ONNA NO MIZUMI (Neue Blicke auf die japanische Filmgeschichte)

In the organizer's words:

Program

Tue 1.10., 20h, with an introduction by Annette Lingg
TOKYO 1958 Hiroshi Teshigara, Susumu Hani, Yoshiro Kawazu, Kyushiro Kusakabe, Sadamu Maruo, Zenzo Matsuyama, Kanzaburo Mushanokoji, Masahiro Ogi, Ryuichiro Sakisaka Japan 1958 jap. OmeU 24'
ONNA NO MIZUMI Women of the Lake Yoshishige Yoshida Japan 1966 35 mm jap. omeU 102'
In the form of an avant-garde urban symphony, the short collaborative work TOKYO 1958 by the Cinema 58 group takes a look at the largest city in the world at the time, in which modernity was inexorably gaining a foothold, but at the same time trying to maintain an often fragile balance with old traditions. The woodcuts, which a young man (the influential author and film critic Donald Richie) looks at in a shop window, are repeatedly inserted into the cityscape as graphic animations in the course of the film.
ONNA NO MIZUMI: In a series of "anti-melodramas" made outside the studios featuring women in emotional states of emergency, Yoshida criticized the traditional role of women as victims and objects of desire. Bored with her husband, Miyako (Mariko Okada) begins an affair with the young Kitano. She agrees to him taking nude photos of her. When these are stolen and she is blackmailed, she tries to turn the tables and coerce the blackmailer. "In the anti-melodramas, an important stylistic device that was used so pointedly and subtly in AKITSU SPRINGS was drastically expanded: the expressive use of landscape and time to capture the otherwise unmentioned inner emotional world of a character." (Haden Guest)