IN ADDITION TO BEING PART of a larger
whole, Flickerings has become its own complex program: we tried again in 2007
to balance assorted program elements for an increasingly diverse audience
— from filmmaker to film buff, beginner to professional. Past
programs have taken a variety of approaches: we've featured directors, national
cinemas, film
movements, subjects and
themes. This year, we took more of a cultural perspective. Chicago
reviewer J. Robert Parks,
with his keen eye for the perfect Flickerings film, tipped us to a local
screening which opened up a trail that became our featured track: J-Pop! We
began by assembling a program of peppy teen films, complemented by
anime. But as we looked into things, it became clear we needed to
supplement this discussion with a look at certain darker aspects
of Japanese youth culture. The trick was to celebrate those aspects that
make J-Pop so popular in the US, but also try to get behind the myth of Japan
and grapple with a deeper perspective of the country and its people. To that
end, we brought in some folks whose experience with Japan and its media
exports helped guide us in our explorations of that universe. Paul Nethercott has
worked as a missionary in Japan and also co-produced a film on youth culture
issues. Jason
Morehead is an online film writer who knows a thing or two about what
we generally categorized, for this program, as otaku culture.
Let's talk about that word: otaku — the obsessive fan of Japanese pop culture.
Most of us understand the concept; some say Trekkies were the original
otaku. Cornerstone
Festival could even be described as an "otaku-magnet": our
crowd can be quite obsessive about its music and movies. Of course, the
infamous mainstream rejoinder to fervent fandom is "Get a life!" (a
suggestion we at Flickerings and Imaginarium are not unfamiliar with.)
Yet it's not hard to sympathize with anyone less-than-eager to shoulder their
share of the Status Quo. True, the shirking of what some call "real life"
may coincide with a desire to avoid responsibilies and hard truths. But
surely if there's any real life worth "getting", it must be one which
provokes the otaku's passion and capacity for appreciation. No doubt
— it's quite complicated, this business of "getting a life," aka
"growing up." Flickerings 2007 explored these complexities in a series of
films depicting, not coincidentally, significant life-passages and
various comings-of-age.
Our featured anime series Haibane-Renmei demonstrated conclusively why
Japanese animation tends to create such obsessive fans. Still, it seemed a
bit risky to put a thirteen-episode work on the program, spread over four
days of the festival. We wondered how many (if any) attendees would to
commit to showing up for the whole thing — as it turned out, the answer
was in the neighborhood of forty or fifty people, kids, teenagers and
grown-ups, experienced anime buffs and newbies.
They came in enmasse for each screening, gasping, cheering, even crying
together over the journey of the angelic Haibane through past hurts and
limitations to self-knowledge and a certain closure on the mystery of life.
We ran into one of these young fans at a concert during the fest who
complained that her favorite band was scheduled opposite the series: she
decided to catch a couple songs then race over to Flickerings to finish the
episode! Jason Morehead hosted the screenings and led a spirited discussion
afterward, one that included even very young kids making their own surprising
connections and contributions.
Most J-Pop seems to be divided into meticulously-targeted interest groups:
Haibane-Renmei has been classed in the josei genre of
manga and anime, aimed primarily at older teenage girls and
women. Yet, as our audience found, what that may actually mean is less a
"chick flick" than a story about relationships and values, as opposed to
spaceships and blowing stuff up. (Not that there's anything wrong with that:
we launched our J-Pop program with the classic Space Battleship
Yamato). Stories about overcoming obstacles at key moments of
life can be particularly meaningful, especially with female characters,
especially in this culture — though perhaps obstacles women face are
similar everywhere. At the end of our screening of Kamikaze
Girls, the young ladies in our Flickerings audience cheered with
gleeful defiance as the fragile girly protagonist stood up to defend her
friend and take charge of her destiny. To similar enthusiastic response, Linda, Linda,
Linda repeated that sort of Girls Against the World theme (along with
a title song
you just can't get out of your head.) For a program moving in this direction,
there was one film we were determined to add: the scandalously underappreciated
Studio Ghibli
masterpiece Only
Yesterday, about a young woman who finally makes peace with her
childhood. Some years ago, Disney picked up the rights to the Ghibli films,
distributing many of them — but not Only Yesterday. Rumor has it
the reason is because this film would be problematic to market: a
mostly-realistic and quietly-introspective drama, this isn't a kids' film,
and portrays puberty in more detail than the Disney universe typically
admits. (But despite a certain amount of Disney-bashing we may have
overheard in some quarters, we should note that company was most gracious in
letting us screen Only Yesterday and we are grateful to them.)
Guest speaker Paul Nethercott, in addition to leading a seminar on "J-Pop in Context" at the Imaginarium, spoke at Flickerings on the topic of Hikikomori.
Paul screened a video interview he recently shot with one of these young
Japanese who are, in the title of a recent book on the topic, Shutting Out
the Sun. The subtitle of Michael Zielenziger's
book is "How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation." It was Paul's
work in Japan with that lost generation that led him to co-produce a film
with the Biola University Film Department, Mujo No Kaze (The Wind of
Impermanance), which we included in this year's Film Showcase
as a work-in-progress screening. As the week went on, it was clear that our
opening night film, Densha Otoko:
Trainman, was more than just a sweet and touching love story of
geek-meets-girl (which it also was), but a desperate plea to an entire nation
to be brave and face the world, to step out of otaku isolation and
take the risk of real relationships: to "get a life," in the best sense.
Obviously, the struggles of youth are phenomena hardly unique to Japan. Along
with our J-Pop series we screened a classic of Italian cinema that
captures the ambiguities of "growing up" in piercingly poignant fashion.
Federico Fellini's bittersweet memoir, I
Vitelloni, follows a group of school friends hanging desperately
to the razor's ege of youth — you want to smack 'em sometimes; at
others, your heart goes out to them as they cling to those magical days.
Jason Morehead found especial connection to this tension. After a long
absence from a Cornerstone Festival he attended regularly in college with
friends, Jason finally returned to to the fest — with his wife, Renae.
"I keep running into my younger self," he told me, a reference to a recurring
motif in Only Yesterday. Jason later blogged about the unique light
this film cast upon his own wrestling at Cornerstone 2007 "between
youthful nostalgia and growing up, attempting to reconcile your past and
present selves, the power that childhood memories can hold over you as an
adult, recognizing the beauty of yesterday without getting trapped in said
memories, pining for a simpler time while trying to deal with the
complexities of your life as it is...
In balancing on that edge, and with this year's film program in general,
Flickerings overlapped the traditional territory of sister-program, the Imaginarium — the real otaku magnet at
Cornerstone. Along with sharing J-Pop programming, the two venues also joined
together in conversation about consumerism and commodification. The
Imaginarium had Elvis and Zombies, and Flickerings had Reverend Billy...
