Peter C. Pugsley is Associate Professor in Media/Film
Studies at the University of Adelaide, Australia. His research and
teaching focus on Asian film and screenwriting.
Ben McCann is Associate Professor of French Studies at the
University of Adelaide, Australia. His most recent book is
L’Auberge espagnole: European Youth on Film (2018).
France and Japan offer two of the world’s most vibrant and
fascinating film cultures. This lively introductory survey maps out
some of the major thematic and contextual contours of the dynamic
inter-relationship between these two regions.
*Alastair Phillips, Professor of Film Studies, University of
Warwick, UK*
The book examines both cinemas -French and Japanese and the
exchanges and influences between these “two cinematic eco-systems”
(17) since their inception and more particularly since the 1940s.
It probes into various cultural tropes pertinent to each culture
and contrasts them while explaining how some of these can be
shared. The authors are well informed of Japanese and French
cinema. They unpack some of the stylistic and thematic ideas at
their core. The segmentation is carefully thought-out, and
incorporates the French New Wave, not to be confused with the
Japanese Nouvelle vague. Their study is deeply indebted to some of
the major critics/historians of Japanese and French cinema.
It offers an interesting look at cross cultural differences and
links between directors. The production and reception aspects are
exposed, as well as some of the contemporary concerns regarding
films today, their increased visibility at film festivals, East and
West, in venues which have become a place for not only showing
films but also creative meetings. As the reader navigates these
respective cinematic productions, the complex nature of the
Franco-Japanese filmic relationship is revealed when it comes to
mise en scene, history, culture, various genres and concerns,
literary adaptations, and locations. I plan to include this volume
for an upcoming class on the encounter between east (Japanese) and
west (French) cinemas.
*Sylvie Blum-Reid, Professor of French & Film Studies, University
of Florida, Gainesville, USA*
This book is a wonderful antidote to the idea that the West holds
the primacy in all aspects of the movie-making art and industry.
Instead, it puts forward the principle of a cross-border dialogue,
where there are no winners or losers, leaders or followers. Rather,
it’s a realm of democratic exchange where two cultures commingle in
their love for each other’s films. France and Japan, with their
deep-rooted cinephilias, are the most eloquent and ravishing
example of this love story. From the quasi-simultaneous emergence
of the closely entwined French and Japanese New Waves, in the
1950s-60s, to Catherine Deneuve starring a Kore-eda film in our
day, what a pleasure to navigate this fertile transnational
conversation!
*Lúcia Nagib, Professor of Film, University of Reading, UK*
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