In the last twenty years the cinemas of the East have developed an incredibly sophisticated and diverse body of work, and have been garnering increasing attention in the West, not just at Film Festivals but on the shelves of high street shops. From the charm of the 1980s Hong Kong action flick, through the artistry of China's Fifth Generation and the Tawainese new wave, to the dynamism of the New Korean Cinema; Asian cinema has reinvented film language as we know it, wresting an essentially western medium from its roots and inflecting it with specifically Oriental themes and forms. Often innovative and formally beautiful, Asian film has reinvigorated cinema and began to challenge the dominance of an increasingly stagnant Hollywood. Hollywood's only defence has been to remake Asian films badly. This Blog will provide a personal commentary on the Asian film renaissance.

Tuesday, 23 January 2007

Mikio Naruse

There has been a distinct lack of blogging from me recently, so what better way to restart than to draw your attention to a great new release from my favourite DVD label Eureka! Their first box set of films by the legendary, but under-exposed Mikio Naruse, a contemporary of Ozu and Mizoguchi, constitutes a rare event indeed. The three films, all masterpieces of understated melodrama, Repast, The Sound of the Mountain and Flowing, are accompanied by commentaries and a 200 page book of insightful essays. This release heralds a retrospective, currently touring the greater cities of the western world, and due to arrive at London's NFT in the first half of this year (the rumour is something like 25 films out of the director's eighty odd). The three films explore the status of women in postwar Japanese society with a great sensitivity. Naruse's style is breathtaking: rooted in complex psychology and powerful, but never excessive, emotions, characters interact within an editing system of astonishing visual economy, which captures the poetic rhythms of everyday life and infuses every encounter with a subtle network of glances and meanings arising from under the surface of things. Repast follows the uncertainty of a wife trapped in an unfulfilled marriage, Sound of the Mountain the friendship between an old man and his daughter in law as a result of her philandering husband, and Flowing the everyday, unromanticised lives of the women of a geisha house teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. Naruse's view is pessimistic, yet incredibly empathetic, and he handles his material with a rare ad complex emotional subtlety.

You can find out more at http://www.eurekavideo.co.uk/moc/catalogue/repast/ and i will hopefully have a review online fairly soon at www.firecracker-magazine.com

I recently spent new year in Paris, where i found an exceptional video rental store just on the intersection of Boulevard St Michel (by the Jardins du Luxemburg) and the Rue Abbe D'Eppe called Videosphere, which has a great selection of Asian films, including the odd rare gem.
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