In jenen Tagen (1947)

Many film history books devote their pages on postwar German film industry to New German Cinema movement, usually citing the names of the auteurs like Fassbinder, Herzog, Schlöndorff or Wenders, and drawing a parallel with French New Wave. Both movements shouted first and shot later: they both shouted their papa’s movies suck. For French New Wave, ‘papa’ was kindly named by François Truffois, – directors like Claude Autant-Lara, Jean Delannoy, René Clément, Yves Allègret and Marcello Pagliero, and scriptwriters like Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost, Jacques Sigurd, Henri Jeanson, Robert Scipion, and Roland Laudenbach (1). Young Germans were much more …

When A Society Drifts Further From Truth

During the production of “Bouquet in the South Seas (Nan-kai no Hanataba, 1942)” The film was shot on location in Marshall Islands and other South Sea Islands, the occupied territories of Japan at the time. The caption for this photo reads “The issues of the South Sea Islands need the most urgent attention.” The nationalists not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. – George Orwell There’s an article in Independent website about ever-growing revisionist views among the board members of NHK, the public …

Newsreels of War (Part 3)

Southern half of Sakhalin had been a part of Japanese territory since early 20th century, and many Japanese relocated from the main islands to seek profitable opportunities. At the same time, these settlers craved for entertainment from the country they had left behind. Movies were particularly in high demand, and there was at least one theater in each settlement. Shikuka (or Shisuka, Polonysk today) was one of those towns along the Soviet border, with a population of 30,000 (in 1941). Koji Takii, a reporter from Kinema Junpo, visited the town in 1939 to document the movie business in the town. …