earth] (1908-1909):
***
In honor of the exciting two-week run at New York's Film Forum of the soundtrack music series Takemitsu. Ran plays December 12-13, but be sure to catch such rarities as Kobayashi's Youth of Japan (1968), Susumu Hani's Bad Boys (1961), and Hani's She and He (1963).
Gustav Mahler's "Der Abschied" (The Farewell) from Das Lied von der Erde [The Song of the Earth] (1908-1909):
***
In honor of the exciting two-week run at New York's Film Forum of the soundtrack music series Takemitsu. Ran plays December 12-13, but be sure to catch such rarities as Kobayashi's Youth of Japan (1968), Susumu Hani's Bad Boys (1961), and Hani's She and He (1963).
- 12/3/2010
- MUBI
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