{"id":36862,"date":"2016-01-22T15:11:31","date_gmt":"2016-01-22T06:11:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/?p=36862"},"modified":"2016-01-22T15:39:39","modified_gmt":"2016-01-22T06:39:39","slug":"comparing-the-new-cinemas-of-france-brazil-and-japan-with-columbia-university-professor-richard-pena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/news\/36862","title":{"rendered":"Comparing the new cinemas of France, Brazil and Japan with Columbia University Professor Richard Pe\u00f1a"},"content":{"rendered":"

On January 19,\u00a0Waseda University\u2019s Research Institute for Letters, Arts and Sciences invited Columbia University Professor Richard Pe\u00f1a to deliver a lecture on the new cinema movements of France, Brazil and Japan. The lecture, titled \u201cWaves on Different Shores: Comparing the New Cinemas of France, Brazil and Japan,\u201d was organized as part of Waseda\u2019s Global Japanese Studies initiative and funded by the Top Global University Project (TGU). Professor Pe\u00f1a was greeted by a full house of students, researchers, and guests who came to hear from the film studies specialist.<\/p>\n

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Professor Pe\u00f1a began his lecture by providing general information and context about new wave cinema movements, including the rise of auteur theory, which asserts that a film embodies a director\u2019s personal artistic vision. \u201cOne could say that modern films are \u2018art about art\u2019 in that they make us conscious and aware of the process behind a given work of art,\u201d said Pe\u00f1a.<\/p>\n

Moving on to French New Wave cinema, Pe\u00f1a discussed the philosophies and techniques of French directors. In a conscious resistance to Hollywood cinema, French directors attempted to capture events as spontaneously as possible, using non-artificial \u201cstudios\u201d with natural sound and light. Pe\u00f1a cited a scene from the 1962 Jean-Luc Godard directed film \u201cVivre sa via\u201d that was shot in an actual Paris caf\u00e9. \u201cAs opposed to studio sets, Godard filmed in an actual caf\u00e9 and moreover included the full sound scape of the bar. The bartenders pass back and forth, situating this fictional encounter within the confines of a physically authentic world.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Pe\u00f1a explained that unlike the French New Wave, the Japanese New Wave began with film studios trying to attract younger audiences. One film to come out of this movement was \u201cSeason of the Sun,\u201d directed by Takumi Furukawa and based on Shintaro Ishihara\u2019s novel of the same name. Pe\u00f1a discussed how the American occupation influenced Japanese cinema and filmmakers to incorporate foregrounding cinematic techniques and exaggerated stylization in their films. \u201cShohei Imamura, who had actually served as an assistant director to Yasujiro Ozu once actually said when he began directing his own films, \u2018I just tried to think of everything Ozu might do and I did the opposite.\u2019\u201d Pe\u00f1a showed a scene from the 1964 crime film directed by Masahiro Shinoda, \u201cPale Flower,\u201d where the main character, a Yakuza hitman released from prison, kills a Yakuza boss in incredibly stylized fashion. Pe\u00f1a suggested that the pure stylization of Japanese New Wave corresponds to the 1960s student protest movement and Anpo security protests.<\/p>\n

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Pe\u00f1a closed his lecture by discussing the New Cinema movement of Brazil. Pe\u00f1a discussed how Brazil\u2019s New Cinema began with the 1954 bankruptcy of Vera Cruz Studios, a highly commercialized production company that focused on creating American-esque films. He explained that following the bankruptcy, a new generation of directors began experimenting with independent cinema, rejecting the traditional studio filmmaking model. This new movement focused on unseen or ignored areas of Brazil and rejected classic forms of narration, resulting in a type of third world film \u201caesthetic.\u201d Pe\u00f1a discussed how this cinematic movement corresponded with the rise of a radical bourgeois nationalism and the \u201cconstruction of Brasilia\u201d that led to the popularization of art forms such as bossa nova music and ended with the military coup of 1964.<\/p>\n

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On January 19,\u00a0Waseda University\u2019s Research Institute for Letters, Arts and Sciences invited Columbia Universi […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":36855,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,117],"tags":[167],"class_list":["post-36862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-topic","tag-culture-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}