Japanese cinema in 75 minutes? Here's a challenge for you all: if you had 75 minutes to talk about Japanese cinema to a group of 16-17 year olds, including being able to show clips (but bearing in mind the ages of the kids... no Battle Royale, I think), what would you cover? I'm thinking bits of A Kurosawa, Godzilla, Samurai Cinema, 70s revenge flicks like Lady Snowblood, some K Kurosawa, J-Horror, and a touch on anime (though manga/anime are going to be a different lesson entirely). Would probably need to mention pinku eiga but not show anything, obviously. Bear in mind clips will have to come from the (reasonably) extensive Apple Towers DVD collection and/or YouTube. Um, I'm teaching the lesson tomorrow... or plan to, anyway!
Tetsuo & Kitano's films should be mentioned as they helped introduce a whole new generation of western film fans, who had little or no interest in the new wave directors, to Japanese cinema. You should probably mention the whole new wave thing too, I guess. Good luck.
Tetsuo, obviously. A carefully chosen clip though... This is what I've come up with so far. I shall declare my interest in this site first, and say my tastes are skewed towards the underground and outright weird. So, clips from: Zatoichi (Kitano) for samurai flicks Kairo for K Kurosawa Totoro for general anime Ring Happiness of the Katakuris (opening sequence) The weird bit at the end of Suicide Circle A couple of clips of Lady Snowblood The classroom scene from Battle Royale 9 Souls opener Akira opener Tetsuo - the bit where he chased into the garage by the metal woman Godzilla vs Hedorah for some old school monster movieage A scene from Ran to get some classic A Kurosawa A chunk of Kwaidan (the last one) if I get to it And the spirals bit from Uzumaki So, so difficult... now I need to put together a cohesive running order. I know there's loads I've missed, so I'm still open to suggestions for the next time I'm doing this lesson in about 8 weeks.
Late in but what the hell If it wasn't for the age of the students I would have suggested the School roof scene from Suicide Circle. The V-cinema Ju-on could be a good representation of low budget J-horror. As for Anime I don't know how extensive the Apple collection is on that front but I would suggest some Boogiepop Phantom. Great selection though and I could watch the 9 Souls opener over and over if only for the music
