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CINEMA OF ACTUALITY: Japanese Avant-Garde Filmmaking in the Season of Image Politics. Asia-Pacific: Culture, Politics, and Society. By Yuriko Furuhata. Durham: Duke University Press, 2013. ix, 266 pp. (Illus.) US$24.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-8223-5504-6
Yuriko Furuhata's new book on political filmmaking in 1960s Japan adds significant depth, nuance and context to a topic that has, for good reason, long captivated an audience of cinephiles, activists and researchers. She describes this project as a media history of cinema's response to journalism's shift to television, one that draws on film studies, media studies, cultural studies and art history to craft an understanding of the discourses on "actuality" (akucliuaritii) and the "image" (eizo). I would argue it to be more as well-this book is ultimately a genealogy of the cultural politics of radical Japanese filmmaking historicized within die global, mediatized "Long Sixties."
Cinema of Actuality is organized into five provocative chapters on die following issues: intermedia experimentation, die event-nature of cinema, remediation of journalism, die "landscape" discourse (fukeiron), and militant cinema against television. The filmmakers who figure prominently here include Oshima Nagisa, Matsumoto Toshio, Adachi Masao and Wakamatsu Koji, but equal treatment is given to major players in die creation of a rigorous and politicalized film discourse at die time-Matsuda Masao, Nakahira Takuma and Hariu Ichiro-as well as to an earlier generation of intellectuals with whom these figures engaged, such as art critic Hanada Kiyoteru or die materialist philosopher Tosaka Jun. These foundational tiiinkers were actively responding to international...