Choosing Your Own Adventures is FUN!

September 11, 2005 3:49 PM

Toshio Matsumoto's (J) first film (E), Ginrin (or "Silver Ring"), once believed lost has been found! Ginrin was an English Language, "relatively avant garde" PR film that had perhaps the first use of Musique Concrete in a Japanese film -- in this case, the first score by Toru Takemitsu. The film was discovered to be lost (as a result of the firm it was made for going under) in the 1980s when it was desired for a retrospective on the 1950's Japanese Avant-Garde at the Pompidou Center. [More Inside]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me (4 comments total)

Matsumoto's most famous film, however, was Bara no soretsu, a transsexual version of Oedipus Rex that was very, very influential on Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, and is considered to be the first Japanese film to deal with Gay Culture. Unfortunately, none of Matsumoto's films are available on DVD in the US, although a box-set of four of his features is available in Japan, as is a recently-released box set of shorts (E). Very little information about Toshio Matsumoto is available in English, sadly, and as far as I know, no non-Japanese DVD releases are available (though 3 of the 4 films in the Features Box carry subtitles, including Bara no soretsu). In my dreams, the Criterion Collection will pick up these two box sets for release... that would truly make me the happiest boy in the whole USA.
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 3:53 PM on September 11, 2005

Nice post!! Fantastic.
posted by dougunderscorenelso at 5:15 PM on September 11, 2005

There's some downloads of Japanese avant-garde music/musique concrete, including works by Takemitsu, here.
posted by carter at 8:52 PM on September 11, 2005

Awesome, thanks! I'm going to check that out, particularly since I have a tendency to eat that stuff up with a spoon.
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 10:19 PM on September 11, 2005