Tan (ICC Student Staff Leader)
Introduction
On December 7th, ICC held a Movie Talk Night. We invited Professor Morita Norimasa, from the School of International Liberal Studies (SILS) and Graduate School of International Culture and Communication Studies (GSICCS), to give us a special talk on Kurosawa Akira’s “Ikiru” (1952) and its British remake, Oliver Hermanus’s “Living” (2022). The talk focused especially on the comparison of the two movies and the deep meaning of life and death, highlighting similarities and differences related to the changed setting from Japan to England. Later, participants were separated into groups and engaged in the lively discussion from remakes to movies they are interested in.
Background and Motivation
Media is all around us. Not only as a form of entertainment, but also as a way to transmit ideology and raise public discussion. Movies convey many things like sentiment, history, legend, culture, art, ethics, spirit and so on. To me, film is the medium that I can get relaxed with, get inspired and get educated by.
Also, movies work as a facilitator during conversation. When I am talking to somebody for the first time, I often ask about the latest movies such as “Barbie” or “Hunger Games”, and then we discuss the feelings, the characters and the stories. It is those times when I realized that movies are such a good topic to encourage communication, not to mention that film itself is so international as it is made by different countries with different themes. That’s why I started to think about holding an intercultural event about movies.
Event materials (image by author)
Challenge
Even though my main goal for the event was to facilitate communications about movies, I still wished participants could learn about the cultural aspects of movies. Therefore, I decide to invite Professor Morita since he is a specialist in film and I also took his course “Film Studies”.
The hardest thing was to decide what should be the main theme of the talk. I thought about comparison of Western and Eastern movies or movies that depict international incidents or worldwide social issues. After discussing with Professor Morita, we finally decided on the topic of movie remakes which compare both Japanese and foreign movies but with the same story. We also asked participants to watch “Ikiru” and “Living” in advance in order to understand the talk better.
The Event
On the event day, the ICC Lounge was filled with a movie atmosphere with many decorations and a flow of famous movie soundtracks. Participants were given an entrance ticket with event name on it just as if they were entering a movie theater. There were also drinks and snacks for participants to enjoy.
During the talk, Professor Morita compared similar scenes in Kurosawa’s “Ikiru” and Hermanus’s “Living”. Specifically, by showing the scenes, the professor showed how Japanese and British directors told the same story in different ways with different techniques in addition to different social and cultural background. The most impressive thing for me was that at the beginning of the talk, Professor Morita asked all of us a question: What would you do if you only had 3 months left to live? This question was deep and it made us think by standing at the position of the main protagonist. I never thought about life, since we are in a high-speed living environment where we have one task after another, however, through understanding the protagonist’s mind and his actions, I started to get calm and consider the meaning of life. To live the life you want is my answer.
During Professor Morita’s talk (ICC photo)
After the talk, it was time for the free discussion. A topic sheet was provided and following that, participants talked about their favorite movies, remake movies and the latest Netflix movies. I was so glad to see that they were so interested in movies and that they also learned a lot through movies. I felt really satisfied that they enjoyed this movie talk night!
During the free discussion (ICC photos)
Special Thanks
Thank you Professor Morita Norimasa, FT Marshall and other ICC Staff for helping me produce this event! I really appreciate your kind cooperation!
The event staff with Professor Morita (ICC photo)
