{Inter} Cultural Japan

Today the 19th Tokyo International Film Festival opens (it will run until next week Sunday).

Among the opening/closing line-up is a new film by 91-year old veteran Ichikawa Kon, a remake of his own 1976 Murder of the Inugami Clan, after a complex detective novel by Yokomizo Masashi, featuring Ishizaka Koji as sleuth Kindaichi. Ichikawa Kon is less well known outside Japan, perhaps because he was more a mainstream director, but in the 50s and 60s he made such great films as The Burmese Harp, Fires on the Plain, The Key, Conflagration and An Actor’s Revenge, always after literary novels - see this interesting assessment of his work in Senses of Cinema.

There is also a new samurai flick by Yamada Yoji (Love and Honor - here is a report about the first screening from Sake-Drenched Postcards) - I very much enjoyed Yamada’s first samurai film Twilight Samurai, but was rather disappointed by the next one, the repetitive The Hidden Blade.

The section Animecs of Japanese animation films includes the already released Paprika by Kon Satoshi (of Perfect Blue , Millenium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers fame).

In the section Japanese Eyes 13 new Japanese films will be presented, including works by well-known directors as the renowned Aoyama Shinji (Crickets), but of course also many new directors will appear before the public.

In Winds of Asia, Asian film also gets a boost with none less than 37 films, including a retrospective on Malaysian director Yasmin Ahmad.

There will also be a retro on Imamura Shohei who died this year as well as Suzuki Seijun who celebrates his 50th year as a director.

Most films will be dubbed in English. For more information see the site of the 19th International Tokyo Film Festival or the informative article by Mark Schilling in the Japan Times.