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January 2000, Week 4

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Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
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Dennis P Bingham <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sat, 22 Jan 2000 08:04:06 -0500
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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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