Japanese films: Paris Cinema Festival 2010

The Paris Cinema festival will honour Japanese cinema during its 2010 edition, which runs July 3rd to 13^th in Paris. This follows the Brazilian, Korean, Lebanese, Filipino and Turkish film panoramas which allowed the audience to discover unrecognised, yet clearly rejuvenating cinemas, as well as the works of great filmmakers such as Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Im Sang-soo or Brillante Mendoza. A contemporary panorama will allow the audience to enjoy, the diversity of Japanese cinema of the last three years through some forty new films (short and feature films, dramas and documentaries) and panels with their directors and actors. This panorama will also feature a flashback to the 80s with the screening of several rare films considered as major works by the young generations of Japanese filmmakers (Typhoon Club by Shinji Sômai, Zigeunerweisen by Seijun Suzuki, etc.)

Filmmaker Sadao Yamanaka will also be honoured. Unjustly overlooked by film historians, he died in 1938 at the age of 28 and is often referred to as “the Japanese Jean Vigo”. Only three films, of the twenty or so he made, have survived the years, and they will be screen themed for the first time all together and in original version. The enfant terrible of Japanese cinema and subversive filmmaker, Koji Wakamatsu will be celebrated and be a guest of the festival. He is especially known for the films he made in the 60s considered as cult (he is one of the leading directors of the Pink Film genre) but also as the producer of In the Realm of the Senses by Nagisa Oshima, and more recently as the director of the hard-hitting United Red Army. In addition, a special program Japan seen by... will gather films of all genres and from all countries to discover other perspectives on a country which has never ceased to fascinate and surprise.