Toronto Japanese Film Appreciation Pow-Wow Interview, Part I - 'I wanted to be able to show people the depth of Japanese cinema'

Kino-Eye: What originally drew you to Japanese cinema? Is your interest in Japanese cinema encompassed by a more general interest in Japan and Japanese culture?

Chris MaGee: I think Japanese culture and cinema has for me, like a lot of Westerners, always been there in a kind of semi-conscious way. I just remember as a kid watching the kaiju monster movies (Godzilla, Gamera, etc.) on channel 29 out of Buffalo after school, or the English dubbed episodes of “Battle of the Planets”. I think that a lot of Westerners have that shadowy sense of Japan from those things; our culture makes this kind of broad distinction of Japan as the other side of the coin to our North American culture, the same, but entirely different, filled with cherry blossoms and strange street fashions, anime and high tech. In the end this isn’t wholly correct, but its part of our cultural perception, especially growing up.

As I got older Japan was always there at the back of my mind. I used to have trouble sleeping and CBC News World would have a program called “Today’s Japan” that was put together by NHK. It would air at 1:00 am every night and I got kind of hooked.

The two things that ultimately got me into Japanese cinema, though, were that I took a class in screenwriting and ended going to Japan in 2006. For the screenwriting class the instructor kept drilling us with the three act structure and how all stories come in this neat little package, and it goes all the way back to Aristotle, so how’re you going to argue with Aristotle, right? She did pause for a second or two though and mentioned that there were some exceptions to the rule, namely experimental film and Asian cinema. This light bulb went off because I really don’t like being told there’s only one way to do something, so I went off and started with Takeshi Kitano’s “Dolls” and some of Miyasaki’s films. At first it was strange, but wonderful. The pacing, editing, the basic storytelling was utterly different to what I was used to.

Then there was the trip over to Japan. My wife and I had been niggling at each other about adventure, or lack thereof in our lives, so we agreed to go big or go home. If we were going to travel then let’s go to Japan. I’d done some retreats at a Zen monastery and she has her own meditation practice, so... As part of the preparations though I wanted to learn some Japanese and what better way to get your feet wet in the language and culture than through a country’s cinema.

So, that’s the story and through that process I fell in love with Japanese cinema. I really believe that it’s definitely a falling in love situation. Let’s hope we never get divorced!

KE: Does your interest in Japanese cinema cross over into an interest in other regional cinemas?

CM: Of course Asian cinema has a strong hold too. I’m a huge fan of Tsai Ming Liang’s films and I was really impressed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s film “Mysterious Object at Noon”. I think in Japanese and Asian cinema as a whole there is a greater acceptance of the abstract, or well maybe abstract isn’t the best word to describe it... Donald Richie makes the distinction between the West’s “representational” approach to film making, very similar to how a painting is strictly interpreted as a window or mirror of our own reality. Asian cinema works on the level of the “presentational” as he defines it. I’ve always seen that as the equivalent of abstract, thus the choice of that term. To make another comparison to painting an abstract painting is just that, a painting, and it’s not trying to be a realistic mirror of reality. When you embrace that artificiality then it opens up all these other different realities, different possibilities. I think Asian cinema does that.

One thing I found really interesting is that when I was in Japan I’d see a lot of snippets of daytime TV. I mean here if they show films in the afternoon it’s usually something terrible like “Rocky 3” or some other 80’s movie, but in Japan I would see Godard’s “Breathless” or Cocteau’s “La Belle at la Bête”. What kind of impact would that have on young filmmakers? It’s a very interesting thought.

KE: What originally motivated you to found The Toronto Japanese Film Appreciation Pow-Wow?

CM: Sheer isolation. Okay, that’s a bit dramatic, but... Watching films isn’t really a team sport. At best you might go with one other person to a show and then grab a coffee after and do the usual “What did you think?” for an hour. With Japanese cinema though you’re in a very specific niche, so I just found myself renting and borrowing all of these films and having marathon viewing sessions alone at home. It was fantastic, kind of loading my brain with all of this, but objectively it’s a guy alone in a room. I wanted to connect with other people who loved Japanese cinema as much as I did.

Also, I wanted to be able to show people the depth of Japanese cinema. I can’t begin to count the number of people who join the group and the first comment they make is, “I Love Japanese cinema! My favorite films are ‘Battle Royale’ and ‘Ichi the Killer’!” Now, there’s nothing wrong with either of those films, but I think the group’s job is to say, “Okay, then if you love ‘Battle Royale’ did you know about Fukasaku’s yakuza films from the 70’s, or for ‘Ichi the Killer’ maybe you’d like a film like Teruo Ishii’s ‘Screwed’.”

One thing that has bothered me in a way is that many (but not all) people are drawn to Japanese cinema now through the “extreme cinema” tag; very violent, provocative genre stuff. Any way to get into another country’s cinema is good, but I think that there are a lot of people who just get to that and stop exploring and assume that Japanese cinema means school kids killing each other on an island or Tadanobu Asano with his face held together with safety pins. It’s like basing your view on Hollywood cinema on Rosebud and a lightsaber. Those are just two arbitrary books ends. There’s so, so, so much more. So, that’s the main purpose of the J-Film Pow-Wow now. To let people know that.

KE: On your group's site, you have a note of appreciation from Midnight Eye's co-founder Jasper Sharp. How did you come into contact with him?

CM: I had a momentary spasm of courage and emailed Midnight Eye telling them about the Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow and he was nice enough to get back to me. I think that’s what brought him on Facebook, so hopefully we’ll see a Midnight Eye presence there soon. Midnight Eye was one of the sites that really fed the fire for me, so I’ve been very flattered that he and I have struck up a nice acquaintance and got to bond over our love of the director Akira Ogata who did a couple films, “Boy’s Choir” and “The Milkwoman”. He was very open to writing that little blurb for the group too. Very nice guy.

KE: How frequently do you hold your screenings? How do you decide which films to screen? What has the attendance rate been like?

As of right now not very frequently at all, but that will hopefully change. I’ve tried setting things up in the past and I’d like to continue to do so in the future because the response was pretty good, but there are a lot of difficulties that you have to deal with, the two main things being what to screen and the legalities involved. You could pull together a really nice roster of films to show, but then how do you arrange the screenings with the distributors? It gets complex and potentially very expensive. The screenings we have hosted have been self financed, so...

One way that I’m managing to keep Japanese films on the big screen in Toronto is that I’m on the committee that is co-programming this year’s season of movie nights run by the Canada Japan Society. The season runs from September until June usually on the third Friday of each month. We’ll have quite a diverse bunch of films this year, starting off with Nobuhiro Yamashita’s “Linda, Linda, Linda” in September and then I believe we have some Kitano, Miike, Iwai, and other directors represented as well. The final details are getting hammered out.

I’d really like to have the Pow-Wow have its own screening series though, but the difficulty with that is that there’s a very small community of folks who show Japanese film in Toronto and there’s kind of an unwritten rule not to step on each other’s toes. I mean Cinematheque takes care of the classics (Ozu, Kurosawa, etc.), the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre in Don Mills has their family friendly contemporary films, and then at the Canada Japan Society the mandate is to showcase contemporary films that might be geared to the over 18 set. At the end of the day what’s left? A lot have people have told me that if we showed anime films we’d get a ton of people out, but that’s not the thrust of the group and Thomas Silver over at UTARPA, the U of T Japanese Animation Group is doing a fine job of that already. I’d say that my dream series would be a lot of the lesser known films and use the series as a way of showcasing those. You’d hope that you could get a few bodies out to see more obscure stuff like Nagisa Oshima’s “Sing a Song of Sex” or Keisuke Kinoshita’s “Carmen Comes Home”.

KE: Do you primarily spread word of your screenings through Facebook?

CM: Right now yes, although I’ve put up some posters in some key locations around the city. It seems that most people find out about us through Facebook though.

Toronto Japanese Film Appreciation Pow-Wow Interview, Part II - 'Up until now it’s been kind of a one man show...'

KE: What shops, video stores, libraries, theatres and neighbourhoods do you go to in the GTA to find Japanese films? Do you ever buy or rent bootlegged Japanese movies?

CM: There are great resources out there in Toronto for Japanese cinema you just need to be pointed in the right direction. I already mentioned that various groups, the JCCC, CJS, etc. that hold screenings. One of the best places to get your hands on not only Japanese films, but literature, news and culture in general is the Japan Foundation at Bloor and Avenue Road. They have a great library there and borrowing privileges are free. The Pow-Wow actually did some volunteer consultation work with Mariko Lilifeldt, the head librarian there a few months back so that they could expand their selection of films on DVD and some of those films have already hit their shelves, so that’s a great resource. I have to tell you though that their selection of films on VHS makes my mouth water!

Besides that anyone who’s interested in Japanese cinema or a good cross section of world cinema has to check out places like Queen Video, Suspect and Bay Street Video. All of those combined put most things that are released on region 1 DVD right in your hands. What isn’t can sometimes be found in Chinatown, but you take your chances not so much with the quality of the transfers, but in the quality of the subtitles. Some are really bad.

I also have some favorite little used places, but as a collector of films I have to keep those as my own happy little hunting grounds.

KE: What Japanese films do you hope to check out this year at the Toronto International Film Festival?

CM: Unfortunately my coffers are empty right now, so that coveted festival pass is out of financial reach this year, but never fear! One of our new contributing editors, Bob Turnbull is going to be our correspondent, so we’ll hopefully have the latest word on Kitano’s new film “Glory to the Filmmaker”, as well as a lot of others. I’m kind of upset that I’m not getting a chance to see Naomi Kawase’s latest “The Mourning Forest” myself. She’s one of those filmmakers I’ve read a lot about, but haven’t had the chance to catch in person. Maybe next year for me.

KE: How to you keep yourself informed about the latest developments in Japanese cinema?

CM: Through online sources mostly; the aforementioned Midnight Eye, Twitch Film is a great site and Mark Schilling’s reviews in the Japan Times are obviously a great source of what’s new in Japan. He has really eclectic tastes, so you don’t have to worry about only getting a narrow selection of films being reviewed.

KE: What films would you recommend to someone who needs an introduction to Japanese cinema?

CM: That’s kind of a hard question because it really depends on who is interested in exploring Japanese cinema and what they might have already seen. Like I said before, someone who loved “Battle Royale” should check out other films by Kinji Fukasaku, maybe also Seijun Suzuki’s and Yasuharu Hasebe’s films and go from there.

Then again it’s like visiting a country. If you visit Japan then there are some things you absolutely should see or you’re totally missing out. Same for Japanese cinema. I’d say the big ones would be Yasujiro Ozu’s “Tokyo Story”, Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon” and “Seven Samurai”, Hirsohi Teshigahara’s “Woman in the Dunes”, Masaki Kobayashi’s “Harakiri”, Kenji Mizoguchi’s “Ugetsu”, “Tampopo” by Juzo Itami, definitely some of Takeshi Kitano’s films, “Hana-Bi” being the big one, and I’d say films like “Audition” and some of the anime classics for sure. If you have those under your belt then you have a good foundation to build on, but it’s important to make your own discoveries, to see where your real tastes lie.

Still, I would love it if everyone could have a chance to see films like Sai’s “Doing Time”, Ogata’s “Boy’s Choir” and Itami’s “The Funeral”. Those are some of my more obscure favorites.

KE: Are there any books that have deepened your understanding of Japanese cinema that you would recommend?

CM: Definitely. I’d say that Donald Richie’s writings are key to someone who’s interested in Japanese cinema. His “One Hundred Year of Japanese Films” is a real seminal work, but also he wrote a really lovely book of character studies called “Geisha, Gangster, Neighbor, Nun” that includes these very perceptive portraits of every day people Richie encountered in his daily life in Japan along with your Kurosawa’s and Mifune’s and Katsu’s. It’s crazy the amount of people he got to know!

Then there’s Mark Schilling’s work and Tom Mes and Jasper Sharp’s work with Midnight Eye. They wrote a great book called “The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film” that I love. It’s a really great resource. It’s interesting with them that when you go through Richie’s work he kind of breezes over a lot of the contemporary films. He’s very dismissive of them and directors like Kitano and Miike and Tsukamoto. I guess he’s gotten old and curmudgeonly, but Jasper and Tom have kind of picked up where he’s left off. I absolutely believe that we wouldn’t have the interest we do in guys like Miike, or be aware of filmmakers like Ryuichi Hiroki or Rokuro Mochizuki at all if it weren’t for them writing about them and creating a demand for them in the West.

Outside of criticism though there was a really nice little book by Peter Carey that, I’m not sure if it expanded or greatly deepened my view of Japanese cinema, but it’s “flavoured” it maybe I could say. It was called “Wrong About Japan”. He travels with his son and they encounter a lot of the manga and anime greats as well as Hayao Miyasaki. That’s a great book.

KE: What can we expect from The Toronto Japanese Film Appreciation Pow-Wow in the future?

A lot hopefully. There’s my work with the Canada Japan Society movie nights and, like I said, hopefully our own screenings returning shortly. There’s a plan in the works to do a co-presentation of a new Japanese film at this year’s After Dark Film Festival in October, but I would have to kill you if I told you what that film is right now. It’s a great one though and it hasn’t been screened in Toronto before.

I’ve recently brought in three contributing editors to help out with reviewing films. It should be interesting because they’re all so diverse. Bob, who I mentioned before works for IBM, then Marc Saint-Cyr is in the cinema studies program at U of T, and Polly Esther is one of the stars of the Pillow Fight League. Of course then there’s me, so we’ll have this kind of wonderful stew of viewpoints coming together. I mean up until now it’s been kind of a one man show, but from here on in it will be more of a group effort between the four of us.

I think that the big goal right now that I have to put my muscle behind is that we’d like to start a website for the Pow-Wow, so we can have a little bit more in depth material on there, and also will hopefully give us a little more cred so that we can go out and solicit some interviews with some directors and actors. With that website to compliment the Facebook group (because that’s definitely going to keep going) I’d hope that we can build it up so that the Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow becomes a cross between a Midnight Eye and a Now Magazine. Someplace where Torontonians who love Japanese cinema can check out what’s going on in the local scene, but a place where people internationally can get something as well. The only problem is that I’m an absolute HTML dummy, so this is my official cry for help if anyone wants to volunteer some time to do some web design for us!