Hong Kong's CineFan's November and December programs

[FWN Adm]

Hong Kong's CineFan club released its November and December programs, which are both focusing on Japanese cinema. Japanese cinema had grown by leaps and bounds since the 1930s, when pictures began to 'talk'. With a strong demand for good scripts, studios and directors looked to the works of literature for their realistic portrayal of contemporary lives and popularity among people, paving way for bungei-eiga (literary films) to become a trend. From the early 1950s when the second Golden Age of Japanese cinema flourished, modern Japanese literature offered a wealth of choices for filmmakers anxious to explore and reflect on themes consonant with the rapid political, economic, social and cultural transformations underway in Japan during the postwar recovery.

While both are powerful forms of storytelling and embodiments of imagination, literature and film are different artistic mediums with distinctive form, language, technique and effect. In translating a literary work into sound and image, a filmmaker has much to take into consideration – its characters, themes, narratives and visualisation, among others. Whether to remain faithful to the original, to reinterpret, to use it as a pretext, or to make one's statement, it's a director's call – for good or bad, or both.

Taking up the Meiji-era tales – I Am a Cat and The Heart – from Natsume Soseki, the father of modern Japanese literature, master filmmaker Ichikawa Kon crafted his contemporary cinema with the novel's profound sense of desolation and loneliness, while capturing the interplay between the self-reflecting spirit of the alienated intellectuals and the postwar collapse of the traditional values. Nomura Yoshitaro, in putting the acclaimed detective stories Stakeout and The Castle of Sand on screen, accentuates writer Matsumoto Seicho's themes of social corruption and human darkness through escalating tension in narrative structure and brilliant mise-en-scene.

Morita Yoshimitsu's poetic evocation of Natsume Soseki's And Then and Ichikawa Jun's minimalistic contemplation of Murakami Haruki's idiosyncratic alienation and solitude in Tony Takitani garnered approval from readers and cinephiles alike. Among the countless cinematic adaptations of Tanizaki Junishiro's novels of erotic obsessions, Mizoguchi Kenji's Miss Oyu – a heart-wrenching tale of love and sacrifice – is hailed as a cinematic masterpiece for its lyrical long takes and enchanting imagery, taking the original novel to an elevated artistic level. Widely acclaimed as a towering fiction of the century, Mishima Yukio's The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, is re-interpreted under the lens of Ichikawa Kon, who turned the author's scrutiny of destructive passion and agonies into an exploration of the social and cultural forces at work in the young monk's life in Conflagration. It draws readers' scorn, and film critics' nods all at once.

Following our programme featuring Kawabata Yasunari in 2019, we continue our theme of adaptation from book to screen, showcasing 16 films adapted from the literary works by five celebrated Japanese novelists. We hope this selection brings an awareness of the insights that Japanese literature has brought to a cinematic tradition.

Visit the Official Website for the full schedule, times and location of films viewed