This book explores the phenomenon of V-Cinema, founded in Japan in 1989 as a distribution system for direct-to-video movies which film companies began making having failed to recoup their investment in big budget films. It examines how studios and directors worked quickly to capitalize on niche markets or upcoming and current trends, and how as a result this period of history in Japanese cinema was an exceptionally diverse and vibrant film scene. It highlights how, although the V-Cinema industry declined from around 1995, the explosion in quantity and variety of such movies established and cemented many specific genres of Japanese film. Importantly the book argues that film scholars who have long looked down on video as a substandard medium without scholarly interest have been wrong to do so, and that V-Cinema challenges accepted notions of cultural value, providing insight into the formation of cinematic canons and inviting us to rethink what is meant by "Japanese cinema".

An eye-opening portrait of a vibrant film culture, The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film is the most comprehensive study of the Japanese filmmaking scene yet written. Tom Mes and Jasper Sharp explore the astounding resurgence of Japanese cinema, both live action and animated, profiling 19 contemporary Japanese filmmakers, from the well-known (Kitano, Miike, Miyazaki) to the up-and-coming (Naomi Kawase, Satoshi Kon, Shinya Tsukamoto) and reviewing 97 of their recent films. With 100+ images from behind and in front of the camera, this is a book any film lover will savor. Foreword by Hideo Nakata, director of Ring. Tom Mes (in Paris) and Jasper Sharp (in Tokyo) co-edit Midnighteye.com, the premier English-language website on Japanese cinema.

Francois Truffaut called "Night and Fog" "the greatest film ever made." But when Alain Resnais finished his documentary, with its depiction of Nazi atrocities, the resistance of the French censors was fierce. A mere decade had passed since the end of the war, and the French public was unprepared to confront the horrors shown in the film--let alone the possibility of French complicity. In fact it would be through "Night and Fog" that many viewers first learned, as film critic Serge Daney put it, "that the worst had only just taken place."

An engrossing account of the genesis, production, and legacy of Resnais's incomparable film, this book documents in extraordinary detail how a film that began as a cinematic spin-off of an educational exhibition on "resistance, liberation, and deportation" went on to become a significant step in the building of a collective consciousness of the tragedy of World War II. Sylvie Lindeperg frames her investigation with the story of historian Olga Wormser-Migot, who played an integral role in the research and writing of "Night and Fog"--and whose slight error on one point gave purchase to the film's detractors and revisionists and Holocaust deniers. Lindeperg follows the travails of Resnais, Wormser-Migot, and their collaborators in a pan-European search for footage, photographs, and other documentation. She uncovers creative use of liberation footage to stand in for daily life of the camps featured to such shocking effect in the film--a finding that raises hotly debated questions about reenactment and witnessing even as it enhances our understanding of the film's provenance and impact.

A microhistory of a film that altered the culture it reflected, "Night and Fog "offers a unique interpretation of the interworking of biography, history, politics, and film in one epoch-making cultural moment.

Synopsis: Der Protagonist dieses Romans, wird von seiner Lebensgefahrtin nach einer durchzechten Nacht verlassen. Er begibt sich wieder zuruck in sein Jungesellenleben und erlebt so manche skurille Situationen. Eine Besprechung: Die Besprechung neuer, unbekannter Autoren fallt schwer, drangen sich doch stets unwillkurlich Vergleiche mit etablierten Vertretern der Zunft auf. Doch der Vergleich ist ebenso unvermeidlich wie unzulanglich, vor allem wenn es um die Geschichten dieses Typen gehen soll. Selbstverstandlich weckt schon allein der Name Reminiszenzen an die wilderen Vertreter der US-Literatur der spaten siebziger und achtziger Jahre, naturlich ist man versucht, die Stories sowohl hinsichtlich des Stils als auch des Inhalts als eine Fortentwicklung der Werke Bukowskis anzusehen. Doch damit ware Tommes Unrecht getan, denn er fuhrt nicht einfach etwas fort, was ein anderer fur ihn angefangen hat. Tommes lebt und schreibt sein eigenes Leben (? ). Doch auch dieser Satz steht wie eine Halbwahrheit auf dem Papier, denn man hat den Eindruck, dass Tommes sein Leben nicht nur lebt, sondern erlebt und genau das macht seine Starke aus. Atmospharisch dicht, ganz auf die Darstellung des Wesentlichen konzentriert, schafft er es, auch den unbeteiligten Leser an seinen Geschichten teilhaben zu lassen, wobei anzumerken ware, dass das Wesentliche, uber das Tommes schreibt, nicht immer das nach aussen hin Sichtbare ist. Auch wenn man durch die ungewohnlichen Stories, die teils absurden Situationen und den allgegenwartigen Sex versucht ist, sich allzusehr auf den Inhalt zu konzentrieren, geht es nicht nur um die beschriebenen Begebenheiten, nicht nur um das, was geschehen ist, sondern um das Wie, um das Gefuhl, die Stimmung, die zugrundeliegenden Emotionen. Genau das verschafft auch dem Leser den Zugang zu einer wilden, extremen, manchmal auch abstossenden Welt, denn es kommt nicht darauf an, dass er sich mit dem Verhalten der Personen identifiziert, sondern dass er die Gefuhle, d

Francois Truffaut called "Night and Fog" "the greatest film ever made." But when Alain Resnais finished his documentary, with its depiction of Nazi atrocities, the resistance of the French censors was fierce. A mere decade had passed since the end of the war, and the French public was unprepared to confront the horrors shown in the film--let alone the possibility of French complicity. In fact it would be through "Night and Fog" that many viewers first learned, as film critic Serge Daney put it, "that the worst had only just taken place."

An engrossing account of the genesis, production, and legacy of Resnais's incomparable film, this book documents in extraordinary detail how a film that began as a cinematic spin-off of an educational exhibition on "resistance, liberation, and deportation" went on to become a significant step in the building of a collective consciousness of the tragedy of World War II. Sylvie Lindeperg frames her investigation with the story of historian Olga Wormser-Migot, who played an integral role in the research and writing of "Night and Fog"--and whose slight error on one point gave purchase to the film's detractors and revisionists and Holocaust deniers. Lindeperg follows the travails of Resnais, Wormser-Migot, and their collaborators in a pan-European search for footage, photographs, and other documentation. She uncovers creative use of liberation footage to stand in for daily life of the camps featured to such shocking effect in the film--a finding that raises hotly debated questions about reenactment and witnessing even as it enhances our understanding of the film's provenance and impact.

A microhistory of a film that altered the culture it reflected, "Night and Fog "offers a unique interpretation of the interworking of biography, history, politics, and film in one epoch-making cultural moment.