Animating Reality: The Film Theory of Imamura Taihei

Where: 202 Ford Alumni Center

The Yoko McClain Lecture Series in Japanese Studies Presents,

"Animating Reality: The Film Theory of Imamura Taihei"

 

Imamura Taihei has been called Japan's only real film theorist. Active from the 1930s to the 1960s, Imamura was known for a seemingly paradoxical advocacy of both documentary realism as the essence of motion pictures and the animated film as a new form of cinema. In this talk, Aaron Gerow will unpack this apparent contradiction by locating Imamura in contemporary efforts to conceptualize the place of cinema in the everyday, as well as by situating his theoretical writings in the complex history of Japanese film theory, itself fractured by the contradictory place of prewar Japanese thought in the world system.

Aaron Gerow is professor of film studies and East Asian languages and literatures at Yale University and has published widely on a variety of topics in Japanese file and popular culture.

This lecture series is presented by the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies.