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January 2000, Week 4

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Subject:
From:
Dennis P Bingham <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sat, 22 Jan 2000 08:04:06 -0500
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TEXT/PLAIN
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TEXT/PLAIN (64 lines)
Glenda Jackson appears to have given up acting, at least for now, to
devote herself to British politics.

Dennis Bingham



On Sat, 22 Jan 2000, Abe' Mark Nornes wrote:

> I have been asking the following question of everyone I know, and so far no
> one has been able to come up with any names:
>
> ****Are there any political filmmakers who have given up their art to
> dedicate themselves completely to politics?
>
> I have two names: Ronald Reagan and Adachi Masao.
>
> Reagan's no so interesting, since his own filmmaking was 1) as an actor and
> 2) rarely overtly political, except for perhaps the war era and his campaign
> tv commercials.
>
> Adachi is a fascinating figure. He to filmmaking through an experimental
> film group at a Japanese university, and then got involved in highly
> political soft-core pink films with Wakamatsu Koji in the 1960s. As long as
> there was amble sex, they could do anything in these films...high school
> student guerrillas, Frankenstein gynecologists creating a new humanity, etc.
> etc. He lead the movement to get Suzuki Seijun's job reinstated when Suzuki
> was fired from Nikkatsu. He wrote scripts for Oshima Nagisa, and appeared as
> an actor in Oshima's Death by Hanging. Adachi also wrote some of the more
> radical film criticism and theory in the early 1970s, when he became
> interested in the Red Army. After making a film with Wakamatsu on the
> Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Beirut in 1972, and became
> increasingly radical. He finally joined the Red Army around 1974 and
> disappeared from Japan at the height of his career. He remained a legendary
> figure until today, as no one knew his whereabouts until he was arrested
> with 4 other Red Army members in Beirut last year, and he sits in a Beirut
> prison as the Japanese government presses for extradition.
>
> Everyone has assumed that Adachi's decision to become a terrorist and give
> up filmmaking completely meant that he decided----at that interesting moment
> in the early 1970s when so much was changing----art and politics don't mix.
> That politically engaged filmmaking does not change the world, so the only
> choice is violence.
>
> Are there any other filmmakers who have left their art for politics, who put
> down their camera and picked up a gun?
>
> (I ask because I'm doing an interview-by-letter with him while he's in
> prison...)
>
> Markus
>
> A.M. Nornes
> University of Michigan
>
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