Alexander Zahlten | Parasophia: Kyoto International Festival of Contemporary Culture

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Alexander Zahlten

Alexander Zahlten
b. 1973 in Madison, WI, USA; based in Boston and Kyoto

Work in exhibition
“Mirrorball on Asia,” 2015
Cinema program
Screenings at the Film Theatre of The Museum of Kyoto

Alexander Zahlten is an Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. His research on film and audiovisual culture in East Asia and especially Japan from the 1960s onward examines the topics from a wide range of historical, political and other perspectives. For Parasophia, he has curated a selection of Japanese and other films from the 1960s through the present day as part of the screening program at the Museum of Kyoto Film Theatre, with a focus on “East Asia as seen in Japanese cinema.” This program re-interprets traces of how Japan has attempted to represent themselves and other countries in cinema by referencing entertainment movies, documentaries, and experimental films, and offers an opportunity for the people of these countries, for whom the modern East Asian narrative is too complex and close to home to be discussed objectively, to re-examine it as a meta-narrative woven by the films that Zahlten selects as an outside, yet deeply informed and insightful, observer.

Parasophia Conversations 01: Alexander Zahlten & Keisuke Kitano “Image Traffic in the 21st Century,” Kyoto Art Center, November 16, 2014
Asiapol Secret Service / Ajia Himitsu Keisatsu (アジア秘密警察) (Japan edition)
Directed by Akinori Matsuo, 1966, 97 min., 35 mm

Asiapol Secret Service (Hong Kong edition)
Directed by Akinori Matsuo, 1967, 97 min., 35 mm (DVD screening)

A classic secret agent adventure involving chases across East Asia: An agent for the Asiapol Secret Service battles with an international smuggling ring (headed by Jo Shishido), but discovers secrets that have to do with his own past. Colorful and full of secret weapons like the James Bond films it models itself on, Asiapol was a co-production between Nikkatsu and Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers. However the film exists in two versions, shot with different leading men: Hong Kong superstar Jimmy Wang Yu in one version, and Nikkatsu actor Hideaki Nitani in the other. The international family drama that unfolds at the end of the film is an attempt to resolve postwar relations in Asia through family melodrama that stretches back to the colonial period. A comparison of the two versions is fascinating, and Matsuo’s inventive visual style make the films into a pan-Asian roller-coaster ride. (Zahlten)

Photo: Asiapol Secret Service / Ajia Himitsu Keisatsu (アジア秘密警察) (Japan edition)
Honolulu, Tokyo, Hong Kong (ホノルル・東京・香港)
Directed by Yasuki Chiba, 1963, 102 min., 35 mm

A transnational romance between Akira Takarada and Lucilla Yu Ming in one of the several co-productions between Toho and Hong Kong’s MP & GI from the early 1960s. This light-hearted comedy stands in an interesting tension to Japanese films in the colonial era that featured handsome Japanese soldiers and their romances with indigenous women. (Zahlten)

Photo: Film Theatre, The Museum of Kyoto
Annyeong Yumika
Directed by Tetsuaki Matsue, 2009, 119 min., 35 mm, rated R15

At an event in memory of one of the most famous AV actresses of her time, Yumika Hayashi, filmmaker Tetsuaki Matsue comes across a scene from an unknown Korean sex film she starred in. Interested in the origins of this obscure tape and in the meaning of these images, he travels to Korea to find the original actors and production team and creates unexpected interactions. (Zahlten)
Saudade / Saudāji (サウダーヂ)
Directed by Katsuya Tomita, 2011, 167 min., 35 mm

Construction workers, immigrants from Brazil, hip-hop right-wingers and Thai bar hostesses form strained relationships in Kofu, Yamanashi. Saudade explores the problems of forming a new kind of society amid an economic slump and insular definitions of community. Globalization and the feelings of attraction, regret, and anger it evokes plays out in the Japanese countryside. (Zahlten)
Asia is One / Ajia wa Hitotsu (アジアはひとつ)
NDU, 1973, 96 min., 16 mm

The Nihon Documentarist Union was one of the most internationally minded documentary groups in Japan, traveling across Asia and the Middle East to shoot their films, always positioning Japan as part of a global system. This fascinating film moves between Okinawa and Taiwan to investigate the trails left by Japanese colonial expansion and the voices that try to find their place in a history between Japan and “Asia.” (Zahlten)
The Bird People in China / Chūgoku no Chōjin (中国の鳥人)
Directed by Takashi Miike, 1998, 118 min., 35 mm

Masahiro Motoki and Renji Ishibashi star in the story of a salaryman and a yakuza’s journey to a remote village in China in search of a business opportunity. Like many films since the 1990s, this poetic and beautifully shot film portrays Asia as a magical, ancient place that is contrasted with modern Japan. However unlike many other films it also decides to complicate that kind of easy exoticism. (Zahlten)
Last Life in the Universe / Chikyū de Saigo no Futari (地球で最後のふたり)
Directed by Pen-Ek Ratanaruan, 2003, 117 min., 35 mm

A Japanese-Dutch-Thai-French-Singaporean co-production based on a story about a young Japanese man in Thailand whose life changes when his fugitive yakuza brother appears. Written by Prabda Yoon, shot in three languages, starring Tadanobu Asano, and directed by a Thai director: More obviously than others, this award-winning film asks us if films can easily be assigned a “nationality.”
The Far East Apartment / Kyokutō no Manshon (極東のマンション)
Directed by Tetsuya Mariko, 2003, 32 min., 8 mm (DVD screening)

In a fascinating and gripping journey across fantasy and fiction, Tetsuya Mariko explores how to make a film when you are caught in everyday life. Jumping between his room and a village in Cambodia, Mariko thinks about the strange and deep connection between filmic space and personal, interior space by using the film medium most associated with our private spaces, 8 mm film. (Zahlten)
The Rambler Under the Southern Cross / Hatō o Koeru Wataridori (波涛を越える渡り鳥)
Directed by Buichi Saito, 1961, 79 min., 35 mm

Akira Kobayashi again plays the wanderer armed with a gun and a guitar in the sixth film of the Wataridori series. However this film leads the hero out of the usual non-national landscapes of the earlier films to foreign countries, in this case Hong Kong and Thailand. At the same time an international family melodrama unfolds that is closely tied to the history of Japanese colonialism. (Zahlten)
Dear Pyongyang
Directed by Yang Yong-hi, 2005, 107 min., 35 mm

Director Yang Yong-hi presents a view on her own family’s dispersion across countries and generations. In long discussions full of tension and humor with her father she tries to understand his complex relationship to North Korea, the country he sent three of his sons to live in. (Zahlten)