The Closeness of Close Up: Behind the Scenes of Carl Koch’s Nippon
Wayne Arnold (University of Kitakyushu) and Adrian Wood (Independent)
One of the most cited reviews for the Japanese-German film Nippon (1932) was published in the influential film magazine Close Up in the fall of 1932. Written by Bryher (Annie Winifred Ellerman), one of the founders and an editor of the magazine, Bryher claimed that Nippon would “certainly rank among the great films of 1932.” Director Carl Koch had commenced creating the film in 1931, a compilation of three abridged Japanese silent films with added scenes shot in Berlin, with the addition of music, sound effects, dialogue and German intertitles. Advertised as the first Japanese “talkie” in Europe to promote Japanese culture, by the time the film appeared in Berlin in the spring of 1932, Koch and his wife, silhouette animator Lotte Reiniger, were in desperate economic circumstances due to a combination of the Great Depression and the growing wave of antisemitism overtaking Europe. Therefore, the positive review of Nippon was significant for promoting Koch’s endeavor. The previous year, Koch and Reiniger had become friends with Bryher, leading to Koch’s publication of his article “Japanese Cinema” in the December 1931 issue of Close Up, concerning his concepts for the film that would become Nippon. Bryher is well known for her financial philanthropy towards individuals surrounding her artistic community, including Marianne Moore and Sylvia Beach. What has not been explored, however, is the monetary assistance, coupled with the publication platform of Close Up, which Bryher provided for Reiniger and Koch during the production of Nippon and Reiniger’s film Harlekin (1932). Our presentation utilizes archival letters between Reiniger and Bryher alongside additional materials that reveal the closeness of their friendship, the financial aid provided by Bryher, and the avenue of publicity that Close Up offered for Koch’s endeavors with Nippon.
Reclaiming the Pioneering Cinema of Sai Paranjpye
Nandana Bose (Independent)
Writing histories that chart women’s relationship to the institution of film production, such as studies of the articulation of gender in cinema, involves the work of uncovering contributions that have not been spoken about, a process of re-reading texts, and challenging the given assumptions. Models of male authorship form one such given assumption. This assumption, according to Judith Mayne, works “to repress or negate the significant ways in which female signatures do not appear on film” (cited in The Woman at the Keyhole: Feminism and Women’s Cinema, 93). Whether onscreen or offscreen, historically, female labour invested in popular commercial filmmaking has been overlooked, either willfully or by happenchance, by patriarchal, male-dominated industries in India. Although the 1980s has been considered a watershed in the history of Indian cinema so far as the entry of women filmmakers such as Vijaya Mehta, Sai Paranjpye, Prema Karanth, Aparna Sen, Kalpana Lajmi and Aruna Raje is concerned, apart from Sen, these pioneering directors have largely been written out of the annals of film history, and have not received the recognition that they deserve. This recuperative paper intends to interrogate the reasons behind the erasure of one such ‘forgotten’ creative talent behind the camera, Sai Paranjpaye (1938) whose contributions to popular Hindi filmmaking and screenwriting have been neglected in Indian film historiography, despite being feted with multiple national film awards and state honors such as the Padma Bhushan in 2006 for such memorable, critically acclaimed films as her 1979 debut Sparsh (The Touch), one of Indian cinema’s classic comedies, Chashme Buddoor (1981), Kathā (1982) and Saaz (1997).
One Tune, Many Languages: New multi-language Platforms of South Indian Cinema
Kiranmayi Indraganti (Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology)
The ‘need’ of a song, it seems, has long superseded the narrative/situational/melodic requirement of the mainstream south Indian cinema that speaks many languages across the same digital platform in the contemporary OTT era. I refer to films such as Pushpa, the multi-million box office hit that now plays in five different languages across Amazon Prime’s multi-lingual platform(s) in India as I share these thoughts. The filming doesn’t change, the tune doesn’t alter nor does its orchestration, but the intrinsic purpose of the way a song is generated in the film industry has undergone significant changes with the arrival of the OTT platforms, where the consumer’s capacity to migrate across multiple linguistic boundaries of the same film has engendered a new kind of reception of narratives and singing voices. This trend is not limited to songs, which have historically fulfilled the need of either the narrative or the star, but is now diffused to the other expressions of the Indian melodramatic tradition. The OTT brings a meta reality of the singing voices, who are highly successful playback singers, voicing for the same actor in different languages. Narrative situations never wither away if there are singers keeping the emotional value of the story going and its melodramatic appeal lasting. While in the ‘good old days’ a song was much about the emotion it portrayed and how effectively a singer sang it, in the new OTT era, it is more about how an actor is cloaked and hooded in different languages, crooning in different playback voices on a singularly available platform.
Revisiting Kawashima Yūzō — The Forgotten Status of The Graceful Brute (1962)
Łukasz Mańkowski (University of Warsaw)
Often considered as the missing link between the Japanese Classic Cinema of Ozu, Kurosawa and Mizoguchi and the New Wave, Kawashima Yūzō started his career at Shochiku Studios, first as an assistant (For Shibuya Minoru or Kinoshita Keisuke) and then as a “program director”. His subsequent work for Nikkatsu, Toho or Daiei, however, marks his venture onto the realms of experimental expression within the scope of Japanese popular cinema. His socially-engaged satire comedies depicted many themes that later preoccupied the minds of New Wave filmmakers: the agency of women, social changes, modernization, the problems of youth. Despite being never officially labelled as a New Wave artist, his last films—Women Are Born Twice (1961), The Temple of Wild Geese, The Graceful Brute (both 1962)—were captured in a seemingly New Wave aesthetics. Particularly the latter one—starring Wakao Ayako, with a masterfully crafted screenplay by Shindō Kaneto—stands out as an exquisitely rendered satire on familial connections and one of the most poignant representations of the post-war reality of Japan, dark, witty and with wonderful energy. With its back-and-forth change of perspectives, rapid tonal shifts, voyeurism (erotic and social one), and ingenious use of the limited setting, The Graceful Brute is a hallmark of Kawashima’s body of work that didn’t receive a proper reception.