Nibei Foundation’s Japan Study Club:”Contemporary Japanese Cinema in the World” by Prof. Akira Mizuta Lippit of USC, Feb 9, 2010

Lippit Akira

Prof. Akira Lippit of University of Southern California

Nibei Foundation’s Japan Study Club

Tuesday, Feb 9, dinner at 6:30 p.m. lecture at 7:30 p.m.
$10 including dinner

“Contemporary Japanese Cinema in the World”

Akira Mizuta Lippit, University of Southern California

This presentation looks at the revitalization and reorganization of Japanese cinema since 2000.  Beginning in the Heisei 1990s, Japanese cinema underwent a dramatic change in the ways that films were produced and consumed.

No longer following the vertical models of large film studios and apprenticed directors, a new generation of younger filmmakers came to make films from other points of departure, including television, music, and straight-to-video markets, known in Japan as V-cinema.

As a result, Japanese film culture saw a dramatic increase in the number and quality of films spread across a wide range of genres, including drama, melodrama, art cinemas, horror, comedy, and animation.

These films began to be recognized at a rapid pace internationally, most notably at prestigious film festivals such as Venice and Cannes, but also in new markets, including Northeast and Southeast Asia.  Contemporary Japanese cinema has forged a new relationship with the world, and in turn reflects in novel ways an awareness of the world in Japan and its cinema.

“Contemporary Japanese Cinema in the World” looks at some of the key developments in recent Japanese cinema, focusing on work by Kore-eda Hirokazu, Iwai Shunji, and Aoyama Shinji, among others.  It also looks at the role that trans-Asian film cultures play in Japanese film culture, the presence of Asian films in Japan, and the increasing awareness of Asia in Japan’s cinema.

Akira Mizuta Lippit is Professor and Chair of Critical Studies in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, where he is also Professor of Comparative Literature and East Asian Languages and Cultures.  He is the author of two books, Atomic Light (Shadow Optics) (2005) and Electric Animal: Toward a Rhetoric of Wildlife (2000).  He is presently completing books on spectrality and avant-garde cinema, on contemporary Japanese cinema in the world, and on David Lynch’s anagrams.

Nibei Foundation’s Japan Study Club
Tuesday, Feb 9, dinner at 6:30 p.m. lecture at 7:30 p.m.
$10 including dinner
“Contemporary Japanese Cinema in the World”
Akira Mizuta Lippit, University of Southern California
Terasaki Foundation Laboratory Building, 11570 Olympic Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90064

RSVP by Thursday, Feb. 4 by email  japanstudies@nibei.org or call (310) 479-6101 ext 134. www.nibei.org

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