DOCUMENTARY FILMS

Bitter Lake (2015)

  And I think the same is true of a new kind of journalism that’s emerging, which is not saying, ‘Oh I don’t know anything.’ It’s saying, ‘Well I’m trying and I’m doing my best in this chaotic world.’ – Adam Curtis    When I was working as an engineer in a big manufacturing company, I learned one thing. Senior managers, directors and all the other important people prefer “conciseness”. They want to know problems at hand in short sentences. 3-minute presentations. 1-sheet status reports. 2-line messages. Most of all, they love this one word.  “Everything is Okay.”

 
JAPANESE FILMS

Of Course, You Know Their Music

  This July, the new Godzilla movie “Godzilla Resurgence” will be released. It is directed by none other than Hideaki Anno (“Evangelion” series), whose enthusiasm for special effects in monster movies is unparalleled. In this new trailer, one can see that the creators of the film are not pulling any punches. This is not a peek-a-boo marketing of Del Toro’s Godzilla. We all can see what we can expect.

 
JAPANESE FILMS

Renoir, Gide, Setsuko Hara

Though little known today, there were attempts to export Japanese films to the foreign countries before Kurosawa’s “Rashomon“. Japanese film industry explored the possibility to show Shimazu’s film or young Setsuko Hara’s starring vehicle in various countries, from Asia to United States to Europe. They condescendingly ‘exported’ the films made in Japan to Manchuria, Korea and the other occupied territories. However, the attempt to export such films to Europe was a different matter. It was a competitive market saturated with highly sophisticated products. Especially, during the thirties, volatile European politics lowered the melting point of artistic borders, resulting in the …