香港六合彩

There are many versions or narratives of Japanese film history that each contain their biases, omissions, and arguments. This module investigates the Japanese film industry from the beginning of the break-down of the traditional studio system in the late 1960s up to the present day to reassess what happened after Japanese cinema鈥檚 so-called 鈥淕olden Age鈥�. We will investigate how an increasingly media-saturated society was constructed after the collapse of the studio system, which altered how film and media was produced, engaged with and understood. Students will be encouraged to consider how different strategies used by the film industry contributed to the disorientating experience of how modern Japan was produced. These strategies include the Pink Film Industry; the Media-Mixing phenomenon starting in the 1970s that has shaped the present Japanese media industry; (cyber)punk cinema made on the fringes of the industry in different formats; independent production and distribution companies including The Art Theatre Guild that contributed to a cinema largely free from the constraints or boundaries of the mainstream industry; and V-Cinema, the straight-to-video industry in which, after the introduction of television, another technological shift took place that attempted to transfer film-viewing from the cinema to the home. Throughout the module we will also trace some of the missing links between the collapse of the studio system and the emergence of a new generation of producers and filmmakers with independent visions. With a specific focus each week on a different case study involving industrial structures and practices and different film/industry movements and genres, students will focus on how to decode and engage with the Japanese film industry from the late 1960s to the present. Filmmakers we look at will include Seijun Suzuki, Koji Wakamatsu, Nobuhiko Obayashi, Toshio Matsumoto, Kinji Fukasaku, Shinji Somai, Shinya Tsukamoto, Sogo Ishii, Mamoru Oshii, Takashi Miike, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Shunji Iwai, Toshiaki Toyoda, Hideaki Anno, and Hirokazu Koreeda, alongside others.听

All films will be subtitled in English and no knowledge of Japanese is required.

Two of the key texts we will engage with are:

Alexander Zahlten, The End of Japanese Cinema: Industrial Genres, National Times, and Media Ecologies. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017.

Tom Mes, Japanese Film and the Challenge of Video. Oxford: Routledge, 2023.

It is recommended that you try to read these as soon as you get access to the 香港六合彩 library to acquaint yourself with some of the issues we will cover.