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!

Entschuldigen Sie bitte

Well. It's been a while. Too long, really - months. Edward Yang, Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni have all passed away and are probably now in heaven, being assaulted by the vicious ghost of Klaus Kinski. We will miss them.

Meanwhile, Kino-Eye has been suspended in limbo for the last few months, and for that I apologize. Summer employment came to monolpolize most of my free time, thus preventing me from updating this site as often as I would have liked. But today is my final day as an espresso jockey and, from here on in, I should (school work aside) be able to devote myself to this site in a way that I haven't been able to recently.

And I am happy to report that as soon as I finish this little update-cum-apology, I will be able to post an interview that has been in the works for sometime now, one which I'm quite happy to have secured. In terms of postings to come, there are a few things in the works but, as usual, the content of this site will largely be determined on the spur-of-the-moment. And by all of you, who I am hoping will contribute articles and keep me posted on film-related happenings in Toronto.

So, again, big apologies for abandoning this site - it won't happen again.

The Great Happiness Space

Way back in May, a friend of mine sent me an email asking me if I wanted to check out a class at the Anarchist Free University called 'Hell in Eros: Desire and Japanese Cinema'. Looking at the course website, I found I was familiar with some of the film makers featured in class (Takashi Miike, Nagisa Oshima, Kinji Fukasaku and Koji Wakamatsu) and unfamiliar with others (Kaneto Shinoda and Shuji Terayama). With my formal, communal experiences with Japanese cinema largely restricted to retrospectives at Cinematheque of critical favourites like Kurosawa, Ozu, Naurse and Immamura, I was interested to see how the work of these often maligned film makers would be investigated in class, given the course mandate to problematize the 'facile distinction' between the arthouse and the grindhouse.

So I and another friend headed on over, neither of us adequetly prepared for the screening that was to follow. The first film was Koji Wakamatsu's 'Go, Go, Second Time Virgin' and by the end of it the class was left, quite literally, speechless (for reasons I'm sure you're familiar with if you've seen the film). Subsequent screenings have been, if not as damaging (and I use that term reverentially, if that's at all possible), then certainly as interesting - Kinji Fukasaku's 'Black Lizard', Kaneto Shinoda's 'Onibaba', Takashi Miike's 'Audition', Nagisa Oshima's 'Diary of a Shinjuku Thief', Shuji Terayama's 'Throw Your Books Away, Rally in the Streets!', Masahiro Shindo's 'Double Suicide', and Jake Clennell's 'The Great Happiness Space: Diary of an Osaka Love Thief', among others.

After a healthy game of email tag, I managed to secure an interview with the instructor of the course, Ryan Mitchell, who reveals (among other things) what motivated him to launch the course, what 'Hell in Eros' actually means, and what Zizek and Lacan have to do with Japanese cinema. Class resumes in September and I appeal to all of you, as cinephiles and as students (who I am sure, come September, will realize what a drag formal education can be), to check out 'Hell in Eros' at the Anarchist Free University. The course website, with all the details related to class times and location, can be found here.

Hell in Eros Interview, Part I - 'It's more fun to respond to the ending of 'Audition' than it is to pore over Hegel.'

Kino-Eye: What motivated you to found this course originally and how did you come to found it?

Ryan Mitchell: The course came about over a drunken conversation with another AFUer who had done numerous courses before. The idea was to do a split Peter Greenaway and Takashi Miike screening course where we would alternate weeks and screenings. Although the pairing seems a bit random — Greenaway is often considered ‘art’ whereas Miike comes from the ghetto of manga/yakuza adaptations — we did find affinities between the way each of them with certain themes: desire, frustration, decay, the uncanny. Not only that, we felt that Greenaway and Miike approached these themes with two seemingly different vehicles — Greenaway uses sex whereas Miike uses violence. Our idea for thecourse was to try and get at what each of these filmmakers were try to discuss through the use of sex or violence (or both). There seems to be some sort of unspeakable place that is only accessed through such acts.

Anyway, for whatever reason, this course didn’t happen. I had, however, done quite a bit of work on my Miike weeks so I basically had half a course planned and was looking for an outlet. At the sametime I was also planning on putting on a theory course on the political theory of desire. I basically decided to put the two courses together but expand Miike course to a broader Japanese cinema course.

KE: Beyond this, were there any more reasons why did you decide to approach Japanese cinema exclusively in your examination of desire as represented in film?

RM: Sure. This goes back to my intention to do a theory/philosophy course on desire. I had thought what it’d be like to gather people around to read something out of, say, Hegel’s “Phenomenology of the Spirit” and I figured this would be such a drag and it would simply replicate what’s going on in “real” universities where people sitting around and do a type of intellectual archaeology of playing with fossils. Pairing the two courses together and having a weekly screening would always make for a concrete object of discussion that we could project the abstract theory on to. I’d like to think that the format worked for everyone involved. Even if you necessarily didn’t understand the readings, or even do them, the film could be something you could respond to and that as a viewer you were as much as an expert as anyone else in the room since you could respond with your feelings and how the film affected you. Besides it’s more fun to respond to the ending of 'Audition' (1999) than it is to pore over Hegel.

Oh! That doesn’t directly answer your question, does it? Okay, even though I don’t want to say anything broad or essentialist about Japanese cinema — and especially about Japanese national culture — I kept coming across certain themes in Japanese cinema over and over again that I wasn’t seeing elsewhere. Specifically I was seeing the theme of “desire” in just about every other film I saw. What I was seeing was the violent, hellish reactions that desire produces in us. Again, I think this is an attempt to deal with this unspeakable/unknowable aspect that is at the heart of not only our desire but the human condition. I can’t say why the Japanese are so good at this but they sure seem to be!Beyond this, I also had a philanthropic urge where I felt a duty to get people out to see these films. Some of the greatest films in cinema history have been made by people like Wakamatsu, Masumura, Shindo, Oshima, and Miike, but outside of Jack Hunter’s wrong-headed “Eros in Hell” (1998) book these films are rarely discussed, let alone seen.

KE: So the title of your course is a play on Jack Hunter’s “Eros in Hell” (1998) book?

RM: Absolutely! Being the silly guy that I am, I wanted something pretentious and important sounding for the course, but at the sametime my reasons behind it are a bit more playful. The “Eros in Hell” book is pretty awful in that it plays up to the tiresome and offensive Japanese “blackface” stereotypes of young-girls-in-Sailor Moon-school-uniforms-getting-caned-across-the-ass that we in the West use to demonize Japan as a “degenerate” country. Although I’m largely dealing with the same group of filmmakers/films as “Eros in Hell” is, I wanted to give the actual films a bit more of a serious treatment rather than delegating them to the mondo/exploitation ghetto. The book, for example, plays up the “exploitation” elements of Masumura’s 'Blind Beast' (1969) and Shindo’s 'Onibaba' (1964) in that it simply gives a synopsis of the sex and violent content of these films. Needless to say, I think he seriously does a disservice to these important films.

Also, the book’s main thesis is that because of Japanese unique censorship laws — the ban on the onscreen depiction of genitals — has lead to an extreme cinema where all other boundaries are broken — again playing up the mondo/exploitation angle. I have to say I’m not convinced of this argument at all.

So, yeah, it’s simple. Beyond being a response to Jack Hunter’s book, my course is called “Hell in Eros” in that there’s something “hellish” about being in love, something hellish about desiring. I wanted to explore this idea in the course. Not only that but there’s been a few Japanese films that play to this idea. Chusei Sone did a pretty good “roman porno” with 'Hellish Love' (1972), Susumu Hani’s great New Wave film 'Nanami: The Inferno of First Love' (1968) and of course Yoshishige Yoshida’s 'Eros Plus Massacre' (1970).

Hell in Eros Interview, Part II - 'This is fucking awesome!'

KE: You admit that your critical approach to these films is rooted in Lacanian psychoanalysis and the writings of Zizek. These writers, along with writings by critical thinkers such as Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, make up the course's theoretical focus. What is it about these writers that appeals to you and why are their ideas relevant to discussion on Japanese cinema? Why have you decided to utilize their writings more often than texts that explicitly deal with Japanese cinema?

RM: Before starting the class I had an idea of what readings I’d like to do and some of the concepts that I’d be playing with. To be honest, I felt that none of the readings were going to go over well with the rest of the group since they were “difficult.” I made the pretentious mistake of handing out an essay by Felix Guattari, “A Cinema of Desire,” during thef irst class to show how cool and well-read I am. I hadn’t read it in some time and only got to read it after the first class, so I came back for the second class apologizing for handing out such a “difficult” piece, but the majority of the class enjoyed it and really wanted to discuss it. Although I had only intended the readings to be secondary to the screenings I found that as the course went on and we were reading things by Bataille and Zizek people were really wanting to discuss the readings and go further with theoretical side of the class. I have to admit I was caught off-guard about this since I never planned “lectures” or discussion entry points into the readings. Actually, the one time I tried to do a formal lecture — with chalkboard illustrations and everything — I got heckled! I totally deserved it too!

So, again this goes back to my intention for the class — that the screenings would serve as a vehicle for a discussion of desire. I guess the course fits in somewhere between a philosophy course and film course and for this reason I didn’t assign too many film history/theory texts. I really didn’t want too much to get in the way of a discussion of how the films address the question of desire. That said, as the course progressed I found it was necessary to contextualize the films within not only a historical context but also an artistic one.For example, I found when I screened Wakamatsu’s 'Ecstasy of the Angels' (1972) and Oshima’s 'Diary of a Shinjuku Thief' (1968) that it was necessary to talk not only about the student movement in Japan in the late 60s but also how the Japanese New Wave was aligned with the Art Theatre Guild and they were making films in response to the same thing the students were rallying against. So, yeah, maybe it was naïve for me to completely leave out the film history/theory side of the course. I have to admit to not being a huge expert on this side of things so I think I was maybe hesitant to provide such information.

KE: In Hannah Arendt's introduction to Walter Benjamin's 'Illuminations', she describes Benjamin's conception of the collector as a revolutionary, one who 'redeem[s] the object as a thing since it now is no longer a means to anend but has intrinsic worth' (that is, redeems the object 'from the drudgery of usefulness') and in so doing complements the redemption of people from their labour. You yourself are a collector of films and I believe have laid claim to ownership of hundreds of movies. Do you understand what you are doing in Benjamin's terms, or is there a more prosaic motive behind your collecting?

RM: I think collecting is what little boys do, and I fully admit that my collection is borne of the fact that I’ve yet to graduate into full adulthood and that in many ways the 2000+ films I have are the collection of a little boy! I know I’m never going to have the time to watch even half of them. I have no idea, for example, when I’m going to feel in the mood to watch Charles Bronson in Death Wish 1 through 5 or all of Fassbinder’s films.

My life has been a succession of different collections. I started collecting comic books as a youngster so I’d be chasing every appearance of “Tiger Shark” in the Sub-Mariner comic. I then moved on to collecting vinyl records so I’d be chasing stupid 7’ singles of this or that obscure band. Somewhere along the way I took up collecting dolls and action figures and I’d be chasing a mint condition carded Mego Captain America doll. It must be a sublimation for something! I’m going to have to ask my therapist…

In many ways I think collecting is a perfect metaphor for desire — we’re always chasing something and when we finally catch it we’re always disappointed because it was the case and not the catch. That’s why collections are absolutely predicated on lack — a collection is never complete and when it is, we often find reasons why it’s not or we move on to another collection to start again. I mean I would often look my various collections and be absolutely miserable because there was something missing from it: “If I only had the 8-inch Fist-Fighting Batman with Karate Action I could be happy!” Manufacturers aren’t stupid, that’s why they create obscenely small print runs of that Charizard hologram card so that they can make every 10 year-old Pokemon collector miserable. Actually, they probably make their parents miserable who have to put up with their kids.

Jesus! I really didn’t answer your question! Benjamin? Arendt? Films? Japanese? Want to repeat it again? I tend to rile myself up like this… I think I should go lie down…

KE: What objectives did you set for the class upon establishing it this summer?

RM: I’m not sure if I have any concrete objective for the course other than facilitating a space where we can watch film and discuss it. The reason for not having a specific objective is that I know people are coming to the class for different reasons and I’m completely fine with that. Some people are there to learn more about Japanese cinema, others are there for the desire component and some just show up to goof around. It’s all good.

Just the other week we were watching Yasuzo Masmura’s 'Manji' (1964) and in the middle of the screening someone from the group bursted out laughing: “this is fucking awesome!” I guess you can say that is the type of audience member I had hoped to attract! Objective met!

KE: How is your class in particular and the AFU in general advertised? Have these methods been successful?

RM: This is an interesting question and it’s something we’ve often grappled with at the AFU. My quick and immediate answer would be to say “no” and that we could benefit from more exposure for what we do — I think more people would be involved if they knew we existed! We were just recently written up in the Globe and Mail and have received some other “mainstream” exposure, but we’ve tended to stay low on the radar. I dunno, maybe it’s for the best?

This Fall we’re doing outreach with some alternative high schools in the area and we’re going to have some of our classes count as school credits. We’re also trying to create better connections with various universities. We’ll have to see how this all works out.

For my own class I did absolutely no advertising—just what was put on the website. Although weekly attendance wildly varied from 5 to 25, I was happy with the enrolment for my individual course where I had about 30 students. I figured anything more than 30 would have been unmanageable. I’m still debating actually promoting any of my future courses since I prefer things to be more intimate rather than have more people show up to my class just to allow me to feel popular.

KE: What films are you planning to screen in the coming weeks?

RM: Well, we’re on hiatus for the summer - I’m just too busy with other projects during August. Also, with the weather being so nice it gets hard for me to commit every week. I am, however, restarting/rebooting the class in September for the Fall semester.

There were about four films that I intentionally didn’t get around to showing the first time around — Miike’s 'Imprint' (2005), Masamura’s 'Blind Beast' (1969), Oshima’s 'In The Realm of the Senses' (1976) and Miike’s 'Ichi The Killer' (2001) — and I’m using them as “bait” to encourage the folks who showed up to the first instalment of this class to come back for the second. The reason I held off on showing these films also had a practical purpose because I think they all exemplify what I’m doing with this course — it would just be a good way to wrap up all the themes of the course.

KE: What do you hope attendees of your class will take away from the experience?

RM: To come away from the class saying “this is fucking awesome!”

On Reginald Harkema’s Monkey Warfare - an essay by Kohei Usuda

Hey everybody,

Sorry for the lack of new material as of late. Chalk it up to days spent moving and unpacking, as well as hours of grueling labour in the salt mines (I swear to God I'm going to quit).

That being said, I have exciting news: Kino-Eye finally has it's first contributor. A friend and local film maker, Kohei Usuda has generously contributed a short essay he has written on Reginald Harkema’s film 'Monkey Warfare', a 2006 feature shot largely in Parkdale. I won't say too much about the article (too many cooks in the kitchen and all that) other than to say that I'm always pleased to read Kohei's writing on film, given that he brings to his essays a critical and yet sensitive appreciation of cinema as a medium and as an art.

Read and enjoy (and then contribute something yourself).

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'On Reginald Harkema’s Monkey Warfare'

By Kohei Usuda

Writing on the current state of Canadian films in the new issue of Cahiers du cinéma, Mark Peranson lists Reginald Harkema’s 'Monkey Warfare' – which was shot largely in Toronto’s Parkdale district – as two of 2006’s most unique Canadian films alongside 'Radiant City' by Burns and Brown. Yet, upon reading the reviews of 'Monkey Warfare', one cannot but be alarmed by all the discussions regarding the political implication of the film, such as the theme of “burned-out post-radicalism” that Harkema’s film is supposedly commenting on. At any rate, that is how Toronto Star’s Geoff Pevere begins his review, going on to say that Monkey Warfare “is about things that have gone stale. Things like marriage, idealism, old records and yesterday’s hopes.” Indeed, for NOW’s Cameron Bailey, “Monkey Warfare is that rare Canadian film that takes politics seriously”; likewise, for Eye’s Jason Anderson, “Monkey Warfare returns repeatedly to questions about how one is supposed to go about changing the world and whether violent acts are ever justified.”

Of course, the critics are not wholly mistaken in speaking of Harkema’s film in terms of contextual aspect of the film; however, in doing so, the same critics must not fail to notice the other equally important subject of 'Monkey Warfare': i.e. the subject of recycling, exchanging, and trading. That is how, as we see throughout the film, the Parkdale couple Dan and Linda (Don McKellar and Tracy Wright) make their living: gleaning up offbeat vintage items off the street, and selling them on to the buyers through their website. Harkema obviously underlines this theme by showing the gestures of his characters passing objects from one character to another. As a matter of fact, it is this gesture that the relationship between each character is established. For instance, we recall that it is through the gesture of the young pot-dealer Susan (Nadia Litz) passing a joint to Dan that they strike up their friendship (see OutNow.ch). But obviously we must wait until once that Dan passes his radical ideology to her – as presented in the forms of books and records – that they move beyond their simple association as a dealer and a client. Finally, their relationship based on exchange is fully complete when Susan uses his theory into practice, that is, when she actually transforms Dan’s idea into action. (But unfortunately the story doesn’t end happily for her since Dan refuses to pass on his know-how of making a Molotov cocktail!) Of course, the danger in passing on an object is that, sooner or later, it might come back to its original owner, hence making a full circle: thus, in no time, the young Susan emerges as a radicalized revolutionary, transforming herself into Dan’s older self to haunt his hidden past. This is a classic image of a snake swallowing its own tail. Perhaps that is why there are numerous circular objects in the film, such as bicycle wheels, vinyl records, and so on.

In this sense, despite many critics’ allusion to Godard – Cameron Bailey name-drops 'La Chinoise' as well as 'Two or Three Things I Know about Her' – Harkema’s film is closer to Bresson in essence than to the filmmaker of 'Week End'. Indeed, it was Bresson – and not Godard – who used to film the movements and circulations of objects passing from one hand to another. (The images of hands snatching wallets in 'Pickpocket' are probably one of the most graceful moments in the history of cinema.) Yet, save for one fleeting shot, in this film about objects passing from one hand to another, Harkema refuses to present banknotes in the image. That is to say, unlike Bresson’s 'L’Argent', he refuses to show the transaction of money and goods, the act of which the French director saw as an evil deed. If there is no place for banknote in 'Monkey Warfare', perhaps it is because money is something people use to dispense with; a banknote as an object is nothing more than a piece of paper, without a value in itself other than its symbol as the currency.

In final analysis, we can say that Reg Harkema is a materialistic filmmaker. In the sense that, firstly, he presents interaction between people by filming the movements of objects that pass between them; secondly, he shows things such as knowledge, revolution, politics, history – all elements without substance, therefore un-representable in the image – in filmable objects such as vinyl LPs of left-field music, books on history, on revolutions, etc.