Latest / Outskirts Film Podcast / #008 - Meiko Kaji and the Age of Delinquents and Assassins

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#008 - Meiko Kaji and the Age of Delinquents and Assassins · Outskirts Film Podcast

• 0:18
  SPEAKER_05: Welcome to the Outskirts Film Podcast.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_05: I'm Mirky Sofolo, and today I'm joined by my co-hosts.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_05: Hey, I'm Christopher.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_05: Hey, I'm Alonso.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_05: As we mentioned at the end of the previous episode, we'll be staying in Japan a bit longer.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_05: Since this week we're diving into the filmography of the great actress and singer Meiko Kaji, whose career is being celebrated with a retrospective organized by the Japan Society in New York running from March 27 to April 4.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_05: Mostly associated with rebellious, deviant, and transgressive characters she portrayed, Kaji made her entrance into Japan's tumultuous film industry at Nikatsu in 1965, appearing in a number of films in the late 60s, first under her real name Masako Ota, gained considerable attention through her first starring role in Teryo Ishi's Yakuza Kuryo Blind Woman Curse and the biker gang series Stray Cat Rock, in which she starred in five films from 1970 to 1971.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_05: As Nikatsu's style shifted more decisively towards Pinku Eka genre, and as it became physically and mentally impossible for her to maintain the rhythm with which the studio expected her to work, she began working for Toei Company, where she became the star of another series, Female Prisoner 701.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_05: After her most widely known and iconic portrayal of Yuki Kashima in Toshia Fujita's Lady Snowblood, Kaji went on to work with renowned masters such as Kinji Fukasaku and Yasuzo Masumura.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_05: Having starred in so many films in a single decade, Kaji's film career came to a halt in the 80s.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_05: And in the following years, including the 2020s, she made occasional appearances on television and in film.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_05: At the height of her career, Kaji appeared in more than a hundred films, which makes it obviously impossible for us to cover them all.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_05: For practical reasons and because of the time constraints, we decided to stick with the selection of Japan society.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_05: Since this episode marks the first time that we talk about an actor, I want to start by asking you guys this question.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_05: What do you think makes Meiko Kaji's acting so compelling and distinctive?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: She kind of like plays with that in a very like unique way each different each different time, despite all being within the range of kind of like exploitation, or like at least in this, like the as uh Oiko has mentioned, like the uh Nikatsu part of her career.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think like she's she like varied from fill uh from genre to genre and from aesthetic to aesthetic very seamlessly.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like that there's like the iconographic like power she has.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's always very commanding on screen, but it isn't like kind of like the 80s action start, kind of like run the same gimmick all over and over again.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's like nuance to the different characters.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Also, she has like a very like fabulous sense of like uh long-in and melancholy in all these films that I think kind of have kind of get like uh overshadowed by the more like uh intense stares and like those more like primal instincts in some of the films, but I think that that sense of like balancing the like the melancholy and those like like nostalgic uh nature of the films with the more like uh blatant and exploitation and exalted emotions of the rest of the filmic universe is kind of like what I identify with her like filmic career, or at least on on the on these like uh morals more well-known part of it.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I guess also the question is like it would be different if it if it came after watching just a few of the films and then what having watched all all of the films or most of the films that we looked at, because you know, over time I started to see that the Kaji that you would uh know from Lady Snowblood and and Scorpion the Scorpion films is a very specific kind of part that she played, which she did play again and again in many ways.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_06: But then if you deviate just slightly from that, you find like a very different kind of performer.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_06: Um those earlier films that I mentioned, they they have that like incredible intensity, which also is um kind of amplified, ironically, by the fact that she doesn't speak, which was a well-known decision that she insisted on for those films.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_06: And of course, it's very clear that those that that lack of words like creates a very powerful and expressive visual style that is revolving a lot around the eyes.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_06: But then when once I started to dig in some of the other films around that, I found like a very different kind of actress as well, like the Khaji of Stray Cat Rock, for example, or um Wandering Ginza Butterfly.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_06: Like those are much lighter roles in some way, and there's no sign of any kind of insistence on not speaking, being like cool in that same way.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_06: She's she's plenty verbal, she speaks a lot, like she's she's very seemingly very relaxed.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_06: And then again, you know, when I watched uh Double Suicide of Sonozaki, it's also a film that like it's a very different style of performance for her.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_06: I can count on her in all these films that it's like just a pure aesthetic pleasure to watch her work, but also that like the films vary so much and she varies with them.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_05: I also think that she's often associated with a type of character, as I said in the intro, like very rebellious for a female character.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_05: But at the same time, this lecture of her career creates a contrast with the studio system in which she worked throughout these years, because I feel like it's quite a from the production perspective, it's it's a like crazy work conditions and exploitation.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_05: So the fact that the studios and the whole uh reading of her career reflects this idea of yeah, she was a rebellious figure, whereas actually suffering from this very extreme work conditions, like with uh working day and night, it I found that really interesting from the perspective of like female representation, let's say.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_06: I had this feeling, like not only watching the films but also reading about them like simultaneously, how much of a kind of authorial presence she herself brought, at least for a few years.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_06: I think it was mostly a kind of burst of creative energy on her part.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_06: I think she became like very quickly very conscious of her image, and like the kind of interventions, like the infamous ones, like saying that she wasn't gonna speak at all in the the Scorpion films, was already her like really deciding what kind of star she wanted to be.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_06: Very quickly, then she was just crushed by the horrible conditions of making these films, like on such a tight schedule.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_06: I think it's also interesting to just like mention like how she got started, which was in the mid-60s.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_06: She was uh scouted as a model and started working in a TV station.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_06: In this like TV context, that she was on a soundstage and somebody from Nikatsu came and invited her to start filming, and she she said, like in this interview with Kaido Cinema, she said that she signed the contract and started shooting the same day.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_06: You know, when we look at these films like retrospectively, we are piecing together like her choices, which I think is fair also because it's evident.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_06: But there was also this element that she was, you know, not an actress really, and she was quick quickly thrown into this into the deep end, and like for a few years really had to try to like find a way to exist in this world and to like assert herself somehow.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_05: Throughout her career, I think one of the choices that she co uh consciously made was working with Yasuzo Masumura, and even when she like she really wanted to work with him, but at the same time the whole schedule, the whole shooting was so hectic and stressful for her that she mentions that she lost 10 kilos or 10 pounds, I don't remember exactly.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_05: But like even that, even those conscious choices were quite hard and stressful and hard on her.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_06: You know, at this period she was kind of arriving simultaneously into a sort of like amazing period of creativity which produced these films.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_06: But also, I mean, objectively for the industry, it was a disastrous moment.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_06: You know, like a lot of the studios were having like serious troubles, the audience numbers had basically collapsed.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_06: As as Alonso said, like she she left Nikatsu because of this like pressure to join the new Roman porno uh movement that was just like starting to be enforced on all of the actresses.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_06: When she's talking about her career, she sounds almost wistful that she didn't have a more of an authorist filmography that she she wanted to work with Masamura earlier, but you know, at the time that she was making films, Masamura was a daye.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_06: For like Masamura heads like me, like it's interesting to see how in the 70s, like this ultimate studio filmmaker had to basically shop his wares at various studios and make what he could.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_06: So it was also like a very bad time to be working with auteurs in that way.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_06: I read an interview where she kind of says, like, wistfully, she says, like, oh, and there was one time where I almost worked with Akiro Kurosawa, but you know, it wasn't to be.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_06: You know, it's like of course, like when we watch these films, like maybe for us it's better that she made these kinds of films than than that.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe we can start by like with a controversy, like a controversial opinion that we have about uh one of our most iconic roles, because I think the one of the m least favorite film of ours for this episode was Female Prisoner 701 Scorpion, the first film of the series.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe we can talk about that and then shift into the second film that you guys loved a lot.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds like heresy because I think that's like the cult favorite usually when people think of like her career.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, like the thing with this film is like on paper, if you read what what what it is, and like just like the title and the vibes and the like uh female like female like prisoner kind of like uh like traditional films, you would assume it's like more like on the side of like a like thrashy exploitation film.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: And technically it is, like in in many ways, but aesthetically uh I found like some kind of like collision with like uh the amount of like uh artfulness is like embrace.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um with that I mean like uh to me, at least in this film, there's like a lot like of direct like inspiration and dialogue with like European arthouse like uh mannerisms.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I guess I was kind of kind of thrown off with that that balance, and I think uh also considering like the character psychology and everything uh the film is kind of kind of building around, to me there was kind of kind of a clash there.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I also think uh we can uh talk about this later, like how the second film being more like primal and out there and like more like erratic, to me, kind of like embodies better the kind of like filmic experience that I was thinking I was gonna get on on the first film.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_05: Like I felt that those exploitation parts were a bit off or like kind of created this incoherency between the tone the tone.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_05: There were some really tragic and heightened moments that not that are not necessarily into like attuned to the to the exploitation, more trashy aspects.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_06: I watched the second film first, which is a much more kind of elemental vision.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_06: And also, speaking from this perspective, is a film that kind of works on its own if you don't know that there's a film that comes before it.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_06: So for me to come back to this first film afterwards, you know, it's more prosaic, there's more things being set up, the beats are being hit of like this kind of prison film and so on.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_06: It's neither one nor the other.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_06: It's not like a purely like trash exploitation film, and it's also not this kind of arty film, it's like somewhere in between.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_06: It made me interested in this director Shun Yo, who made uh these three films, because like he's clearly someone who has like a strong sensibility, like very arty on some level, but like willing to go to very ugly places.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_06: It's an interesting entry point because it shows like how Meiko Kaji was great, but she also like happened to be inhabiting this very strange period of Japanese cinema where these kind of like journeymen directors were there, but they were somehow, I don't know, creatively inspired or whatever.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_06: So they're able to turn this film in collaboration with her into this kind of like weird sort of psychedelic exploitation film.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like this constant constant like flow of like uh different like genre pastige is like something very also very prevalent in this period of time of how this filmmaker is related to those like uh foreign or like kind of sometimes American influences and kind of like how the counter-cultural hype and exploitation part of it and the like early 70s kind of was built into these films almost like immediately because like both of the famous prisoner uh scorpion films we watched were from the same year, so it's kind of crazy to think like I imagine they were like shot almost like back to back, and like aesthetically they're like very far apart.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm kind of like wondering what happened along the way that we're like, okay, so we're like fully like delving into like more like a almost like mythical kind of like uh uh like fever dream kind of like like experience for the second one.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: I guess like since the second one is like almost kind of like an abstracted primal experience, uh then the first one, those like tonal clashes, particularly at least to me kind of happened when you're seeing like this like uh artsy, colorful, colorful, almost like a like Kabuki theater kind of like sequence, and then you have like this like ugly like uh sexual violence sequence.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: So that I did feel like that's being being jarring.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_05: Even though the they are tonally different from one another, I think of Lady Snowblood, for instance, where which is also a revenge film.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_05: In Scorpio, we try to like we have these flashbacks that kind of try to set up why she's trying to take revenge and go escape the prison.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_05: I think the way it's built in a clumsy way, whereas it works quite well in Lady Snowblood.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_05: So I think that kind of flashbacks going back and forth and explanations and creating a like a sense of logic behind her actions is maybe what is offputting for us.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_06: Basically all of the rest of them were made in three years.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_06: And so the film that is like her quote-unquote like debut is Blind Woman's Curse, which was 1970, but she made like 50 feet 50 films before that.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_06: So it's another another Fulci situation that we've got on our hands here where like this this uh construct of Meiko Kachi that we're talking about is actually kind of fake in some way.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_06: That it's like a very long career that we've just like because of the Japan society retrospective and also because of Receive Wisdom and the films that get remembered, like we're talking about a very, very concentrated period here for the most part.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_05: I think maybe it's a bit of a different perspective on acting and historiography of uh these things is that it's still from an authorist perspective, I think.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_05: Because she herself considers these small roles appearances as unimportant, maybe, but still I think to see, to observe or study how she achieved or arrived to blind woman's curse itself is I think interesting.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, although although I will say that like part of the pleasure of this series for me was that like at least compared to our other explorations, it was a little author light, let's say.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, of this list, the only like true author like so so considered is is uh Masamura.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_06: And then Fukusako has like this kind of like elite journeyman status, I would say.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_06: But I also like clearly these guys have like really strong sensibilities.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, particularly Shonya Ito, the director of the Scorpion films.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_06: But also, I mean, very interesting revelation to me was Blind Woman's Curse in Tero Ishii.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_06: I knew the name, but I hadn't dug into that, and suddenly like I could see the the seeds in Blind Woman's Curse of like a very like true exploitation guy.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_06: And when I looked a little bit more at the filmography, I think that this is a definite subject for further research.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I've known about uh horrors of malformed men for for a while, just by virtue of the title.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_06: Sublime title, yeah.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, some steals I've seen.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Yeah, this is definitely something uh I I need to watch.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it kind of makes it interesting to think about that film, uh Black Woman's Course as the start of the official like Miku Kaji kind of like career, because I think in a way the version of her that we remember is is almost immediately uh ingrained in that film as this kind of like uh badass character.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I think that film particular, it's perhaps my favorite one from that that I saw like doing this retrospective, embodies the kind of like mash-up element of this like delirious period of production where it's like it almost seems like this all these studios where like throwing like shit at the wall and see, like, yeah, it's this is like a Jakuza film, but uh yeah, we need some some horror in there.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna do like some mystical, amazing possessed cat one of the best cat sequences I've seen.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_05: When I saw that, I immediately thought that's gonna be the favorite film of Alonso in this election.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_05: I immediately thought about that.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_05: But it it's such an interesting experience from the beginning to the end because first of all, I I'm not a familiar spectator of Yakuza genre, so I was already like thrown into this.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_05: What is going on?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, who are these people?
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_05: kind of situation.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_05: Then it deviates immediately to the horror genre, but it does in such an interesting way.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_05: I I enjoyed it a lot.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_05: I think it's also one of my favorites, but I was also quite uh enamored by another uh performance in the film because I think um the blind woman in the title, Aiko, played by Hoki Tokuda, is also a quite interesting character as a I mean as a side character because all in all these films we've seen, she's the star.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_05: So we we don't necessarily have these interesting, compelling uh side characters, with the exception of Wandering Ginza butterfly.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_05: So I think Aiko in this film was also a highlight for me.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_06: She was in a conversation with Arnaud Des Plechin, and Des Plechin told her that like it's a big favorite of his, and she said, like, that's that's a terrible you don't need to watch that worthless film.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_06: But that's always the good films.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_06: I mean if if it's a film that the director hates, then it's usually I mean, Emmanuel 5, look no further.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean I can I can understand that as well, uh, because like even like tonally, this one, like I guess like the proto-splatter element or uh might uh throw some people off.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: And even like just like looking at how people remember this film, it isn't particularly like that much.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: So it's uh usually compared like uh unfavorably towards like the film Scorpion series and like the latest noblood films.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Despite her being like the main character here, to me, perhaps that that's the main difference as well.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: The ancillary aspects of the film perhaps are as interesting as her character, or even more so as uh Oiku was saying.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps that makes it like less of like a canonical uh Miku Gai film as well.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: If we're kind of creating like the canonical template of her career in a way, so I can see how it fits, doesn't really fit that narrative perfectly.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: Seeing this specific transitional period like culturally uh within the industry might also like uh establish that sense of protection of her own iconography as Oiko was mentioned in Angel as well, when she was like, Oh yeah, I I won't make any of these like pink like pink films that's like the line I won't cross.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I I kind of keep uh thinking about how she related to the material she was working with all the time and like all these like different genres thrown at her all the like constantly.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_05: But at the same time, like I remember like talking about Blind Woman's curves.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe the reason why she's more like dismissive about the early films in 70-71, I feel like she didn't have much say or choice to rather like in comparison with other films that she starred in.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_05: I feel like the studio was just like bringing roles and telling her that you're gonna stay you're gonna star in these series, especially in Stray Cat Rock.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe that's the reason I think she's being more like, yeah, like it's not necessarily a choice, but more like I did, yeah, of course, kind of thing.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_06: But you loved Stray Cat Rock, Sex Hunter, no?
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, I loved it.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_05: I think it was such a revelation for me.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_05: I'm I'm definitely like when I find time, I'm gonna watch the whole series.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_05: Sex Hunter was such a such an interesting film.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_05: Like the whole elements about race, the discrimination, like it it appears to be like a biker gang film, but I think the the film itself talks about so many serious subjects.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_05: In a quite lighter tone, I admit, but still.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_06: Well, I mean it's not that light.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_06: I mean there's like it gets pretty ugly at the end, no?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, but the motor cocktails Yeah, with Coca-Cola bottles.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen a circuit rock with the first one, uh Delinquent Girl Boss, which again uh magnificent uh subtitle, uh, one of the best of all time.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Those films, and I do have like a self-support for this, like kind of like uh post-winging 60s, very like groovy, loungy way of filmmaking.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, in that in in this series, I think that's like the like the apex of that style, which is clearly like taking from the like country cultural, like well, a little bit later than in in the West, but also that kind of lost thing translation element of the country cult like 60 western country culture is to me interesting to see how what elements they take in in Japan.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And to me that that's also like a nice sideway to talk a little bit about like her music career, which I think we haven't really addressed at this point.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because as you were saying about like the her like iconic status as uh not only like film, but like uh being like a model and like naturally like being casted by her looks in in many ways.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: The same case was for with the music industry, and actually she was one of the main figures of what eventually became uh like a subgenre of Japanese music called uh idol kaiu.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Kayo is kind of like the abbreviation of uh Kayu Kyoku and probably like uh butchery in all these pronunciations.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: So it was like that.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_06: That was what I was saying for this episode for all of us, I think.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Kayokokyo basically meant like a pop tune in Japanese and was like an evolution of uh Ryokoka, which Ryokoka was like in the 1930s to 1950s, and the like Japanese uh folk music being like a hybridization with Western uh vocal pop music, particularly, and some like Western orchestration.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Kayokoku was in the 60s to 70s, where they uh started like incorporating more contemporary elements from uh Western pop music that kind of created also this import, particularly not necessarily like American, but more like on the GG, kind of like a French style, kind of like uh girl pop star that simultaneously does films, like a person of magazines, and needs to do like music.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I actually uh like uh one of her albums from that period uh it's crazy to think she was doing like 50 films like a year and also recording like a classic album.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like in 73, she she has uh Keijumeki no Hajiki Uta, which I think kind of translates to like Kajimeku's like uh poetry collection or something like that, which is to me interesting because kind of like embodies also that kind of like aesthetic appeal of those films.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds like she's singing like uh Enka or like a classical uh hybrid Japanese like lyrical music over like spaghetti western themes, which is like uh an amazing amalgamation.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's the same uh thing uh of like what was asked about her and her like authoral role in these films, like the fact she thinks like the theme songs is is also like very important, I think, for like how she creates like the the mood and the setting and how it also like comes back to her at the end of the day.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_06: To bring it back to the cinema, like this musical influence that you're talking about that at this time, like this kind of Japanese popular music was like plundering from all different kinds of sources.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, straight cut rock is like very much a film like that's a product of cultural plundering.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_06: But the difference I think in this case is that it's like made subject, made text, as they would say in academia.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_06: Like it's about American military presence in Japan and the like mixed race children of like black American soldiers who are persecuted by uh these like racist Japanese gangs on this base.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_06: A lot to unpack.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_06: Although, like, yes, it's like horribly violent, yes, it's about racism and so on, but like basically just watching the girls like get into mischief and you know, like it's also another feeling that I got from Wandering Ginza Butterfly, which was like a big revelation for me, was just like you what you're watching Mako like shoot and pool, you know, in a bar, neon lights.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_06: Like this is cinema, this is cinema for me.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_06: Like I basically don't need anything else.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_05: As a mood piece, that's it what I want from the film.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_05: Like a melodramatic narrative, but also about some hustlers.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_05: There's the like the whole story of like um atonement, maybe we can say, or like trying to make herself forgiven for this woman who a part like made her pardon from the prison.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_05: All these aspects like work in such a good way, and she's amazing in it as well.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_05: And yeah, the whole neighborhood vibes, and also she the I think it's a it's a choral story, and that dynamic between other characters also quite worked for me.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean you had like suits and you got like uh gangs in there, like that that just see kind of like popey vibes of this particular like creative films perhaps are the ones that I'm drawn towards the most.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because yeah, they're they're kind of kind of like minor films in a way, but kind of like showcase this like uh temperament of the times.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I did want to mention like this counter-cultural element, how it was kind of not only uh like a shadow over like uh Toei, it was something that was also kind of being explored in like even like bigger productions of like Toho Studios that was kind of like ingrained in all Japanese society at the time, like kind of like in in some way kind of exploiting that like sensationalist aspect of like the Western influence of Western culture.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I think there's also some some reflection along along the line.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I haven't seen the straight cat rock film you mentioned, which kind of fascinating to me to think how it evolved towards that because the first one is basically like a very like second-wave feminist kind of like uh oh all men are evil kind of vibe, which is like biker gang goes against them.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_05: Like Wondering in the Butterfly, we said it's a minor film, but I was so impressed by how beautifully it was shot on film.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_05: It's just the images themselves.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe it's uh like in her career and overall the history of cinema, it's a minor film, it can be.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_05: But to me, you remember the pool scenes where they have this like uh shovel and try to like win the bar bronco from the Yakuza, and you literally see her sweating while she's playing, and these like small details of material texture details, I always find them really fascinating because they're not necessarily there to sign like signify anything.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I just wanted to say that for further reference, when I say that film is minor, I say that bracingly.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_06: Of course.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_06: I mean when I think of these films, I think of like the fact that the costumes and the sets are either amazing or like eye-wateringly ugly in that like 70s way, you know, like herbal sofas and wallpaper and so on.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_06: But she's always very stylish in these films.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_05: I think she has different acting styles, and that probably comes from the hair.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_05: Because in her modern day set setting films, I think she's more like defiant and more I even even like in comparison with Lady Snowblood, she's I feel more presence of action in in her modern day setting films, whereas in period pieces, period dramas, there's this cold, calculated and passive, whereas in modern films it's more spontaneous and hard to define, maybe hard to capture.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_05: And that comes from hair and style, I think.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: It is conceptually interesting because there's like this like juxtaposition and an anachronism of like you have like this spirit piece like a film and like Elo Japan, but at the same time we have this like very like awful kind of saint rock soundtrack, like very like early 80s, uh late 70s.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: So again, to me, there's like some beautiful juxtaposition and in the anachronism of that.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to trash too much like uh Rio Luzaki, which he composed that and it's kind of like plugging his aesthetic interest for his band, which I don't really like.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: The music itself was kind of changing, and these like attempts at uh creating and jumping on bandwagons aesthetically.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh which yeah, I guess like doing that in this particular film is also kind of like weird considering what the film is, which uh from the films we saw, I think it's like perhaps the closest one.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you you you agree with this towards being kind of like uh because I know Basubura isn't really like a prestige filmmaking in the traditional sense, but since it is like a period piece and it's very like stagy and like very like ingrained in it kind of like more like theatrical, kind of like uh exalted kind of performance.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then we have this like like reminder, no no, this was uh like a 1978 studio film because we you we you need you need to have like that like pop culture hook in a way.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_06: You know, like he's he's one of my guys, Masamura, so like I forgive a lot.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_06: And for me, yeah, exactly.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_06: This like weird, very weird clash with this kind of like lounge lizard sort of synthsie jazz, whatever, like being on this like prestige film set in 1703 is very jarring and it's like a very strange choice that's not easily explainable.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_06: At that time, like uh Masamura's career was in the toilet.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_05: So I mean the opening sequence you have the Buddha statues and the jazzy tunes playing.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_05: So when you have this scene, you're like, oh my god, I'm gonna watch something so eye-opening and new.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_05: You have you what you start watching the film with those promises, and then it immediately goes back to this really classic, very uh structured and tonally heavy drama.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe that was why I found it a bit disappointing.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_05: Because I think on the musical aspect it's quite transgressive, like the way it combines them, but in the image and the the tone of this story itself is quite classic.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I mean it it was a film, I mean it's it it has a weird place in Meiko Kaji's career because it's like she constantly says it's her favorite of her performances, and I think that was because she won.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, there's part of it is because she always wanted to work in Masamura and finally did so, but also she won the Japanese equivalent of the Oscar for her performance in this film.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_06: So I think it was probably this moment of like peak critical respect in some way, because of course the films that like we are talking about as cult films like The Prisoner Scorpion, Lady Snowblood, I mean I'm sure people loved them, but they weren't like critical, critically beloved films.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_06: Like this was her produced by the Art Theatre Guild, and like when you watch the film, that's at the start.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_06: It's like very self-consciously like a prestige art film.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_06: So I think for her, probably, you know, if I can think about that as like she's looking back on her career and is like, oh yeah, that was my that was when I finally found the respect that I deserved.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_06: Which is weird because you know it's it's um as you said, like Masamura at this time was quite a pulpy filmmaker, and and I can easily imagine that without him this film would be kind of turgid.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_06: Like for me, what's so special about this is like this insane um closed-off intensity.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_06: Like the fact that basically the whole film essentially is just this like torrent of like emotional intensity from one scene to another with almost no like no wide shots to ever really open anything up.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_06: It's almost all all contained and like highly, highly intense.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_06: And it was also like for for him as well, like you know, she like she clearly admired him, she really wanted to work with him, but as I said, his career was in a really bad state at this point, and this was the last film that he made that anyone considers like of any value.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_06: Um, after this, like he made two very um disreputable films, and then his career was over.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, it's it's a strange UFO in that sense.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: I totally see why Mekukaji charges uh this performance, particularly, because also I I don't want to generalize how it actors, but this is the film where she gets to like the theatrical monologue while she's crying, and I can almost picture like the Japanese Suscars like showing the specific monologue she does in like the in the final 10 minutes of this film.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: But it's so good.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it is very good.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_06: It's not it's not Timothy Chalamet, you know, or like fucking Jesse Buckley.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_06: It's like she's amazing.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_06: But yeah, I understand what you're saying.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean I do struggle like tonally with with this film.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: It has some these weird elements that give me, like when I think like the film has lost me, like particularly the like the merchant character, I think human.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like he's such like a pulpy character, like villain.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like his schemes and the way he performs that he's always like, yeah, this isn't purely like uh like a prestige film at all.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like it has these kind of like low, like lowbrow elements.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: I know, I know that it's based on on a play from like a very famous like playwright in Japan as well.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I know also like uh the script isn't necessarily like a direct translation of the text as well.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: So there's like some elements that were kind of like conceived specifically for the film to work.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_06: Which which I think actually was the merchant.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_06: The merchant was added in this version, as I understand it.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_06: Which is kind of hard to imagine because I mean he's so like central to the plot.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_06: But I I'm pretty sure that like putting this like almost like mustache twirling villain in the film was was like part of like trying to make it more like commercial in this period.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe maybe it's because also the theatricality mostly comes through the text itself.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_05: The fact that it's uh has that fatalistic element that from the beginning the film itself foreshadows their death, and we know like they expresses their wish to die together numerous times, and this probably is in the text itself, kind of doesn't really help to the cinematic elements.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_05: So either the film the film for me could have used this fatality and build it through a more cinematic devices, but I think it stays in the more like a surface level of theatricality.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_05: I think if if it were on a stage, the tra tragedy, the inevitability of death could have been more interesting, but I think cinema itself kind of has other ways of incorporating that, which this film doesn't do.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_04: What?
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_06: Maybe we should talk about Lady Snowblood.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, what's that film called?
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and maybe also there's a like an inevitably talking about this film, there's an elephant in the room that's either should be addressed or shouldn't be addressed.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: You mean like an IDF elephant in the room?
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, Benjamin Netanyahu's favorite filmmaker.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_06: I wanted to ask at the outset actually, like if you guys had any relationship with Meiko Kaji before this little exploration that we've done.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_06: Maybe we can just start there and work our way to Lady Snowblood.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: I actually saw like Straight Cat Rock before I saw Lady Snowblood.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: So my experience was like knowing her as an icon as like a pop figure, which is something I guess we kind of like touch upon on the podcast, but like looking at her career and looking at like also like her musical output and everything.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: She she seems to also transcend cinema in a way.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: And also the way she's using the films kind of played to that as well.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like 1970s pop culture Japan to me.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: It can only be understood through like uh Meiku Kaiji's albums and like her presence in in film.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: Usually it goes back to like uh Lady's No Blood, which is kind of a shame.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: It felt kind of refreshing to see to see the film without that kind of like like fanboy, like teenage kind of like I guess like exoticized like way of like look looking for like cold objects.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_05: I also knew her as a like this really uh iconic figure in Japanese pop culture, music, and cinema.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_05: But I also watched uh Lady Snowblood first, but I didn't necessarily watch the film because of the Killbill connection, but I was uh asked to write about uh text about like animation adaptations, and we had a selection of films, and I chose Lady Snowblood because it was adapted from a manga.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_05: And but yes, when I watched it, I all of course said, Oh my god, he stole everything from this film.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_06: As as happens a lot with my Cynophilia, I I miss things early on, and then I never catch up with them because yeah, then I put in the garbage can and then I don't want to look anymore.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_06: So I had the same feeling as you, Urku, when I watched it for this series.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_06: Like I knew he took some things from it, but I didn't wasn't quite prepared that it was like 100% plundered.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_06: I think for Meiko Kaji, I mean, one of the positive things about uh his influence was that like you know she made a shit ton of money because suddenly like he put two songs in Kill Bill and suddenly like she re-recorded the songs, she put out new albums, etc.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_06: So that that's a positive thing.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_06: But yeah, I what I have to say about Lady Snowblood, I mean, like I was just totally blown away by this film.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_06: Maybe because uh I was lucky enough to watch uh 4K version and just like the overwhelming aesthetic experience of color was like one of the most like transcendent viewing experiences I had of the year.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean to me the main thing is just in this film, it's like kind of like the fight choreography is kind of like incredible as well.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: And also like the type of fight choreography, which uh I guess like the main difference, just the final mention of like the film, is like uh actually throughout my life, like the Killville films have been my least favorite pastige, and it has like this like detachment from the material that I find very annoying all the time.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then like looking at this film and what it is and how like I mean it is very pulpy in many aspects, but just like very the tone itself, it's melancholic like element to the violence as well, is tinged with this like a character psychology and the way it's like the very methodic methodical way, like the sequences of iconographers structure, kind of make this like uh elevated a little bit even more.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like uh I can I can see why this is the one that became kind of like the the main like iconographic moment in your career.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_06: It's that's something David mentioned last week with Shimizu also that like you know we are exposed to a filmmaker through like 10 films, and those ten films like define our image.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_06: But there are some cases with some filmmakers or figures like Meiko Kaji where there is like one film that kind of does go above and beyond in some way of the other films.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_06: And like, yeah, I totally understand that if you have like Alonso's sensibility, like those th those films like can like you can prefer like other kinds of films, like even while recognizing them as kind of like these monumental works.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_06: And this is one this is one of them for me.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, like it's it's a film that like has its own logic, like even besides the other films.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_06: You know, it's like it's it's truly like monumental in a weird way, it's like kind of sui generis.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_06: Uh she's different in it, as Oiku mentioned, like she she gives like a different kind of performance.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_06: And yeah, like this relation to the manga, which I haven't read, does give it this like kind of cartoonish quality, you know, like it's like it it does have this like really vivid power in the way that maybe only the second Scorpion film I think has has a little bit of that as well.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_06: But again in the film, like you just see again and again like the futility of revenge, which is something that I think never even go near.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_06: You know, you just see like it's just like her quest is a quest of repeated frustration, climaxing, I think, in this like amazing scene where she goes to uh Gishiro, the guy she most wants to kill, goes to his grave, finds out he's dead, and like slashes the flowers at the grave.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_05: Something you said, Alonso, I found it really interesting because the the psychological melancholic element is like against what she's trying to do because she has she was born and made, came to this world to like to act like a machine.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_05: So the fact that she's still like framed or uh given these glimpses of humanity or this sensibility is maybe her flaws, but what these flaws also make her human.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_05: So this whole level of contradictions that uh uh inhabits her, I think what makes her character, this character so compelling and canonical, like it it's yeah, it's indisputable.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_05: You I mean sometimes we just like deviate from these canonical readings of her, but I can't like say anything about the position of this film in our career.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_05: I think it's really something else.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_06: Maybe like the two films from the series that I saw that you guys didn't see, both by Kinji Fukusaku, who along with Masumura is the other kind of big name director from from this series.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_06: It's a little strange why these films are included in this Japan Society retrospective.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_06: Not because of the quality of the films, but because of who she is, like what she does in these films.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_06: So the first one is Yakuza Graveyard from 1976.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_06: Very much a Fuksako film from this time, you know, like Macho in the absolute extreme Yakuza film.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_06: Which she doesn't have a major role in for most of the film.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_06: It's true that when she comes in at the end, she's she's powerful.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, but otherwise, I think she's kind of more or less relegated to the background in this film.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_06: She has a bit more of a substantive role in the other film in the series.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_06: New Battles Without Honor and Humanity, the boss's head, which I was confused about.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_06: Again, as I've like said in this episode and other episodes, I have a horrible ability to like program my own selection of films.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_06: So I thought this was the second film in the Battles Without Honor and Humanity series.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_06: Turns out it was the seventh.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_06: And she's also very good in this, but again, there's not there's not a huge amount there to to to grapple with.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_06: Like it's it's true that the these two Fuksako films, like the New Battles is from 1975 and the Yakuza Graveyard is from 1976.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_06: And as we know, like in this period in Japan, like the space of one or two years was like decades.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_06: So it's interesting that yes, like the all the other films in the series that from 1970 to 1973 uh are like these very powerful, like woman-led genre films, basically, starring Okaji.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_06: Whereas like these two films, which are like other than the Masumuro, like the latest films in the series, are by like the manliest filmmaker of all time, Kenji Fukusaku.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_06: And she's like very much relegated in those films into a kind of background role.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_06: Even even when she's wonderful in these films, like she's very much in the background.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_06: When you've when you've watched eight Meikukaj films, you want like you want to see her.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_06: You want to see your girl doing like her death stare and stuff.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_06: You don't want to see her like serving tea.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_05: I always wondered, like, talking about Masumura and Fukusaku, she wanted to like fully, as you said, like switch into the these more otter films, and maybe that was her way of compromising her star status to these minor roles, even though I think the double suicide at Sonozaki is quite big.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_05: But it's interesting, like when we talk about that film, because uh it's as if like the height of her career, and then afterwards in the 80s, like as if she made her the most important per gave her most important performance from her perspective, and then like stopped.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_05: I think after that, in the 80s, there's only one uh title, one film that she starred in, then that then literally disappeared from the cinema screen, and with occasional role appearances in TV.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_06: I knew that she had these horrible shoots that were like physically demanding, and then I knew that like Japanese cinema was in a crisis.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_06: So I thought, okay, she retired, and then she sort of came out of retirement in the like 2010s to 2020s.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_06: She didn't retire at all, actually.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_06: The reason that she stopped making films was that she had a like a main role on a TV show called Onihei Hankachu, and she was on that series from the 80s through to like for various specials and like continuous programming, like way like for twenty twenty-five plus years.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_06: So in in the Keiju Cinema interview that we read, she mentions that like this was basically like she just didn't have time to make movies, which I'm sure is also somehow of an incom of a convenient excuse, but like that was the reason.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_06: It wasn't that she like 100% retired, she just turned to television.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, maybe the difficulty of wrapping up this episode is that so far we always discussed this like filmmakers that like encounter downfall after making these bad films in their late careers, but I don't think it's the case for Meko Kaji, which makes it harder for us to bring a conclusion.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_05: But like thankfully, she's alive.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_05: She's even like presenting her films in the Japan uh society.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_05: She's alive, she's thriving, and we're thankful for her.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_00: An house to each film podcast first.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_05: This weekend I was at uh Luxembourg Film Festival, even if it's it was for two days, and I had the privilege and the honor to uh meet and uh speak to Ulrike Oettinger and Isabelle Hupper after the screening of the Blood Countess.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_06: Wow, I didn't know that.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_05: Surprise! Surprise! I kept this for this episode.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_06: Wow, that's awesome.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_06: We got a primary.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_05: Wow, what a film.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, since we've been talking about late careers, Ulrike Oettinger is 83, and this film was a project that she wanted to make uh since 1998.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_05: So imagine the time that she was been working or pitching or reworking on this project, and then she finally made it.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_05: And I think it's just amazing how refreshing and entertaining this film was.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_05: From Isabel Lupre's performance, I think there are roles that she's more transgressive, more groundbreaking, but still the fact that she's like enjoying herself so much portraying this character is I think was the highlight of the film because you feel that she's genuinely excited and happy to be there.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_05: And not necessarily because it's like an author film, but this character, the setting speaks to her, and I think she's fully there.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_05: And Oettinger is like known for these more uh genre-bending films, like in both sense of the term, uh in New German cinema.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_05: And I think it's an interesting turn after the more ethnographic documentaries that she uh made in the 2000s and 80s and 90s because I think it's still a quite uh structurally contained film within the more like uh defined settings in Vienna.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so we have this vampire figure that tries who tries to find like find a book that is able to destroy the vampire kind.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_05: And um we have this really uh I think straightforward structure of episodic nar narration, but still I think there are these really interesting sad pieces and quite uh weird performances and bursts of imagination.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_05: Like there's a scene where Conchita Wurst makes an appearance and uh she sings a song.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_05: So I think she's still like uh attuned to queer culture and contemporary culture um in an unexpected way.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_05: So I was quite happy and surprised to watch it and to chat with them.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_05: How about you, Alonzo?
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_05: What did you see recently?
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: One I really wanted to watch for a while was uh Shang-Sha's uh Golden Swallow, a lot less known than the first film in this series, perhaps, which is uh King Who's Come Drink With Me, which is like a Wuxia classic.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: Golden Swallow is fascinating because it takes the same like uh premise of the like the first film, and since you're following like the Golden Swallow character, like uh interpreted by Shang Pei Pei.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: When this film, well the first one was perhaps a more like classically like uh Show Brothers like Wu late 60s Wuxia film.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: In this one, it's kind of like uh a lot of like like court intrigue and a lot of like uh like love triangle and that happens in the film, and and Golden Swallow kind of like super my expectations because it didn't really play up to what I like in the first film, but has this like very like a lot of tension between the characters and the back and forth.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's like do they they're staging this like uh amazing like martial arts sequence throughout the film where they go around like defeating these like evil masterminds and warriors, but at the same time, like there's like this competition between the two other characters, which because also they also have like great names.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there's uh Silver Rock, which is interpreted by Jimmy Wang Zhu of the one armed swordsman uh fame, and the other one, uh Golden Whip, is uh Lolie, uh which again like another like legendary like uh Hong Kong actor uh that has like Five Fingers of Death and Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind, Thirsty Changers of Shaolin.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_00: So basically you have like this all-star like love triangle between these like mighty warriors be like the center stage of this Wuxia film, and I don't know, it's like blown away by it.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's like on par with the first one, and uh kind of makes me want to do like a Shang-Ze retrospective soon as well, uh, which I know is kind of like a whole endeavor and talking about filmmakers at almost a hundred films.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what about you, Chris?
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_06: Like in contrast to our uh home retrospectives um that we do for the episode, I have some celluloid pics uh that I watched in the last week that were really amazing.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_06: So the the first was that I went to a program of uh Slovenian experimental films curated by Mateus Diermann and Juri Medin, who's from the Austrian Film Museum, and they made a movie last year about these experimental films, and all the films were worthy.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_06: But in particular, the final film of this program was a movie that I've wanted to see for quite a while, which is called Bite Me Once Already by Davor Martz, which is a film entire like wasn't made with a camera, it was made with the director uh chewed and tried to digest the film stock.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_06: And so there's only one version of this film, like the the version that he bit that exists on 8mm.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_06: So we watched that, and it was amazing because like you could smell saliva, like decades-old saliva, like as it was running through the projector.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_06: So beautiful, it's like one minute, and you just see like the bite marks dancing on screen.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_06: Like, this is how I knew I was in the right place.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_06: The crowd, like as soon as it was done, yelled that we should watch it again.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_06: So the projection is like rewounded, and we watched it a second time.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_06: And the second time it was playing, the audience did um like chewing noises as the film was playing as a kind of soundtrack spontaneously, which was really, really nice.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and then the other one was that I went to a like incredibly precious program uh organized here in Prague by an independent Russian curator called Ilya Lukinich, and he had, I think, on his own money rented um films by Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hyler.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_06: And the season is in two parts.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_06: This was the first one, and it was two Hyler films and two Dosky films, and I haven't seen a Dorsky film in many years.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_06: Um, so to come home to Dosky was, of course, like an immense pleasure, as always.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, we saw The Return and my favorite uh intimations from 2015, but actually the big revelation was honestly the Jerome Heiler films, and I had never seen those films before.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_06: And so they showed um In the Stone House and Words of Mercury, which both like absolutely blew me away and were absolutely transcendent experiences.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_06: It's kind of impossible for me to describe them to you now, but Words of Mercury is like this pure kind of globules of light, beautiful horizontal movement, like an amazing film from 2011, uh, that I think was one of the first films that Haila ever showed after a long hiatus.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_06: And the other film in the Stone House was described by Ilya in his introduction as like a cult film, uh, which is this like 35-minute epic by their standards, uh, which kind of combines both like documentary and experimental film, and it's really, really amazing.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_05: Wow, that sounds really precious.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_05: I think you had a really precious and important film experiences this week.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I think we covered all the bases.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_00: We we had like a Slovenian experimental film on 60mm, we had like a late-style uh film festival with interview and like pirated copy of like Hong Kong film.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's so that's the whole Cine Phillies in there.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_05: That's the outskirts film magazine for you.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, no, no middle brow, just like highbrow and lowbrow, and nothing in between.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_06: That's how it should be.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_05: So we're finally at the end of this episode.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_05: If you have any recommendations, if you have any complaints, if you have any love letters to films, to us, to outskirts film magazine itself, please feel free to send it outskirtsfilmmagazine at gmail.com.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_05: And our next episode will uh focus on Doris Wishman.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_05: And I personally am very excited.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_05: On another note, just to mention that Boris Barnett, a Soviet poet's retrospective, is playing at Metrograph and the Theater of the Matters from March 30 to April 11th.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_05: And for that occasion, Outskirts Film magazine put the first issue of the magazine free access on the website, and you can download it from clicking on the shop section on the website.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_05: See you in the next episode.