Welcome to Kinema Club
Welcome to the website of Kinema Club, a long-standing, international but informal group devoted to the study of Japanese moving image media. Kinema Club was started precisely to share knowledge about Japanese cinema, so this site serves both to introduce our activities, such as the KineJapan mailing list and our conferences and workshops, as well promote information and thinking about films, research, bibliography, and education.
Tokyo yakyoku
Orchestral Score of Tokyo Life
The city symphony was one of the hallmarks of classical film, as directors such as Walter Ruttmann, Dziga Vertov and Rene Clair tried to weild all the tools the new...
Read moreSuzaku*
Betting On a Long Shot
Kawase Naomi’s rise to stardom has been nothing less than astronomical. Just a year ago, she was known only to experimental film aficionados as a talented 8mm filmmaker who won of a couple of prizes at the Image Forum Festival and the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival (where I helped...
Read moreThe Eel
“The Eel” - A Slippery Slide into Sentimentality
When Japan was experiencing its period of high economic growth in the 1960s and 1970s - developing into a modern, consumer society of comfort and technology - Imamura Shohei was there to remind Japanese that they were still human, a state for him not far removed from the...
Read moreKoi wa maiorita
‘Tis the Season to Be Dopey
There’s always something pitifully absurd about a Japanese Christmas movie. It’s not just the fact that Christmas bells ring a little hollow in a non-Christian culture–it’s because the holiday’s cinematic celebration always comes up looking as shallow and as superficial as the consumeristic concoction Christmas in Japan is....
Read moreThe Fire Within
Gangster Scorched by Underworld Changes
At first glance, Mochizuki Rokuro’s films may look like the run-of-the-mill hard-boiled fare, featuring lone wolves on the edge reveling in the de rigeur sex and violence. Yet certain peculiarities always lift them...
Read moreWild Life*
The Unexpected Is the Joy of ‘Life’
It almost feels like Aoyama Shinji has been toying with us all along. With three feature films already under this maverick new director’s belt in the year since his debut, he keeps us guessing about what he will do next.
He started off with...
Read moreSummer Tale*
Smiling at Our Own Imperfections
Did your mother ever give you the old line: “If you can’t make your bed, you’ll never make anything of yourself”? It seemed like a lot of pressure over just arranging a few sheets.
Takashi (Hidaka Yoshitomo), the fourth-grade hero of Summer Tale, has a similar problem. In gym class, he can’t do a back pullover over the...
Read moreLabyrinth of Dreams
This Bus Ride Is Murder
Ishii Sogo used to be the bad boy of Japanese film. His 8mm Koko dai panikku (1976) climaxed with a rebellious teen shooting his school to pieces. Crazy Thunder...
Read moreMy Secret Cache*
Yaguchi’s secret: ‘Cache’ in on comedy
Sakiko (Nishida Naomi), the heroine of My Secret Cache, loves money. Most of us do, too, but Sakiko is a bit single-minded in her affection. After all, when asked out for dinner, she usually just responds, “Why not give me the money you’ll spend instead?”
So when Sakiko is kidnapped by bank robbers along with 500...
Read moreParasite Eve
Ochiai’s ‘Parasite’ Feeds on Television Cliches
Without fail, it was a trick that would appear in all the old Frankenstein horror flicks: Baron von Frankenstein would tower over the monster in his lab, scream out “He’s alive!” and at that moment, thunder would crash and lightning flash. The thunder emphasis became such a cliche that...
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