Asian Transformations in Action - Api-fellowships.org

SPECIFICITIES OF GLOBALIZATION 167celebrated because these Japanese films purveyed serioushumanist themes in a style derived from a deep artisticheritage.After the Ozu, Misoguchi and Kurosawa era, Japanintroduced Shohei Imamura, Nagisa Oshima and theirgeneration to the world. This new generation expressedthemselves with greater freedom by tackling subjects thatwere more social and violent. Despite the differences,Imamura and Oshima still impressed world viewerswith their vivid and pure forms, which were mysteriousand challenging but always identifiably “Japanese.”All of these famous Japanese directors became livingproof of an old formula that to be truly international, acinema must first be truly national.Despite the international success of these famousdirectors, success was never theirs at the local box office.These directors, whose films had what internationalexperts called strong “local” flavor, never becamenumber one in the local box office records. Hollywoodmovies took over. Even though the Japanese filmindustry always considered itself one of the strongest inthe world (with an average production of three hundredfilms every year, it comes number three after India andthe United States), it could not deter the Hollywoodinvasion.The 1970s was the start of the decline in the Japanesemovie industry. Falling attendance rates combinedwith an economic downturn dealt a sharp blow tothe Japanese industry. The major distributors—Toho,Toei and Shochiku—made money only by filling theircinemas with foreign films or animation. Slowly, Japanbecame Hollywood’s single most profitable exportmarket.During these hard times, only Japanese animation,more popularly known as Anime, could still challengeHollywood domination. Since the 1980s, names fromthe Anime World, such as Hayao Miyazaki, MamoruOshii and Satoshi Kon, have been shaping the Japanesefilm industry. We can always say that Anime is one formof resistance to Hollywood domination, because Animehas distinct Japanese expressions, portrays Japaneseproblems and is executed in a very Japanese style.Aside from the Anime world, in those times it was verydifficult for new film directors to break into a majorstudio network because, to put it simply, the studiosbrushed aside the newcomers. Fortunately, starting inthe 1990s, several young Japanese filmmakers employedtheir creative energy to try to put up a resistance toHollywood domination. These young filmmakers havegiven new life to Japan’s battered film industry.At that time, these filmmakers were all between 20 and40 years old, and produced their films with extremelylimited resources. In Japan, one of the world’s mostexpensive countries to live in, this sometimes meantthat these directors also worked in television, advertisingor cartoons, and held down several jobs to make endsmeet.Interestingly, all of these new Japanese filmmakerstended to focus on social and psychological themes, likedelinquency and senseless crime, which mirrored theconfusion and malaise of a generation that had rejectedthe old ambitions of getting rich, blind loyalty to one’semployer and social harmony. Without access to majordistribution networks, they made films in a ghetto of artcinemas where competition was fierce: this new genrecould never earn much money.Financing the productions was also a nightmare forthem. With budgets ranging from USD100,000 to amillion dollars, most often they had to go into debt toget the film started. One of these directors is ShinyaTsukamoto. Making fantasy films in the tradition of theFrenchman Georges Melies, Tsukamoto was director,cameraman, set designer, actor and producer all rolledinto one. It is said that it took Tsukamoto eight monthsto make Bullet Ballet, his seventh film, whose streetscenes were largely shot clandestinely.Another name is Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who started hiscareer by making film noir on 16 mm or video, eventhough since the beginning, he infused his workswith a surprisingly philosophical dimension. Two ofKurosawa’s major works, Eyes of the Spider and SerpentPath (1998), were shot one after the other, each intwo weeks, with the same crew and the same actors.The same plot of revenge, however, is handled verydifferently in the two cases.Takeshi Miike is another director in this generation.His work, despite seeming too violent, is highlyregarded and has many cult-followers internationally.Another name is Akihihiko Shiota, who made a coupleof erotic films before his remarkable Moonlight Whispersin 1999, which follows three children growing up in acity suburb and cost less than USD200,000 to make.This young filmmaker, whose later more popular workswere categorized as “Japan New Wave of the 1990s,”really loved experimenting.This new generation of directors made their filmswithout any thought for the big studio networks.Asian Transformations in ActionThe Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows