Matsumoto Takes Center Stage at Locarno

Yesterday, the Locarno International Film Festival (Festival del Film Locarno) announced that it will be screening the international premiere of Matsumoto Hitoshi's Saya-zamurai (『さや侍』) this August, following the film's Japanese bow on June 11. There will also be a spotlight on Matsumoto himself, with his previous two feature films given another airing.

Here's the press release:

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30.05.2011 Tribute to Hitoshi Matsumoto
The 64th Festival del film Locarno will host the international premiere in Piazza Grande of Scabbard Samurai (Saya-zamurai), the latest feature from Japanese filmmaker Hitoshi Matsumoto.

Hitoshi Matsumoto on the set of Scabbard Samurai

The film, starring newcomer Takaaki Nomi and Jun Kunimura (Kill Bill: Vol. 1), is produced by Yoshimoto Kogyo, Kyoraku Sangyo and Phantom Film, and goes on theatrical release in Japan next June 11.

Highlighting the occasion of the premiere, Festival del film Locarno will pay tribute to Hitoshi Matsumoto with screenings of the director’s two other features to date, Big Man Japan (Dai-Nipponjin, 2007) and Symbol (Shinboru, 2009).

As Olivier Père, Artistic Director at Locarno, puts it, «from a background in television, in which his shows and personality have achieved immense popularity in Japan, Matsumoto has come to cinema and, in only three full-length features to date, has invented and experimented with new forms of comic fiction. Highly original, shifting between burlesque, surrealism and popular genres, his new ideas have proved capable of surprising and delighting even the most blasé of audiences. This is one of the main revelations in contemporary cinema over the past few years, and we are pleased to be able to celebrate in Locarno the work of a remarkable artist and his extraordinary comedy and imagination».

A national celebrity in his home country as a television comedian, Hitoshi Matsumoto began his directing career in 2007 with Big Man Japan. The film went on from a Directors’ Fortnight premiere in Cannes to garner widespread acclaim, achieving record box office success in Japan. Matsumoto followed it up in 2009 with Symbol, which was presented at a number of international festivals, including Toronto, Busan and Rotterdam.
The 64th Festival del film Locarno will be held from August 3 to 13, 2011.

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As you can see, the film's been given the export title Scabbard Samurai, which is a literal translation. They could've come up with something more evocative in my opinion, but there it is.

I wrote at some length about my admiration for Scabbard Samurai last month after seeing a press screening. When I tweeted back on April 26 about a potential festival slot after Cannes, it was Locarno I was referring to.

I had somewhat lamented the fact that Cannes went for a remake (Miike's Hara-kiri: Death of a Samurai) instead of a completely original effort like Matsumoto's -- in retrospect it seems the latter would've gotten stronger critical notices. But now Matsumoto's latest film and his growing body of work will, in a way, get more attention in its Locarno setting than it would've amidst the large (and quite strong) playing field on the Croisette this year.

Looking forward to live reports later this summer.

Best Copy Printing - Al-Qaeda Did My Bootleg Video Jackets

With the killing of Osama bin Laden saturating the news, my mind has drifted back to the September 11 attacks. I'm also recalling a 9/11-related anecdote with origins a few years prior to that.

My Toronto brothers and I were big collectors of obscure cult and foreign films in the 80s and 90s. Before DVD, it was all about VHS (and later laserdiscs). Friends such as Olympic ski coach Dennis Capicik, Toronto film festival vet Colin Geddes, spaghetti western king Mike Ferguson, Canadian DVD industry honcho John Theodorou, Erik Sulev, special makeup FX guy Cameron Scholes and Steve Fentone all outdid me in terms of encyclopedic knowledge and video hoardes. Nonetheless, I was part of the gang and published 10 issues of a pretty successful fanzine called Sub-Terrenea (sic). If you've ever wondered how Toronto has given birth to cult movie institutions like Twitch Film, Midnight Madness and Rue Morgue to name a few, it's because the fans are some of the most voracious in the world.

A big part of fandom was bootlegging. In the pre-internet days that was done through personal connections, mailing lists and conventions. If we could've bought the movies we would've, but many of them simply didn't exist in a commercial format in North America, or anywhere. We certainly purchased massive amounts of legitimate new and used releases. But if you wanted to watch Goodbye Uncle Tom in English you needed a copy from the Greek release. The 137m version of Dawn of the Dead? A telecine of the 16mm print. Obscure kung fu titles? That would be recordings of late-night TV broadcasts.

When colour photocopiers made a quantum leap in the 90s (leading some to almost get away with printing counterfeit money) it was a boon to bootleggers who wanted a spiffy box for their cassette. At that time the machines were not self-serve and it wasn't uncommon for a shop to refuse customers who wanted to duplicate copywritten material.

One shop that couldn't have cared less and had all the latest equipment was Best Copy Printing on Charles St. in the heart of Toronto. It was run by Middle Eastern men in their 30s and 40s. They were always polite and would copy anything we wanted, including jackets for sexually explicit Eurotrash. They were happy to take our money and get us out of there as quickly as possible so they could get back to their work. My friend Dennis and I thought something was odd about the place but couldn't put our fingers on it. What was obvious was that despite a paucity of patrons these peculiar printers were busy as hell at all hours of the day.

The nature of the place came into starker relief when I got my own job at a print shop walking distance away, but with an altogether different clinetele. We did high end business stationary, brochures and sold an unrivaled selection of paper and card stock (washi was too pricey to import, though). When there was no work to do there was a fair amount of standing around and calling girlfriends.

If we were in a pinch for Canon colour toner cartridges I'd head on over to Best Copy and they'd happily sell me some. As always, the little shop's machines were working away. Orders were boxed up. Men would drift in and out, greeting each other in Arabic.

On another movie tangent, this was around the time I started designing and co-editing the book "AntiCristo: The Bible of Nasty Nun Sinema & Culture", written by old cohort Steve Fentone. It was eventually published in 2000. It's long out of print and will likely never see a second edition. I see it now commands several hundred dollars for a used copy alone.

In 1998 I departed for Japan, leaving Toronto and the printing biz behind.

Fast forward to September 2001. I'm back in Toronto for the film festival when the planes hit the World Trade Center. Not long after the attacks Canadian links to the terrorist cell that brought down the Twin Towers made the news. Best Copy Printing was apparently connected to Islamic extremists and Al-Qaeda itself. An RCMP investigation dubbed "Project O Canada" discovered Best Copy had been churning out fake IDs and Canadian immigration forms. Paper stock, ink and laminates left behind by the nineteen 9/11 hijackers closely matched the supplies the busy bodies at Best Copy were using. According to witnesses, ringleader Mohammed Atta frequented, and even worked at Best Copy in the spring of 2001. The store is still visible on Google street view Toronto, so I assume it remained open under the same name until quite recently.

As many in the world wait for a photo confirming the terrorist mastermind's death, a foggy image of an Osama bin Laden portrait on the walls of Best Copy (later found by authorities) comes to mind. But I can't be sure...