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108 Japanese Cinema Goes Global The price of foreign film rights was driven radically down after the Plaza Accord in September 1985 — the dollar was down from 240 yen to 150 yen in October 1986. Additionally, the proliferation of minitheatres made theatrical bookings accessible to highly specialized films. Asai’s company Uplink was a one-man operation to start with. His break came when he screened Derek Jarman’s short films in Parco Part 3. In this mini-theatre, a much softer film dealing with a homosexual love affair set in 1930s Cambridge — Another Country — had previously set a phenomenal record for box-office takings. There, Derek Jarman’s films found a strong cult following among young female audiences, and fuelled a gay film boom in the Japanese mini-theatres. Derek Jarman visited the second Tokyo International Film Festival to screen his film The Last of England (1987). By this time, he had publicly declared his HIV-positive status and this had been identified as contributing to the strong sense of urgency that was driving his filmmaking . He advocated personal filmmaking using Super 8 and low-budget video technology that would free him from financial constraints. In an interview he gave in Tokyo he stated: Honestly, I am tired of thinking and worrying about finances all the time. I am dreaming somebody will sponsor me to do my video experiment. To tell the truth, apart from the film festival, I come to Tokyo because I was hoping somebody here might, actually… [laugh]. (in Kinema Junpo 1987: 37) It was Asai who put up his hand. After successfully distributing most of Jarman’s films to the mini-theatre audiences, Asai co-financed and co-produced Jarman’s last four films — The Garden (1990), Edward 2 (1991), Wittgenstein (1993), and Blue (1993). During Jarman’s lifetime, Asai became known as his Japanese producer on the European film circuit, and in Japan Asai’s Uplink brand developed synonymously with Derek Jarman’s films. For Asai, Shuji Terayama and Derek Jarman were “the two master artists who shaped my life, aesthetics, and sensibility most profoundly” (Asai interview 2006). As an independent film producer, the most valuable lesson Derek gave me was that he showed how individual artists can fight, and live one’s full potential facing the biological limit of life. He always struggled against his material circumstances, but he often Globalization of Film Finance 109 managed to turn material luck into a source of his creativity. His use of Super 8 and cheap video technology was a good example. (Asai interview 2006) Due to his association with Derek Jarman and his involvement with queer activism, Asai became known as the premier distributor of gay films in Japan. Asai says, however, that he is not gay himself, and it was “the existential quality” of Jarman’s work to which he was most deeply attracted. The four Jarman films he worked on, he believes, have a similar “existential quality” to works by Terayama, who also had a terminal illness and died prematurely. Asai has huge respect for the way Jarman stood up to become an icon for queer politics, but he does not necessarily feel any commitment to gay films and politics in general. His sense of camaraderie goes out to all radical artists and filmmakers who resist hegemonic culture regardless of class, gender, sexuality or nationality. And so it happened that it was gay films and filmmakers that were the most radical in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Derek was a self-professed gay artist but Terayama was not. Terayama was Japanese but Derek was not. Neither sexuality nor nationality matters too much to me. I just like to work with artists I feel respect for and I think are interesting. (Asai interview 2006) After the death of Derek Jarman, Asai’s production work became more diverse. He produced the Japanese “Sci-fi Porn Adventure” I.K.U. (Shu Lea Cheang, 2000) with the Taiwanese-American cyber-punk artist Shu Lea Cheang, and he also co-financed the Chinese filmmaker Lou Ye’s Suzhou River (2000). His first full Japanese production Akarui Mirai (Bright Future, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2003) was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and distribution rights were sold to over 14 countries. At the time of our interview, he was working with the Russian film director Sergei Bodrov on his latest project called Mongol, which was set to star the Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano as Genghis...

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