Bonus Episode 9: Zipangu Fest 2011 Special
Welcome to our second annual podcast episode covering the Zipangu Festival in London. This year’s festival ran from November 18th – 24th, 2011 in London and, much like last year’s, featured films both contemporary and classic and from a wide spectrum of genres. In this episode, we interview the following filmmakers and people involved with the festival:
- Jasper Sharp: Jasper is the Director and Chief Curator of the festival and author of the book Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema (FAB Press, 2008)
- Neil Cantwell, Tim Grabham, Ta2mi: Neil and Tim produced KanZeOn, a 2011 documentary about the role of sound and music in Buddhism and their dissemination into everyday Japanese life. Ta2mi is a hip-hop DJ, beatboxer, and Buddhist priest who appears in the film. Ta2mi also gives a banging impromptu beatbox performance of the traditional Japanese folk song “Sakura”.
- Shinpei Takeda: Tijuana-based Takeda is an artist and filmmaker whose deeply affecting 2009 documentary Hiroshima Nagasaki Download starts as a project to interview World War II A-Bomb survivors becomes a personal journey of memory and experience.
- Takashi Makino: Makino is a talented multi-disciplined artist and experimental filmmaker who has apprenticed under the famed stop animators the Quay Brothers. His Enter the Cosmos and Season Inter View programs and entry in the Nippon Re-Read: Radical Fragments and Abstractions from Japan I & II program offer visuals and audio accompaniment (by artists such as Jim O’Rourke and Takashi Ishida) that provide a view beyond the human imagination.
Email: vcinema@variedcelluloid.net
Direct link: Bonus Episode 9.
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About The Author
Jon Jung
Jon Jung (aka “Coffin Jon”) is the producer and host of the VCinema podcast and editor-in-chief of the VCinema blog. He is an avid movie fan who specializes in Japanese cinema, but enjoys everything from artsy high-brow to mega-billion blockbusters to straight-to-video turds. As an Asian-American, he got the best of all cinematic worlds as a child by receiving mega-doses of Ozu, Bruce Lee, Kamen Rider, and American drive-in movies in addition to a steady diet of punk rock, Japanese literature, and Buddhism. He spent six years in Japan as an English teacher and translator. In 2004, he returned to the United States to complete his Masters in Language Education and continue his career as a language educator and cultural anthropologist with a focus on language policy and language shift. Jon is a former Myrle Clark Award recipient for excellence in creative writing and has contributed to World Film Locations: Tokyo (Intellect, 2011).