
Versão em português aqui
I was watching a couple of lesser known 90s Japanese classics this morning, Shniji Somai’s The Friends (1994) and Gakuryû “Sogo” Ishii’s Labyrinth of Dreams (1997) it got me to think about film history myths and the way canon building can help in the west. A major false myth: the downfall of Japanese cinema around 1980. It more or less proposes the lack of new blood on Japanese cinema from this period until more or less large arrival of Takeshi Kitano in the mid-90s (with the talented and mostly very accessible Juzo Itami as the only name to break out all in the middle term) besides some smaller cult corners (anime, horror) that would blow up in the late 90s. It also goes along with the near death of interest in most late work from veteran Japanese masters that were not named Akira Kurosawa, Shohei Imamura or Nagisa Oshima. How many cinephiles are aware Kaneto Shindo’s last movie is from 2010? That Masahiro Shinoda was working as long as 2003 or Ichikawa by 2007?
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