19 June 2013

An Ethnobiographical Film by Jorge Preloran

Jorge Preloran (1933-2009) was an Argentinian-American filmmaker who developed a unique style of ethnobiographical documentary film during the 1960s. One of his most well known works in this genre is Hermogenes Cayo, the Spanish language version of which he made in 1969. A year later, Preloran collaborated with American Anthropologist Robert Gardner to produce an English language version of the film under the title Imaginero. In this film we have the sensitive and human portrayal of a folk artist living on the puna of Northwestern Argentina. The subject of the film, Hermogenes Cayo, is a self made man with a deep dedication to both folk Catholicism and the plastic arts. His creativity and ingenuity reveal a self confidence rarely found in descriptions of Andean lifeways.

06 June 2013

Kinji Fukasaku's Films of the 1960s and 1970s

Kinji Fukasaku joined the Toei Film Distribution Company in 1953, at the age of 23. During the 1950s, Japanese cinema enjoyed a tremendous growth, and by the latter half of the decade it revelled in a new golden age commensurate with that of the 1930s. The most important directors of the era can be divided into three groups: the pre-war masters Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujiro Ozu, Mikio Naruse, Tomu Uchida; the young Turks Akira Kurosawa and Keisuke Kinoshita who emerged soon after the war; and a new generation, working in a wide variety of genres, including Yasuzo Masumura, Tai Kato, Kenji Misumi, Ko Nakahira, Tadashi Sawashima, Seijun Suzuki, Kihachi Okamoto, and Shohei Imamura. By the late 1950s, the Japanese film industry was dominated by six studios: Toho, Shochiku, Daiei, Toei, Shintoho, and Nikkatsu, and new talent seemed to burst out of every studio. Nagisa Oshima had made his first film in 1959. In 1960, Toei, the box-office leader, launched New Toei, a second production and distribution arm, and the following year, Kinji Fukasaku made his first film.