The Center for Japanese Studies and the Michigan Theater Present
Kuro: The The Dark Edge of Japanese Filmmaking (Film Series)
Monday, January 30, 2017 - Monday, March 20, 2017
Michigan Theater
All films begin at 7:00 p.m.
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The 10-week series brings the genre of Noir and its underworld of crime and suspense through the lens of some of Japan’s most prolific filmmakers who have delivered what we now consider classics to the silver screen. Select films will be introduced by professors from CJS and Screen Arts & Cultures, giving viewers insight into the captivating world of Japanese intrigue, yakuza, revenge and redemption.
The next film in the series, screening on January 30, 2017, is Zero Focus. In director Yoshitaro Nomura’s Hitchcockian adaptation of Seicho Matsumoto’s popular Japanese mystery novel, a woman is forced to play detective in a frantic, winding, and harrowing search for her missing husband. But, when the clues start to come together, the man she married may not be who he seems. Her desperate investigation sets off a chain of events that finds her final fate increasingly grim.
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Ineko Arima and Hizuru Takachiho in Zero no shôten (1961) Photo from IMDb
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Additional support will be provided by Nagomi Sushi Downtown who will host monthly menu samplings on-site and advertise additional offers in the weeks ahead to help support the series.
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Lecture and Film Screening
Lecture: Harlan Lebo and Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker's Journey
Monday, January 30, 2017
Hatcher Graduate Library Gallery, 5:00 p.m.
Screening of Citizen Kane
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Angell Hall, Auditorium A, 4:00 p.m.
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In conjunction with the library’s exhibition It’s Still Terrific: CITIZEN KANE at 75, currently on display through February 5, 2017, in the Audubon Room, author Harlan Lebo will present an historical overview of the film’s production, history and cultural significance in his
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lecture Harlan Lebo and Citizen Kane: A FIlmmaker's Journey. Using previously unpublished materials from studio files and the Hearst organization, Lebo’s recently published book charts the fascinating tale of how a then twenty-three-year-old Orson Welles reinvigorated Hollywood but suffered for it the rest of his life.
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(Orson Welles, 1941, 120 min.)
Author Harlan Lebo will introduce the film and take questions following the screening of Orson Welles’s feature film debut, Citizen Kane. Often cited as the greatest film ever made, the film chronicles through flashbacks the rise and eventual fall of Charles Foster Kane, an enigmatic newspaper tycoon.
This event is sponsored by the Special Collections Library, U-M Library, and the Department of Screen Arts & Cultures.
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GRADUATE STUDENT SPOTLIGHT: VINCENT LONGO
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Now a second-year PhD student in the SAC Department, Vincent Longo has recently undertaken several projects that access the pedagogical applications of digital humanities projects. In collaboration with Associate Professor Solomon, he reconceptualized the large
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undergraduate lecture course, SAC 236, to include audiovisual essays instead of written ones. By pairing technical training in basic film editing with lessons in film analysis and rhetorical communication, Vincent hopes the class is an effective introduction to both the film studies and production components of the SAC major.
Vincent is also a mentoring four UROP students, teaching them skills needed to conduct primary source research while building annotated digital publication of Orson Welles’s unproduced adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness. The project explores the research departments of Hollywood studios and, specifically, the research on fascism, colonialism, and phrenology that Welles requested from RKO in 1939.
As an Engagement Fellow at the University of Michigan Library working under Film Studies Field Librarian Phil Hallman, Vincent is designing an online learning platform where secondary and higher-education teachers can access pre-made interactive assignments and lesson plans that utilize a customized digital archive, which the team is creating using over one-thousand fan letters from 1938 from the Special Collections Library here at the University of Michigan.
Finally, Vincent has organized a conference entitled, “The Audiovisual Essay and the Digital Humanities,” taking place on March 31, 2017. The conference will act as a critical introduction to the audiovisual essay that seeks to assess its scholarly and pedagogical applications, while bringing cinema and media scholars who create audiovisual essays into conversation with digital humanists working in a range of disciplines at the University of Michigan.
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