A T G
- A fragment of the film history of the heretics
Text / Kelp Island
Edited / White Gull Desert Island
"Unconsciously, the entire film industry seems to be ATG."
INTERVIEWER Tadao Sato"
A.T.G
This rugged and mysterious three-word LOGO, designed by Itami Thirteen, often appears coldly in Japanese film titles familiar to art film fans. It does not have the "standard Japanese beauty" of the Shochiku and Toho logos, and appears to be obedient, sharp and modern, just as it has left its place in the history of Japanese post-war cinema.
ATG, whose full name is Art Theatre Guild, is often translated as "Japanese Art Theater Guild" in the history of cinema in the Chinese world, and is a film distribution and production company with its own cinema line. In the 1960s and 1980s, ATG took the lead in introducing a large number of high-quality European art films to Japan, which was entering a period of high economic development, and later cultivated a number of local art films to contribute a distinctive avant-garde atmosphere to the Japanese film scene.
It only existed for 20 years, but to this day, some people call the unclassified heretical experimental works "very ATG", which shows how it cannot be abandoned when discussing the development of Japanese art cinema.
The birth of ATG
1. The background of the theater competition
The 1950s were too far away, but the absolute glory of the Japanese film industry was really that far away.
In Japan, which has just ended with the GHQ (Commander-in-Chief of allied forces in Japan), film production is no longer completely controlled and censored by the US military's "democratic film policy", and the five major film companies have begun to explore their own production ambitions. Both the number of productions and the number of movies watched have shaped the golden decade of the studio era, and it is also the golden decade of the mainstream cinema line in Japan.
In 1951, "Rashomon" won a grand prize in Venice as a starting point, and then Kenji Mizoguchi won the golden lion for three consecutive years with "Nishizuru Generation Girl", "Rain Moon Story" and "Mountain Pepper Doctor". The international status of "Japanese style" greatly stimulated the enthusiasm of the people for film, and some subjects that could not be filmed during the occupation period also appeared on the screen. The five major film companies (Shochiku, Toho, Daiei, Toei, Andhino) mobilize signed directors and star actors to find their own genre films in the newly arrived free atmosphere. [Nichiho] is a Japanese-style Western and action film, [Toho] is a historical drama and monster movie ([New Toho] split by the "Redness Problem" is a shiki movie and a spectacular historical drama), [Shochiku] is a small citizen romance, [Toei] is a historical drama, [Daiei] is an actress-centered romance and occasional literary film - in short, the closed loop of film production and consumption is a boom.
As the old saying goes, in 1958, when it peaked, 504 local films (plus more than 100 foreign films) were released, and the audience was 1,127,452 million people in the whole year, with an average of 12.3 movies per person per year.
All of these local works that have been released are the works of major studios. Because the model of studio survival at that time was to integrate production, distribution, and screening. He produces a large number of films, releases them in theaters to which he belongs, and runs theater distributions to screening companies across the country outside his own theaters. Large companies are not allowed to release works from other companies in theaters with which they have signed contracts, but they are also obliged to provide enough films to avoid gaps in theaters. Only large companies have this kind of control, and small companies without distribution ability can only produce and then buy through large companies. But the chance of being purchased is actually very small, because almost all the national theaters are planned under the umbrella of various studios, and there is no free time to release independent works that do not necessarily make money.
It can be said that in the 1950s, independent film companies without contract theaters in their hands could not show themselves in the market. The way they can find it is to send it directly to the foreign exhibition and then expect to sell the foreign copyright.
But by the 1960s, things had changed completely differently.
Television broadcasting began in 1953, in 1958 the number of viewership contracts was 1.5568 million units, and in 1963 it directly doubled to 15.15 million units. In contrast, the number of moviegoers fell to half of what it had been before — 511.12 million. Large production companies cannot maintain their original huge volume under such an industrial ecology.
But in turn, the film industry itself has undergone interesting changes in such a big environment.
1. Some drama genre films suitable for all ages are directly replaced by television at home, especially the market for housewives and children's drama films is shrinking, which means that movies no longer need to take care of the national common sense of the greatest common denominator. In this way, the film has gradually freed up a space that can be provided for the artistic exploration of a small number of people from the most convenient entertainment for the whole people, and the film field increasingly allows creators to make bold thematic breakthroughs and aesthetic attempts.
2. The reality that big studios began to sell their own cinemas to maintain their operations, and independent studios finally found opportunities to appear in the "decay" of movies.
Assistant directors who could not find their way out of the studio mentoring system simply set up their own production companies, mature directors who had already debuted left in anger because of the aesthetic differences between themselves and the studio, and other completely amateur filmmakers dared to set up studios to call themselves directors without funds or teams, which was unimaginable in that fiery studio era.
2. Formally established in the opportunity
But even under the condition that the ecology controlled by this giant has been loosened, ATG, the "driving force of art films", is still extremely special among a number of independent companies.
From the very beginning, it knew very keenly that what it wanted to build was first and foremost a distribution and screening system, to provide something different from the films that had been appreciated by the whole people in the past. This clarity stems from the backbone that propelled it to take shape, as well as from its original purpose.
AtG's predecessor can be traced back to Cinema 57, a young director creative group founded in 1957. At that time, the members included Hiroshi Kawahara, Zenzo Matsuyama, Yuhijin, Yoshiro Kawazu, etc., but these creators were not often referred to as feature film directors, but almost all of them were characters with deep roots in documentaries. Hahito is an important role in the creation of documentaries at Iwanami Shoten, and his 1954 release of "Children in the Classroom" directly changed the mode of post-war documentary creation, when he completely eliminated the usual means of inserting performative scenes in documentaries due to the limitations of equipment and shooting conditions, and naturally recorded the lives of students in the classroom. Before him, many people thought that "complete recording" of the room was impossible because of problems such as light, machine size, and the spirit of the subject. Cinema 57 released a semi-documentary experimental film, Tokyo 1958, in 1958, the result of a panelist's exploration of the fusion of documentary and feature films. Later, Yu Renjin filmed the more mature "Bad Boy" (1960) in the same way, which became a masterpiece with the theoretical value of cinema. This group, with a very high spirit of exploration, has always established the "Art Film Promotion Movement Association" with the goal of establishing a non-commercial art cinema in Japan.
This attitude and the talent of the group members attracted the attention of Kazuko Kawakita, Vice President of Higashiwa. Kazuko's husband was an important figure in the introduction of European films before the war, and the Kitagawa couple, who knew how to link them very well, had always wanted to restart the business of European art films in Japan's peacetime era. Faced with the situation that there were no ready-made theaters, they persuaded Toho's vice president, Mori Iwao, to join in. In addition to being Vice President of Toho, Mori was one of the first critics to study American films, writing screenplays and working as producers. Moriwa then invited his friend, Ioseki Taneo, president of Miwa Konyo, to join him.
These three filmmakers, who have both the financial resources and the professional appreciation, make ATG possible. At the direction of Mori Iwao, Toho Pictures contributed 6 million yuan and provided 5 cinemas (Tokyo Japanese Opera Culture, Nagoya Mingbao Culture, Osaka Kitano Cinema, Fukuoka Toho Famous Painting Block, Sapporo Koraku Culture); Yoshio Ioseki's Miwa Konoe provided 1 million yuan in funds and Shinjuku Cultural Theater; the original strong promoters, Kawakita and his wife deliberately wanted to maintain an independent financial relationship between ATG and Towa without direct funding, but provided a ration share and royalties for the initial introduction of ATG. In addition to the existing 6 theaters, Jiangdong Lotte, OS Xingxing, テアトル興行 also provided 1 million yuan of funds and several theaters respectively.
Unlike many of the "independent film companies" that were established at that time (such as Kaneto Shindo's "Modern Film Society" and Nagisa Oshima's "Creation Society"), ATG first wanted to distribute and screen art films, and did not think much about the production step. But in this reallocation of cinema resources caused by the crisis of the film industry, ATG is undoubtedly extremely clever.
In 1961, ATG, with a capital of 10 million yuan, 20 franchised cinemas across the country was officially established. On April 20, the opening ceremony of three theaters in Tokyo: the Japanese Drama Culture Theater, the Korakuen Art Theatre, and the Shinjuku Culture Theater took the lead in opening the screening, and atg's 30 years of prosperity set sail.
Development of ATG
1. Introduce foreign art films
The development of ATG is generally recognized to be divided into three stages. The strategies of these three stages are different, and the faces are different. Of course, it is inevitable that there are also their own ups and downs and decays.
During the first development period (1961-1967), ATG introduced more than 50 foreign language films. We can often capture the stories of top artists such as Ryuichi Sakamoto and Tadao Ando watching European New Wave films in ATG theaters, and the impact it brought to Japan's post-war culture radiated from movies as a weapon.
ATG's distribution process is strict, and the decision to introduce a foreign film must pass the review of a professional "consultant meeting". The advisory board consisted of 15 film critics, directors, and screenwriters, led by Mrs. Kawakita, and at then ATG President Nao Inoseki had the final say. The selection range of the "committee" is roughly divided into 4 categories:
1. Works that have been produced since the late 1940s, but have not yet been fully introduced to Japan.
2. Works that were imported to Japan, but were not officially introduced for release.
3. Works that were introduced but not released in the same year.
4. Works that have been introduced and released in the past, but everyone hopes to enjoy them in theaters again.
The entire screening process strives to be fair, and tries to avoid the filmmakers from joining in and stirring up the original objective atmosphere.
The proportion of the film is modeled after the French AFCAA (Art Experimental Cinema) organization. Specific benchmarks are documented:
1. Classic old films with artistic or historical interest, not more than 50% of the total.
2. No more than 20% of new works that can meet the tastes of film critics and general audiences and have made significant contributions to the art of film shall not exceed 25% of the total.
3. Very distinctive amateur movies, not more than 10% of the total.
In addition to several major theaters, chains and franchised theaters, in the general direction of adhering to ATG's selection standards and principles (can not release films that insult the title of "art films"), are also given the freedom to arrange their own films according to the actual local audience.
The starting point of this introduction was Polish director Jerzi Kavalerovich's Sister Joanna (1961), which is still bold today. With this as a starting point, ATG's tentacles not only extended to the hinterland of the New Wave of European cinema to introduce the works of masters such as Godard, Fellini and Truffaut, but also did not miss important figures such as Bergman, Jean Cocteau, Renato Castellani, Alf Sjøborg, Vittorio de Sika, Agnès Varda and so on.
In addition, what is more precious is that in the form of the Cold War, ATG not only introduced European art films as capitalist worlds, but also set its sights on the films of third world countries that were forced into great power competition. At that time, they brought film works from India and Brazil to Japanese audiences. This approach is even more significant for Japan occupied by the United States, and it is undeniable that the ATG responded to the clamor of the Japanese New Left throughout the 1960s.
In addition to the large-scale introduction of foreign art films, ATG also tried to release the works of several local directors in its first stage. In addition to Hiroshi Kawahara's Trap (1962), Hahihito's She and Them (1963), and Kanehito Shindo (1962), which has been producing films for his independent film company, another film worth noting is the only work directed by writer Yukio Mishima (1965). The film is based on Mishima's novel of the same name and starred himself, and was entirely a preview of his self-defense in the Self-Defense Forces four years later. The highly artificial scenes and performances of this work, as well as the experimental image style and soundtrack arrangement, greatly stimulated the film production after ATG. Coupled with Mishima's own influence in the field of culture and theater, the release of this film at atatG Main Hall "Shinjuku Cultural Theater" directly enhanced ATG's public influence.
ATG has a rule that even a small number of viewers must be turned on, and regardless of attendance, the film must be full for at least a month once it is released. It sounds like a month now, but in the early 1960s, the launch time for new commercial theater films was basically just a week.
In its first stage, ATG relied on its own theatrical network to support art films very firmly, bringing a wave of "writer's films" from Europe, which greatly stimulated the production thinking of Japanese films.
2. 10 million yen movie
From 1967 to 1979, it was regarded as the second stage of ATG's development, that is, the period of reduced introduction, and the production and distribution of Japanese directors' works were concentrated at a budget of 10 million yen per film.
At this stage, ATG's path of choosing a co-director is also different.
The first is to become famous in the "five-society system", highlighting the characteristics of "author films" in the 60s, but many of them can't create at will in the film company where they are and start their own studios. The most representative is the closeness of Nagisa Oshima, Masahiro Shinoda, and Shigeki Yoshida, who also came out of Shochiku. All three debuted as stars of hope in Shochiku as a new wave strategy when they were young, and almost at the same time left the studio to set up their own independent film company because Shochiku repossessed the art film strategy. Among them, the greatest significance to ATG is Nagisa Oshima, and for Nagisa Oshima, ATG has also awakened another starting point for his career.
In 1958, Nagisa Oshima broke away from Shochiku Andewa and later established the "Creation Society", but fell into the dilemma of not having the funds to shoot feature films, so he used his extremely limited budget to make a short film "The Diary of Lee Hok-fuk" using the photos he took during his trip to Korea. The curator of the ATG Shinjuku Bunka Theater agreed to let the film be released and released on the condition that Nagisa Oshima must give a speech every time, and the result was a good box office in one month. Inspired by this, Nagisa Oshima decided to produce "cheap works" with tight funds in exchange for a one-month screening period to keep the budget. Under this strategy, Nagisa Oshima produced the manga film Ninja Martial Arts Account (1967), and co-sponsored by ATG, Hanged Death (1968), Diary of a Thief in Shinjuku (1969), Shonen (1969), Secret Story of the Tokyo War (1970), Ritual (1971), and Sister Natsu (1972).
Masahiro Shinoda established the "Performance Society" and launched "Love Death Skynet Island" and "Beimihu" with the help of ATG's funds. The former uses ingenious art techniques and sets to change the gorgeous restorative scene arrangement of the film adapted from the general pure glass drama, replaced by an unrealistic sense of dreaminess, and directly substitutes the man in black in the pure glass into the movie, which is surprising. "Beimihu" creatively rewrites japan's classical mythology, providing new possibilities for historical drama. Yoshida Shigeki's "Modern Film Society" produced "Lust and Torture" because the budget was too high FORG to afford, but helped him release the film. But money was invested in martial law, which later represented the Events of Kita Yihui and 2/26.
Undoubtedly, several big directors have made extremely bold and sharp works with visual styles here, and ATG has participated in the exploration of art films by these directors with its own temperament.
Another way for ATG to produce and distribute Local Japanese art films is to recruit creators from other fields and make their debut films at ATG. Toshio Matsumoto, from the documentary field, made one of the most important films of the entire 1960s, The Funeral of the Rose, an anti-Oedipal story that confronts the intricate interweaving of the shinjuku subculture and the postwar patriarchal and gender politics, and many later studies have examined the relationship between his visual language and Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange.
Toyoichi, who also belongs to the documentary field, took over shuji Terayama's script and made "The Third Baseman", and the scenery seen by hopeless young people on the bus became a classic scenery on the screen in the 60s. At ATG, Shoio Masuji, who is familiar with children's monster movies, collaborated on the trilogy of Mandala, Impermanence, and Early Dreams with Osamu Oshima's imperial screenwriter Shuro Ishido. This series of works creates a stagnant, dark and back-to-back erotic world, like a Japanese reproduction of the aesthetics of the Marquis of Sade.
Shuji Terayama, who came from the theater world, finally tried true feature film creation after the script, and the production team under the "Human Flight Plane" left three important works: "Throw Away the Books and Go to the Street", "Die in the Garden" and "Goodbye Box Boat". Years later, researchers are still relishing the impact of his cold East Japanese aesthetics on the metropolis of Tokyo. Dropping out of school from a remote location and coming to Tokyo, Takaji Wakamatsu, who offered a completely topical erotic film and a left-wing perspective, expanded the combination of politics and sex together with Adachi Masao.
At that time, the budget for a regular feature film was generally 40 to 50 million yen. AtG, on the other hand, created its own golden age with a plan of 10 million yen. In 1968 and 1969, the probability of ATG films being selected as the "Top Ten Of the Ten" was 70%, while the entire golden decade was 40%. This is very staggering data. The 10 million yen brought to ATG, in addition to the perverse masterpieces, there is also a cultural circle that absorbs avant-garde newcomers from all walks of life like a sponge. Because the funds cannot cover the salaries of more mature professional filmmakers, the "friends of friends" who have just emerged in various fields have been automatically networked into the experimental field of this movie, making the ATG family more and more rich and large.
3. The true era of independence
1979-1992 was ATG's last good years, and after entering the 1970s, it began to show a trend of decline.
As early as 1972, ATG accumulated a deficit of 20 million yen due to the large number of films produced, and the contract film museum began to decrease. In 1974, the "Shinjuku Cultural Theater" was recycled by Toho, and in 1981, even the "Japanese Drama Culture" was lost, leaving only "Yuraku Cinema" to support it. In 1981, President Yukio Inoseki resigned and Shiro Sasaki, president of the Video Center in Tokyo, took over, ushering in a new era.
At this stage, ATG has completely become the entrance to the stage for the younger generation of creators.
The beginning of the change can be traced back to the time when the name Tetsusuke Taga began to serve as an important producer. The standard-bearer, who was originally the editor of the magazine and had a lot of experience in film promotion, noticed two things: the original ATG authors had begun to enter the stage of seeking large-scale productions, hoping to achieve their own feature film pursuits on more relaxed terms; and the more financial production companies began to smell the huge value generated by the art films represented by ATG, and the entire film field developed in a more artistic direction, as Tadao Sato said, "Unconsciously, the entire film industry has been ATG." ”
Under such changes, the producer proposed a strategy for providing young assistant directors with the possibility of filming, making works that fully reflect the atmosphere of youth in the new era.
It was at this opportunity that Kazuhiko Hasegawa, assistant director of Tatsumi Shindai, launched the important work "Youth Killer". The film, as its debut film, won the first place in the film newspaper of that year, proving the feasibility of this route. Since then, postwar students born in the war, led by Kazuhiko Hasegawa, have begun to really take over the reinvention. Shinji Sagami (who made Typhoon Club at ATG and became a classic youth film of a generation) even said that "Kazuhiko Hasegawa ushered in the era of real restless cinema", after which he and Ishii Takeshi, who also launched works at ATG, formed ディレクターズ・カンパニー, which had a huge influence on punk films in the 1980s.
In the field of pink films, Kazuyuki Wellbore and his assistant Nishioka Peck also created the youth film "Young Empire" (1981). Takahashi also filmed "Tattoo Snake" with the blessing of Nishioka's screenwriter. Yoshitaro Negishi used "Far Thunder" to show the transformation period of cities and villages in the context of Tuandi.
It is also worth mentioning that Nobuhiko Obayashi put the first part of his onomichi trilogy, "Transfer Student", in ATG production. Because the work is adapted from a novel by Hiroshi Yamanaka, Obayashi originally intended to make the film in Kadokawa Pictures, but was rejected, and when he met with Atoichi Omori kazuki, ATG president Sasaki, the other party generously expressed his support for the production of this work, and the "Onomichi Trilogy", which later became an important symbol of youth films, would not die. After the film was completed, it received super high ratings, allowing Toshimi Kobayashi to win three newcomer awards, and also laid the route of the youth idol movie after Nobuhiko Obayashi.
Transfer students
ATG in the 1980s was an era of youthful assertion and confusion. The stalwart director has gained enough status to fade out of the vanguard, while the younger generation has brought a new aesthetic to ATG with the growth of a new post-war person and the uncertainty of the meaning of the future, intertwined with the brightness characteristic of the period of rapid economic growth.
Unfortunately, the change of media continues to arrive. After the advent of the video era of television, the cinema line further declined, and in 1992, ending with Kanehito Shinto's "Meto Keitan", ATG ended its own activities, and the Japanese post-war film jumped to an end in physics.
STYLE CHARACTERISTICS OF ATG
In fact, it is impossible to summarize the style of ATG. Or to put it another way, it is precisely because ATG provides free, non-batch exploration of all kinds of films that it has really maintained the vitality of film creation in the declining cycle of the Japanese film industry.
If there is some sort of unity in these works, we can joke that they are all low budgets, and directors have to spend their money on exploring their own visual language, which the ATG film brings.
1. The distinct concept of a writer's film
Yoshimitsu Morita, who made "Family Games", once said, "ATG is a pioneer existence, although the funds are not much, but people here can make full use of their directorship." If you want to debut as a director, you must choose this place. ATG is a company that lets directors do what they want to do. ”
Family Games (1983)
This is a good summary of ataG's production status. First of all, objectively, its wild state cannot provide a strict commercial division of labor system for traditional companies, and directors must bear the corresponding "DIY responsibility" while gaining freedom; secondly, conceptually, ATG inherits French art films and has always supported the director's consciousness to maximize the display. Therefore, there will be no genre films in ATG, and the director is also very consciously forcing himself to find a unique, brash and direct "author state" in such an environment.
2. The strong presence of conceptual films and stage styles
Film critics Tadao Sato and Inuhiko Shikatada have directly linked the 10 million yen budget to ATG's aesthetics, believing that this is a strange blessing to create ATG's unique style. The tight funds make it necessary for many films to complete the narrative in a very limited set, and to shoot the disputes and contradictions of the few characters in a short period of time, to replace the lengthy and complete narrative in commercial films with a concentrated visual impact, and to use amateur actors to avoid the sense of discord between them and exquisite drama films to the greatest extent, "Hanging Death" and "Shuluo" are excellent examples. The unique weight of documentaries in ATG films is also due to its "documentary" and a certain "amateurishness".
Under such conditions, defamiliarization, artificialization, and ritualization become a certain generality of ATG movies. Compared with the plot, the exploration of form has made many works suffer from "incomprehensible" evaluations in the category of "art films". That is to say, ATG's films challenge the traditional perception that film is the art of "storytelling", and it is difficult to understand that the fluency of the story gives way to the transmission of ideas.
3. The outbreak of youth subculture themes and cross-border art
ATG grew up surrounded by the Shinjuku atmosphere of the 1960s, and it was the forbidden fruit of the postwar youth subculture. Shikata once described the scene around att G Main Hall this way: "In the square in front of the station, the wandering group from all over Japan had neither a house nor money, and they were lying on the lawn or singing. In a café called 'Kazekido', a variety of people, including self-proclaimed artists with long hair and beards, New Left Activists, soldiers who had escaped from a U.S. military base for aversion to the Vietnam War, and Japanese anti-war groups had designated plans to flee to Northern Europe. Further down the main street, you will find a huge gay bar street about to be built, during which French semioticians who were not yet famous in Japan at the time sometimes sneaked in and out. ”
In this context, ATG absorbs into the film with great attraction what does not belong to the film. It brings in talent from other fields as directors, brings its own approach to cinema, and shows the world a work with a strong personal style. The mixing of these other fields also makes ATG like a cross-border artistic utopia, allowing various characters to contribute their talents to the film, and allowing ATG to vividly record the outbreak of post-war Japanese youth subculture, and the young wandering soul of the city finds its "best position" in the film.
For example, in 1967, ATG built a theater called "Scorpion Seat" under the main building in Shinjuku, opening up a space for "live performances". The name was named by Yukio Mishima, both from his favorite movie Kenneth Anger and the name of curator Katsui. The first event after the founding of "Scorpion" was the performance of Masao Adachi's "Galaxy"; then the premiere of Shuji Terayama's experimental short story "The Emperor of Ketchup"; the debut concert of Asakawa マキ in 1968; and the performance of Togatamoto's "Twenty-Seven Nights for Four Seasons" for 27 consecutive days from October 25 to November 20, 1972. ATG's Shinjuku Main Building, the Shinjuku Cultural Theater, is a period of physical cultivation of a subculture. The marginalized people of the subculture also turned their private interactions into part of the film because of the existence of the Shinjuku Cultural Theater. The amateur actors who appear in the movie stay in the theater at night to listen to the performance and watch the play. Masahiro Shinoda's "Skynet Island in the Heart" was used as an artist because of Kurizu's outstanding performance on stage installations. Toshio Matsumoto's "The Funeral of the Rose" is also the art of Asakura Shot, who also designed the stage. "Throw it on the street" is attended by cartoonist Lin Jingyi. Musicians Ichiyanagi, Ryohei Hirose, and J. A.シーザー met because of Yoshida Kishige.
These marginal situations in reality have made ATG directors explore in creation, constantly integrating and rarely repeating temperament, and achieving ATG's experimental and pioneering nature.
1960s-1980s. At a time when big studios were in decline and commercial genre films were tired, ATG created an unprecedented art film style with a keen sense of smell when the film relieved itself of the burden of national entertainment and allowed it to have a bolder creative space. Countless Japanese audiences have seen the best art films in their theaters, and countless Japanese directors have created a rich visual language and tried a kaleidoscopic subject matter by putting aside the common sense of film suitable for all ages, with the possibilities they offer.
In one page of Japan's postwar cinema, ATG provides a harsh, cold, but reliable basis for the exuberant creativity of heretical geniuses.