[Sarai Newsletter] Films for February & March

[ranita]

Friday Films @ Sarai: ASIAN FILM CULTURES 
JAPANIME, curated by Diya Mehra

The graphic form has a long and significant history in Japanese visual and 
textual culture. Since the 1940's and 50's it has emerged in comic book form 
as 'Manga' which has subsequently developed into the most highly read medium 
in the country and is increasingly been used as the basis of animated films 
and television series - some examples of which Sarai presents in its Japanime 
series.   

Manga are akin to graphic novels, wherein stories are lengthy and serialized, 
characters and plot lines complex yet discrete making the volume of Manga 
produced extremely large. In its visual style, Manga is drawn in elongated 
narrow cells, proliferating detail, visual vantage points and imaginative and 
thematic possibilities only open to animation. Many genres of Manga have 
emerged - from the pornograhic to Pokeman. In the complex and abundant world 
of Japanese popular culture, genres have come to be associated with 
particular niche markets. They are drawn by gender and age and use specific 
tropes and milieus to address fundamental questions on technology, the media, 
the environment and popular culture in Japanese contemporary society. 

The three films included here represent three specific sub-genres of Manga. 
'Ghost is the Shell' is "mecha" anime concerned with technology in the form 
of robots, transformative armor, cyborgs and more recently artificial 
intelligence. 'Perfect Blue' is a psychological thriller about a pop star, 
her fans and the multi-mediated world. 'My Neighbor Totoro', a children's 
film directed by Hayao Miyazaki , emerges from an anime studio that is unique 
in its production - producing mythical and allegorical tales that often draw 
on Japanese folklore.

February 28, 2003, 4:30 pm
GHOST IN THE SHELL (1995), 120 minutes
Directed by Mamoru Oshii 

Set in 21st century Hong Kong, the film centres on anti-terrorist police 
forces that fight the Puppet Master - a formless self-generated secret agent 
who hacks his way into net-connected cyborgs and takes over their bodies. By 
fighting the Puppet Master, the film's heroine, a cyborg herself, is forced 
to question the origins of her own "ghost" or soul and the challenge the 
technology presents to her own humanity. 

When the Puppet Master appears, as a ghost in the shell of a female cyborg, 
he/she/it turns out to be something new under the sun, an intelligence that 
has never been human. A fragment of computer virus that replicated itself and 
acquired sentience, the Puppet Master has commandeered a body in order to 
demand "political asylum," the rights that any other "life form" would be 
entitled to.

"What if a cyber-brain could generate its own 'ghost'?" wonders the mostly 
cybernetic heroine -- with the "ghost" of the title understood not just the 
sum total of a person's memories but the bedrock of her self-awareness. If 
that essence can take up residence as easily in a mechanical as in an organic 
system, "then what's the value of being human?" 

March 21, 2003, 4:30 pm
MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO (1988), 87 minutes
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki 

Set in the 1950's 'My Neighbour Totoro' tells the story of Satsuki, aged ten, 
and Mei, aged four, and their father who move to the Japanese countryside to 
provide a healthy environment for their mother when she is able to leave the 
hospital. The children spend their days exploring their new home and 
neighbourhood, which is when Mei discovers the existence of Totoros - magical 
forest spirits which only children can see.  What follows are a series of 
delightful and often surreal adventures set among Miyazaki's sublime summary 
landscape.

Totoro is not based on any exact Japanese mythological or folk character, but 
does spring from the idea of nature spirits in Japanese culture. Miyazaki's 
vision encompasses both a nostalgia for a lost lifestyle since most of these 
rural areas near Tokyo have been converted into crowded suburbs by now and 
also an exploration of the natural world that is central to his work. While 
his later works grapple more directly with questions of ecology in 'My 
Neighbor Totoro', Miyazaki reveals through the enormous detail and perceptive 
quality of his work a seamless interaction that appears to him to be crucial 
to it. 

March 28, 2003, 4:30 pm
PERFECT BLUE (1999), 80 minutes
Directed by Satoshi Kon

Mima abandons her pop star career to opt for a career in television soaps, 
alienating the male fans of her sugar-candy past. When she accepts a part 
that involves her being raped, her life begins to fall apart. She discovers 
internet sites describing every detail of her life. Helpless and afraid, she 
watches as her associates are threatened and killed by a mysterious stalker, 
who she sees everywhere. When Mima's TV drama begins mimicking her everyday 
life, she can no longer tell the difference between television, hallucination 
and real life.

The film develops a complex structure for Mima's psychosis, exaggerating 
elements of pop and Manga as product and form, and interweaving elements from 
her different realities to consider the relationships between media, 
celebrity and technology.