Presented by the University of Chicago Film Studies Center, this ambitious four-day conference “explores the poetics and politics of ‘independent’ cinema in 1960s and 1970s Japan,” with papers and panel discussions featuring some of this country’s best scholars of Japanese cinema. It also includes screenings of films that “contested dominant narratives of Japan’s first modern century, frequently in reflexive forms that put narrative itself into question.” All films are in Japanese with subtitles, and all screenings take place at the center, room 306 in Cobb Hall, 5811 S. Ellis Avenue. All events are free, but space at the conference is limited; to reserve seats call 773-702-8596. A full schedule can be found at filmstudiescenter.uchicago.edu.
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If you’re reading this early enough, you might still be able to catch Death by Hanging (1968, 117 min.), one of Nagisa Oshima’s very best. It’s concerned with the death penalty and the public understanding of a rape and murder committed by a Korean youth. The inventiveness of the staging is not merely dazzling but purposeful: a group of Japanese officials discover, through a fantasy conceit, that the Korean prisoner refuses to die because the issues of his crime and his punishments aren’t understood, and the film works through a series of imaginative restagings of the events leading up to the rape and murder. (The issue of Japanese persecution of Koreans is also very pertinent to the proceedings.) The results are Brechtian in the best sense: entertaining, instructive, gripping, mind-boggling, often humorous, and very much alive. (Thu 11/11, 6:30 PM)
Following the screening, Yoshida will take part in a discussion with Michael Raine, to be followed by Kaigenrei (1973, 110 min.). Also known as Martial Law and Coup d’etat, this black-and-white feature is about national socialist theoretician Ikki Kita (Rentaro Mikuni), who was charged with an assassination plot and executed in 1936. Film historian Noel Burch has called this “radically disjunctive” film “a complex provocation” and “an ideological catalyst,” pointing to the film’s theatrical elements and its uses of psychoanalysis and fantasy. According to Burch the film presupposes some familiarity with the historical facts behind the story, though conference discussions will no doubt furnish some of them. (Sat 11/13, 8:30 PM)
