[Mini Theater Revisited] No. 4 New Wave from Roppongi...Part 1 Cine Vivant Roppongi Part 1

Seibu's new challenge, Cine Vivant Roppongi

The building was built by the Seibu Distribution Group (later the Saison Group), and at the time, Seibu was focusing on cultural projects to improve the company's overall image and contribute to culture. The Seibu Department Store in Ikebukuro, where it is based, is home to the Saison Museum of Art, a multipurpose hall, and Studio 200, and events that could not be realized anywhere else were held there. In addition, Libro Port, a publishing company affiliated with Seibu that started in the 1980s, published a series of luxurious art-related books with elaborate designs and paper (I also published a translation of a movie called " Cult Movie Classics " from here in the 1990s).

At that time, Seibu's influence had finally reached the film industry, and in 1984 it launched the film distribution company Cine Saison. The previous year, Cine Vivant Roppongi, inside WAVE, had been opened in Roppongi.

The first to be screened was Jean-Luc Godard's " Passion " (1982, distributed by France Films). In the 1960s, Godard made films such as "Breathless " (1959) and " Pierrot the Fool le Fou" (1965), winning many fans as a talented figure representing the French film movement known as the "Nouvelle Vague" (New Wave). After a break, he returned to commercial films in 1979 with " Breathless " (1979), which again won high praise overseas. However, it was not released in Japan immediately, and "Passion," which he shot after "Breathless," was screened first.

The protagonist of "Passion" is a film director searching for his "ideal light," and he tries to recreate famous paintings using real people in his films. Images such as Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People," Rembrandt's "The Night Watch," and Goya's "The Naked Maja" are reproduced one after another in the film, and the beauty of the images is what first catches your attention. Isabelle Huppert and Hanna Schygulla appear as heroines who carry the director's thoughts, but like other Godard films, the story is vague, and the protagonists' conceptual conversations are shown (lines such as "A story must be lived before it is written" and "Shadows do not exist. They are only reflections of light" appear). And the classical music playing in the background sometimes has more meaning than the lines. The film is also filled with masterpieces by Ravel, Faure, Beethoven, Mozart, and others.

The avant-garde style of the film incorporates paintings and famous classical music as key elements. The unique character of "The Passion" was a perfect fit for the concept of the culture building, WAVE, which is "a new space of sound and image."

In addition to Godard's works, films by directors with intellectual, philosophical styles who can be called visual poets, such as Andrei Tarkovsky ( Nostalghia , 1983) and Theo Angelopoulos ( Voyage to Cythera, 1983), are screened one after another, helping to create the cinema's avant-garde character.

The artwork for the unique work “Koyaniskatti” is by Eiko Ishioka.