8 September 2012

Kanazawa Film Festival 2012


If the world ends this year, it won't be because of the whole "2012: End of Days" thing. It will have nothing to do with the Mayan calendar, the Aztecs, Egyptians or any other ancient mystical prophecies. It will be because of the 2012 Kanazawa Film Festival.

The program was released about a month ago, and it is pretty unbelievable. Last year's festival theme was Filmageddon, and showcased a formidable line up of horror, crime and war oriented films from all over the world. This year the theme is Eros. A new website (it's pink, of course) has been launched, and the line up is absolutely overflowing with erotica, in what promises to be the most outrageous and unashamed celebration of trash ever publicly held.

The website has split the films into specific categories/genres including but certainly not limited to "Horror Queen" "Way of Love" and "Abnormal" with Paul Verhoeven's big budget sleaze-fest Showgirls set for the free outdoor opening night screening (how is this even allowed??). The centrepiece of the program is definitely the Christina Lindberg retrospective. A cult figure of 1970s sexploitation cinema, it looks as though every film she starred in from that era will be included. From the erotic films of her Swedish homeland to the incredibly nasty Thriller: A Cruel Picture and also her brief foray into Japanese sexploitation cinema with Sex & Fury. Lindberg's naked figure circa 1970 is everywhere, adorning the official program, website, tickets AND T-shirts! But if that wasn't enough, she will also be visiting the festival as a guest! Wow.

Add to this Sadao Nakajima, a director known for his Yakuza films from the 60s and 70s, who will also be visiting, and you have a festival that Tarantino would absolutely lose his lunch over. Facebook updates showing local business owners clutching the program and offering recommendations are making it clear that the town is in a buzz of anticipation for the festival, which is really quite fascinating, given the relatively small size of Kanazawa versus the explicit content of the films scheduled for screening. It runs for one week from September 14 to 21. Unfortunately I will not be attending due to uni (the workload and the not having money thing), but it looks like it's going to be an absolute riot.

check out the website at http://www.eiganokai.com/event/filmfes2012/index.html
and on facebook http://www.facebook.com/eiganokai 

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