Woody Allen’s directing debut, What’s Up Tiger Lily, offers an extreme and fascinating instance of repurposing an existing cultural product. He appropriated a cheesy Japanese gangster film and replaced the soundtrack with a completely new one: in English, comedic, engaging with the original but introducing new layers of meaning. Here is an article discussing the film. Woody Allen took up directly the status of copying … Continue reading on borrowing..
A fan with good video sampling and editing skills has created this video for Jun Miyake’s Lillies of the Valley, which has featured also in a superb dance movie Pina by Wim Wenders. The celebrated German director’s film was a homage to German dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch. Continue reading Fan sampling & Jun Miyake
An interview, only in Japanese but with Japanese subtitles (!), with the first editor of Popeye, Yoshihisa Kinameri. Already 88 at the time of this interview, his career highlights as founding editor also included Casa and Hanako. Here also is a link to a brief review of some of the Japanese mens fashion magazines. And nice insights from fellow editorial pioneer Jiro Ishikawa into how … Continue reading on Popeye & magazine-making
We will explore the centrality of repetition to cognition, cultural product, design and creative processes. Humans are advanced pattern recognition machines: memory mechanisms works off that and so much of human cognition is founded on it. Arguably it is the capability for sustained deliberative repetitive action across many domains that distinguishes us as a species and is fundamental to how humans have transformed their environments. … Continue reading repetition
Lin-Manuel Miranda previewed his work on Hamilton at a small performance for Barack and Michelle Obama and guests at the White House in 2009. Miranda’s prodigious talent is well on display Lin-Manuel Miranda has been a big influence upon poet Amanda Gorman, who was much praised for her reading at President Biden’s inauguration. It is interesting to see how many recent comments are from students … Continue reading Hamilton preview at the White House
Music obviously has great power to move, and when used well by a filmmaker integrates seamlessly with visuality, narrative and performance. Too often though, music is resorted to in post production when one more of those other aspects are lacking. Music has an additional practical attraction to film producers: the soundtrack can be monetised and sometimes even functions as a marketing resource for the film. … Continue reading Soundtracks, Wong Ka Wai & Tom Ford
Video messages from zemi members who finished up their SILS studies in Spring 2023 (most joined the zemi from the Fall, did three semesters, but had an extra semester still in SILS because they were either Fall entry students or took a semester off during the covid online craziness. As per SILS rules, the thesis is formally submitted in the final semester of enrolment, even … Continue reading zemi gallery
Saul Leiter was a dedicated photographer of New York street life for over sixty years. He had an early influential career in commercial photography – primary for Harper’s Bazaar – and later became rather reclusive, photographing regularly but exhibiting rarely. In recent years his work has attracted great renown. In Japan he came to be known through the following documentary (trailer only) and an exhibition … Continue reading Saul Leiter
You have arrived at the dedicated website for the Creative Industries three-semester advanced seminar series offered by Christopher Pokarier as part of the core curriculum of the School of International Liberal Studies, Waseda University. The goal of this advanced seminar series is to foster students’ creative confidence, design and visual literacy, and understanding of the distinct business challenges in industries in which creativity, sensibility, the … Continue reading About
A confronting and highly creative documentary in animated form by Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman about memories of the first Lebanon war by Israelis who served in it, culminating in a massacre carried out by Lebanese Christian Phalangist forces, who were allied to the Israelis. This short video is a rather well-produced mash up of scenes from the film set to Public Image Ltd’s This is … Continue reading Waltz with Bashir
So much to learn from James Brown’s legendary performances.. a distinctive musical signature, and an absolute commitment to performance that affirmed his perceived personal ‘authenticity’.. The extra-ordinary TAMI Show performance where James Brown and the Flames upstaged spectacularly the Rolling Stones who had to follow them on. And a recent film representation of the moment.. The trailer for the 2014 biopic Get on Up about … Continue reading Innovative & ‘authentic’ performance
Arbiters, reviews & rankings: the Michelin Guide & the impact on the chef- entrepreneurs A very interesting documentary by a leading British food writer/publisher on the obsession with the Michelin stars… which Sony asserted copyright too and brought a takedown notice to youtube after the content being available for a few years! Michelin Stars The Madness of Perfection Here is a very brief section of … Continue reading The Michelin Guide and Gastronomic Entrepreneurship
Finding the comedic in the awful surrealism of Soviet leader Stalin’s death and the political machinations that followed. And the depiction – somehow stylised – of the sentencing to the coup to overthrow Beria, Stalin’s long serving and widely feared security chief. Central in this depiction is Marshal Zhukov, the hero of the Soviet resistance to Nazi Germany. Continue reading Death of Stalin
In the second semester of the zemi series we turn our attention to the ecologies and enterprise of taste, under a generic rubric of ‘selling sensibility’. We will explore the increasingly importance of ‘sensibility’ in modern economies: how the ‘enterprise of taste’ has come to shape our cities, our public culture, identities and our economic prospects. Expanding on the analytics provided by Richard Caves in his … Continue reading Selling Sensibility (ZEMI II)
Takashi Murakami has become one of the highest earning Japanese artists and has been very effective is mastering the enterprise logics of foreign art and design markets to serve his own interests, which increasingly extend to promoting younger artists and designers he likes through his own studio enterprise and the Geisai event. See this interview, for instance, on how Murakami helped the reputation of Japanese … Continue reading the Takashi Murakami enterprise
Renowned singer-songwriter Nakajima Miyuki composed the song Rouge in the mid-1970s and it was a minor hit in Japan when recorded by Chiaki Naomi, as follows in the first YouTube post below. It has since been a much bigger hit in translation in a number of other countries. The subsequent links provide some examples. Annie Leung.. The hit version by Beijing-born, Hong Kong-based actress/singer Faye … Continue reading ars longa: a Japanese song goes multi-local
In another post we see how Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson has explored how the extensive repetition of an expressive element can have a sacralising function. Religious worship often entails such elements, leading to a transcendental state. The funeral procession of Queen Elizabeth II, precisely choreographed and realised, is a recent instance of the attainment of great dignity and gravitas through the subordination of the individuality … Continue reading gravitas & sacralising repetition
Sydney Long was still young and had never left the Australian colony of New South Wales when he painted works – later iconic and beloved – that brought symbolism and European mythology to his nuanced seeing of distinctive Australian landscapes, flora and light. Our top picture on Moodle for this seminar is Sydney Long’s Pan of 1898. Here is a short documentary about Sydney Long, … Continue reading Sydney Long: symbolism and art nouveau
Now iconic film from 1998 by the Cohen Brothers with a cult following. A scene late in the film when The Dude and Walter go to scatter the ashes of their deceased friend Donny.. Some thugs broke into The Dude’s place, demanding a debt being repaid but they had the wrong Mr Lebowski, and peeing on his rug. The Dude goes to the other Mr … Continue reading The Dude Abides.. The Big Lebowski
Application for joining the Zemi from Fall 2021 will be through the regular SILS process. Here is a short video that addresses how I will endeavour to accommodate students, via ‘hyflex’ delivery, who are stuck abroad owing to border closures with the pandemic. Continue reading Fall 2021 Zemi recruitment
ZEMI * Christopher Pokarier 