Love Hotel? No, we’re not talking about the Frontline Club Annex. Or are we? You’ll have to wait and see..
Pensioners, lawyers, married couples and teenagers are all regular clients at the unique Angelo Love Hotel in Osaka Japan. With unprecedented access throughout the hotel, this film reveals their desires, fantasies and secrets as they inhabit one of the most private and anonymous spaces in Japanese society. 2.8 million people a day visit Love Hotels in Japan. This BBC Storyville & NETFLIX award winning film is an enticing and romantic take on modern Japan through the prism of sex, love and escapism. Reviewed by the Italian Il Fatto Quotidiano as “Lifting the veil of moral and sexual conformism through the power of film…with echoes of works by Pasolini”.
About the Director:
We see mafias as vast, powerful organisations, harvesting billions of dollars across the globe and wrapping their tentacles around everything from governance to finance. But is this the truth? Travelling from mafia initiation ceremonies in far-flung Russian cities to elite gambling clubs in downtown Macau, Federico Varese sets off in search of answers. Using wiretapped conversations, interviews and previously unpublished police records, he builds up a picture of the real men and women caught up in mafia life, showing their loves and fears, ambitions and disappointments, as well as their crimes.
Mafia Life takes us into the real world of organised crime, where henchmen worry about their bad managers and have high blood pressure, assassinations are bungled as often as they come off, and increasing pressure from law enforcement means that a life of crime is no longer lived in the lap of luxury. As our world changes, so must mafias. Globalisation, migration and technology are disrupting traditions and threatening their revenue streams, and the Mafiosi must evolve or die. Mafia Life is an intense and totally compelling look at these organisations and the daily life of their members, as they get to grips with the modern world.
]]>These short documentaries masterfully capture artistic works on screen while celebrating the imaginative minds behind them.
From a Scottish shipyard welder turned poet to Japanese interactive artist On Megumi Akiyoshi, these short documentaries will introduce you to convention-breaking creatives, their fascinating work spaces, and their sources of inspiration.
Full lineup to be announced soon.
MINING POEMS OR ODES
Director: Callum Rice
2015 / 11 min / United Kingdom
www.scottishdocinstitute.com/films/mining-poems-or-odes/
Robert, an ex-shipyard welder from Govan in Scotland, reflects on how his life experiences have influenced his new found compulsion to write.
YO: LET’S MAKE A BOOK OF THIS
Director: Kristina Budelis and Myles Kane
2013 / 7 min / United States
A few years ago, Yolanda Cuomo, a New York-based artist and graphic designer, learned that she had to vacate her Chelsea studio of twenty-five years. The studio, in an old carriage house in Manhattan, has been the site of artistic collaborations for decades, with artists and photographers from Richard Avedon to Laurie Simmons and Sylvia Plachy, and a team of designers, including Bonnie Briant and Kristi Norgaard.
THE 100 YEARS SHOW
Director: Alison Klayman
2015 / 29 min / United States
www.alisonklayman.com
Carmen Herrera is one of the oldest working artists today. She was a pioneering abstract painter in the ’40s and ’50s, but only recently found the recognition that eluded her for most of her career as she approaches her 100th birthday.
ON BLOOMING ART
Director: Cathryne Czubek
2014 / 6 min / United States
Multi-media artist ON Megumi Akiyoshi transforms the mundane of everyday life. Born in Japan and based in New York City, ON frequently brings her eclectic, and wearable, ON Gallery to the street to interact with the average passerby.
THE REINVENTION OF NORMAL
Director: Liam Saint-Pierre
2015 / 8 min / United Kingdom
http://www.liamsaintpierre.com/
The film follows Dominic Wilcox, an artist / inventor / designer, on his quest for new ideas….Taking the normal and turning it into something unique.
On Friday 31 January, the audience was taken on a cinematic journey of insights from Tibet, Japan, Romania, Afghanistan and the UAE during an evening of Shorts at the Frontline Club. The selection showed five very different but equally compelling short documentaries. This time the films provoked thoughts on the consequences of tourism on ancient traditions, the dedication of individuals who take on a community’s responsibility and the forming of different memories that, combined, create our history.
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Russel O. Bush’s film Vultures of Tibet was set in the striking Tibetan mountains, home to the monks who continue the ancient tradition of sky burials. The sacred practice offers bodies of the dead to the mountain’s vultures. With cameras at the read and hungry for a spectacle, a new phenomenon of tourists now preys on the burials. The unwelcome invasion of mainly Chinese tourists is depicted in the film as a direct threat to Tibetan culture. With reference to the tourists’ disrespect of the local dead, a monk reflected: “They think death only happens to others not themselves.” The voyeuristic banality of the tourists is in stark contrast to the pensive monks. Although another monk explains that the Chinese tourists are not conscious of their negative impact on their practice, the film painfully echoes wider Chinese–Tibetan tensions.
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The sanctity of identity was even more explicitly explored in the film Recollections by Nathanael Carton. After the 2011 tsunami in Japan, around 750,000 photographs were found severely damaged by the sea near the city of Yamamoto. This film documented a group of Japanese volunteers who repair and reconstruct these photos. When possible the photos are returned to their owners, reuniting them with their memories. One volunteer explained that the photographs act as “proof of their existence”. The photos evidently brought with them the pain of loss but importantly, in some cases, the trigger to move forward.
Following on from Recollections was Layla’s Melody by Jens Pedersen which also deals with family identity and looking to the future. Layla is an Afghan girl growing up in an orphanage. Despite the harsh Taliban stance on women playing musical instruments, she plays the drums and dreams of becoming a musician. Her story took an emotional turn when her mother comes for a rare visit and reassures Layla that she can stay in the orphanage away from the problems plaguing her family. The film was an intimate reminder of the ongoing fight for women’s emancipation in the country.
While the evening’s films dealt with some difficult subject matter they did not lack humorous moments. Feeding 500 by Rafed Al Harthi, follows Sediq, an Indian working in the UAE, who for 15 years has taken it upon himself to feed 500 of its stray cats. As the film demonstrated, this requires a daily routine taking up most of Sediq’s time and money. The underlying question was how his apparent duty to feed the hungry cats could be at the expense of seeing and providing for his family back in India. Nevertheless, Sediq’s jovial and unflinching efforts to feed his furry friends along with his ability to ignore the locals disdain had the audience laughing loudly.
The same can be said of the final film, Stremt 89 by Anda Puscas and Dragos Dulea. Taking us to Romania, the film captured the reflections of its rural village countrymen and women recounting their interpretations of what can only be described as a revolution of sorts. The anti-Communist revolution took place in Romania’s bigger cities in 1989 but the excitements failed to impact the small rural area of Stremt. Evidently this did not deter the local men, who eagerly jumped at the opportunity of change or counterchange (they would decide later). Their enthusiasm was fuelled, much to their wives’ concerns, with local wine and lots of it. Perhaps the only sane man explains how he managed to stop the men killing each other by stealing their bullets. The locals’ witty anecdotes painted a chaotic and honest picture. Some wise words filtered through as an old man declared that he was no longer sure what the fuss was about, saying that revolutions were merely “trading powers”.
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]]>VHS or Betamax? Is video rental a good idea? Should the public even be allowed to have physical access to films? On Tuesday 3 September, these were some of the era-defining issues raised at the Frontline Club’s screening of Rewind This!
Directed by Josh Johnson, Rewind This! beamed the audience into a time when the idea of the rewind button – or even having the ability to choose when to watch something at home – was a pioneering concept. Overcoming the initial fear and resistance from major film studios, the meteoric rise and eventual demise of the home video empire draws many parallels to the expanding internet video markets today; most notably in the success of your medium being defined by its relationship to the adult film industry. The idiosyncrasies of home video, from the intricacies of box cover art to sub-genres of cult horror movies – and the impact it had on a generation – is told by the passionate characters who are trying to save home video, and perhaps themselves, from obscurity.
Director Josh Johnson taking questions from the audience via Skype. Photo: George Symonds
Joining via Skype, director Johnson began the Q&A with an explanation of his motivations:
“I feel like the home video revolution is what changed my life more than anything else and really shaped the person that I am. When I was a child I was able to wander the aisles of the video store and imagine what might be contained in those boxes. And then I was also able to take things home – sacks of tapes – and then I was exposed to all the film history from a very young age. . . . So that was a big part of wanting to make the film, because that part of the story of the home video world hadn’t been told.
“And then the other aspect that was really appealing about it was the contemporary relevance, because there were so many thousands of titles that were at risk of being lost. So it didn’t feel like it would just be looking back, it would also be looking to the future.”
A central theme in the documentary was archiving and the potential loss of many films. Johnson was asked if there had been improvements in the archiving or digitising process of VHS tapes.
“What is happening,” he replied, “is that a lot of these collectors, a lot of these people who have access to material are aware that it’s very scarce and that they’re at risk of losing it, and they are starting to digitise and back up things. And you see a lot of file sharing sites on the web and other ways of sharing this content. So it’s legally questionable at this point but people are trying to do it. And I think what’s happening online right now, with the torrenting and file-sharing of a lot of these rare films that are only available on videotapes, is that they’re setting up a good model for what that system should look like once it becomes a more official thing.”
An audience member then asked for the director’s thoughts on the idea of ownership – or false ownership – with the development of internet. Johnson responded:
“I think the only risk is that people think everything is going to be made available to them and I think that’s probably not going to be the case. I think when a studio owns everything, and they are able to provide their entire catalogue, it really makes more sense for them to provide various segments of a catalogue at different times. And I don’t think everything will be widely available.”
“I think what you have now, with Netflix and other sites where they have them for a window of time, and then they go away and then they might come back a little later. But I think the idea of endless access to everything that’s ever been created is unrealistic. So for me, the value of physical media is that when something is released and I purchase it I can back it up. I can hold onto it and I have access to it when I want it. Whereas on the online space when everything goes completely digital or is hosted in the cloud or hosted elsewhere I don’t feel as confident that I’m going to have the level of access that I want.”
Following on, Johnson was asked if his comparison of physical video rentals and contemporary online video consumption was pre-planned. “That was definitely pre-planned,” said Johnson.
“We wanted to make something that was definitely motivated in part by nostalgia and would take people back to a time in their lives, or for a younger audience introduce them to a time that they didn’t live through or that they weren’t aware of. . . . But we also didn’t want to make a film that didn’t hold any contemporary relevance.
“What’s interesting about the current online distribution system is that it actually does seem to be doing what they were fearful of in the early video days, which is that people are going to be able to access so many things so conveniently and so inexpensively that they’re not as motivated to go and see movies in the theatre. So we are seeing that negative impact on the box office. . . . It’s essentially a new version of that same home video concept, but it actually is taking over and becoming the dominant way that people see films.”
In the words of a contemporary VHS enthusiast featured by Johnson:
“When you see a Be Kind Rewind sticker on it [a VHS cassette], there’s something deeply moving about that. It’s such a call to arms and a suggestion or imperative about the way to live your life. To be kind, and rewind. Go back, and hang on to those things that are important to you; and not let them disappear, and not let other people take them away from you. Find what’s important and preserve that – and help it to endure.”
Rewind This! was the last in a series of the Frontline Club’s summer screenings, exploring the role of technology in how we document our world.
Full details of upcoming screenings for Rewind This! in the UK and beyond can be found on the official website and on Twitter.
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Monday 18 March
On Monday, the UN Human Rights Council will formally consider a highly critical report on Israeli settler activities that was published at the end of January.
Meanwhile, in Yemen a national dialogue conference is scheduled to open to try resolve the deep tensions in the country, with a view to holding credible elections next February.
Iran’s nuclear programme will be discussed at a technical meeting of representatives from the p5+1 (E3+3) grouping in Istanbul. It follows talks last month in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
Finally, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen will hold his monthly press conference in Brussels at which the focus is expected to be Afghanistan and President Hamid Karzai’s recent inflammatory rhetoric.
Tuesday 19 March
Also Tuesday, incumbent governor of Japan’s central bank Masaaki Shirakawa will step down. He will be replaced on Wednesday by Haruhiko Kuroda, who is moving across from the Asian Development Bank. Kuroda has pushed for looser monetary policy in Japan.
In New York, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will host a UN Security Council debate on Afghanistan, in what is billed as the highlight of Russia’s presidency of the UNSC this month.
Wednesday 20 March
On Wednesday, US President Barack Obama will begin his first visit to Israel since taking office. The trip, which will also see him travel to the West Bank and Jordan, was nearly overshadowed by post-electoral wrangling as Netanyahu sought to form a coalition government.
In Japan, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida will deliver what is billed as a major foreign policy address. Observers will be particularly interested to see what Kishida has to say about relations with China, and the Senkaku/Diaoyu island dispute.
Finally, in Brussels EU High Representative Catherine Ashton will host another round of negotiations between Kosovo and Serbia.
Thursday 21 March
In Turkey, imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan is expected to declare a ceasefire between the PKK and Turkish government, timed to coincide with Nowruz.
Meanwhile, an immigration appeals tribunal will hold a bail hearing in the case of Jordanian radical cleric Abu Qatada, who was arrested earlier this month for breaching his bail conditions.
Friday 22 March
The oft-delayed posthumous trial of whistleblowing Russian lawyer Sergey Magnitsky is scheduled to resume, after it was delayed again on March 11.
Also Friday, the trial of so-called Devil’s Advocate lawyer Giovanni Di Stefano on fraud charges is expected to conclude. Di Stefano has previously represented figures including Gary Glitter, Saddam Hussein and Ian Brady.
Weekend
A final hearing in former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s appeal against his conviction on tax evasion charges is scheduled for Saturday, when a verdict may come. He has called for nationwide protests in piazzas against what he alleges is a politicised judicial process.
Once a year, the world’s leaders descend on New York for the UN’s blue ribbon event, the cumbersomely-titled UN General Assembly’s General Debate.
This year, the build-up has been dominated by the Palestinian Authority’s planned bid to become the 194th member of the UN, following South Sudan’s incorporation earlier in the year.
Notwithstanding any last minute deals, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will personally submit the application to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday, September 23, after Abbas has delivered his speech to assembled leaders.
Indeed, Friday’s session is set to be a cracker, since it also features Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s speech, in which he must surely address the issue. And yet while the Palestinian membership-issue is grabbing all the headlines, there’s plenty of other highlights.
Ahead of the formal UNGA opening today, there was a high-level meeting on Libya yesterday, the first since the UN formally recognised the Transitional National Council as the official representative of Libya last Friday.
US President Barack Obama met privately for the first time with TNC Chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil, and held separate summits with President Hamid Karzai before he returned to Aghanistan to join the mourning of the assassinated leader Burhanuddin Rabbani.
Tuesday also saw French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe host a ministerial-level meeting of the so-called Deauville Partnership, a G20-offshoot dedicated to supporting fledgling Arab democracies.
The Debate kicks off today with an address by the Brazilian President, the first for Dilma Rousseff since she took office in January and no doubt a welcome relief from domestic troubles.
A notable absence, though, is Russian leader Dmitry Mevedev, who has chosen to delegate responsibilities this year to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
In the afternoon South Africa’s Jacob Zuma will be speaking. On Thursday morning, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gives his traditionally polemical speech (who can forget last year, when he alluded to the 9/11 attacks being a conspiracy). British Prime Minister David Cameron also speaks that session.
Highlights from the afternoon session on Thursday include an inaugural address by newly-elected Peruvian President Ollanta Humala, an address from ageing despot Robert Mugabe, and also remarks from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose star is in the ascendancy amid Turkey’s role in the Arab Spring.
On the sidelines that day, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is hosting a UN High-Level Meeting on Nuclear Safety and Security, likely to focus significantly on lessons to be learned from the crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant back in March. Friday, as we’ve seen, is all about the Palestinian-membership issue.
But in the morning there is also a first-time address from new Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda , who is expected to put in appearance also at the nuclear safety meeting. That afternoon South Sudanese President Salva Kiir – who meets one on one with President Obama earlier in the week – will give his country’s address for the first time since it became member number 193 last July
Sadly, one of the traditionally more entertaining speakers – Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez – is not expected to make the journey to New York this time, as he is recovering from a fourth round of chemotherapy for cancer discovered earlier in the year.
]]>By Allan Williams
Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega has until Monday to appeal against his extradition to Panama. The 77-year-old is currently serving a prison sentence in France after being convicted of money laundering in July 2010.
On Tuesday attention turns to Japan when the Parliament elects its sixth Prime Minister in five years. Incumbent Naoto Kan announced he was stepping down over plummeting approval ratings, following the earthquake and tsunami earlier this year.
Wednesday sees Canada release its second quarter GDP figures. Fears of the economy contracting grew following an announcement earlier this month that manufacturing sales declined 1.5per cent in June, to their lowest level since November 2010.
Also on Wednesday South African President Jacob Zuma makes a state visit to Norway at the invitation of King Harald V. The two-day trip includes a wreath-laying ceremony at the National Monument and a meeting with Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.
In the UK, on Thursday, repatriations of deceased British troops move from RAF Lyneham to RAF Brize Norton. RAF Lyneham and the parade through the nearby town of Wootton Bassett have made the headlines with the dignified way locals have mourned the fallen.
In Thailand that same day, Chiranuch Premchaiporn, editor of the liberal news website Prachatai, has her trial for lese majeste offences recommence. It is alleged that Premchaiporn failed to screen comments on her website that were critical of the Thai royal family, and if convicted faces up to 20 years in prison.
Attention turns stateside on Friday, when a US district court decides whether to order a retrial of former baseball star Roger Clemens, who was accused of lying to Congress in 2008 when he denied using anabolic steroids. The original trial was declared a mistrial on 14 July.
In London on Saturday the far-right English Defence League are expected to demonstrate in the borough of Tower Hamlets, against what it sees as militant Islam. The march is expected to be banned by the Home Secretary, but the action group Unite Against Fascism has arranged a counter-protest against the EDL.
On Sunday the UN Special Representative on Somalia Augustine Mahiga convenes a conference in the east African nation to provide clear timelines and benchmarks for the Transitional Federal Institutions.
And in Germany there’s a test for Chancellor Merkel’s coalition when state elections take place in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, with local elections coming under increasing scrutiny as a gauge of popularity for Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union.
]]>Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak returns to court on Monday. Along with his sons Alaa and Gamal he appears charged with premeditated murder in connection with the deaths of protesters during the 25 January revolution.
Monday also sees the publication of Japan’s Q2 stats. The country’s GDP shrank 3.7 per cent in Q1, largely attributed to the 11 March disasters, and a similar decline is expected as the country copes with power shortages following the nuclear crisis.
It’s the turn of Europe to brace itself for GDP figures on Tuesday, with the official publication of the euro zone GDP figures. Publication comes amid recent fears growing over the global economy and the recent agreement to give Greece a second bailout.
Eyes are drawn to the International Criminal Court on Wednesday, as former UN employee Callixte Mbarushimana appears charged with five counts of crimes against humanity in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2009. Mbarushimana is also believed to have been involved in the Rwandan genocide, but has never been charged over the atrocities.
Angola also hosts a summit of the Southern African Development Community in Luanda on Wednesday. The two-day affair is expected to focus on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his refusal to fully implement the Global Political Agreement, as well as the recent fuel protests in Malawi.
Pope Benedict XVI makes an apostolic journey to Madrid on Thursday, to attend a gathering of Catholic youth to mark World Youth Day. Visit includes a Holy Mass at Cuatro Vientos Airport on 21 August.
In the UK, thousands of students learn what their future holds when A Level results are published on Thursday, and students scramble for (often) oversubscribed university places.
Friday sees the last day in office for Romanian Health Minister Attila Cseke, who tendered his resignation earlier this month following a dispute over funds for his brief. Under Romanian law Cseke had to continue his post for 15 days at a maximum until Prime Minister Emil Boc nominated a successor.
On Saturday the UN Panel of inquiry, led by former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer, is expected to release its report. The report has been delayed several times, most recently from 27 July, and could well be postponed again.
The 2011 Homeless World Cup begins on Sunday, giving homeless and socially marginalised players from across the world the opportunity to represent their country at the beautiful game.
On Sunday a national memorial service takes place in Norway, commemorating the 77 people who were killed in the 22 July Oslo bombing and Utoya shootings. Ceremony takes place in Oslo Spektrum and was announced by Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg ‘to take care of each other and show compassion’.
]]>The Japan we know from films and TV is one of tradition, high technology and pop culture. But as with every nation, something more sinister lies beneath the bright lights of Sony and Nintendo.
Jake Adelstein, author of Tokyo Vice, a memoir of his time as an investigative crime reporter in Tokyo, is the only American reporter to be admitted to the Tokyo Metropolitan Press Club and writes of a country that where organised Yakuza crime gangs are rampant.
But is this the real Japan? With an expert panel including Jake Adelstein, Peter Hill author of The Japanese Mafia: Yakuza, Law, and the State and Satoshi Hashimoto, bureau chief & European editor Asahi Shimbun (Japanese daily newspaper) we’ll investigate the problem of organised crime in Japan and cast a light on the media’s reporting of it.
Chaired by William Horsley, BBC Tokyo correspondent from 1983-1990.
Pic credit: Colodio
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