Sha Huang: Project 2 Complete

B2210 Workinig Critique

Project 2

Kitano Takeshi’s Violence Movies

Sha Huang

Abstract

This project is a violence scenes movie clips collection from a Japanese movie director named Kitano Takeshi. He has directed 18 movies, most of them are violent movie talks about Japanese mafia, he also has movie focus on ancient Japanese swordsman. In this project I have three different versions of his violence scenes, one is clips of the moment right before hitting the victim, one is hitting moment, and the last one is longer violent scenes with visual at first, and then fade into black with audio only for couple of seconds.

I read an interview from a magazine called BRUTUS (10/15/1997), journalist ask Kitano Tateshi that “What do you think about violence movie effect on audience? Making violent person?” He said “I don’t see thousands of beautiful movies about human personality making a better world.”

Kitano Tateshi is an actor, director, producer, TV presenter, poet, journalist, one-time stand-up comic and sometime recording artiste. His films, often violent, gritty yakuza gangster movies veined with grim humour, have gained him a following abroad, with Hana-Bi winning him the Golden Lion at Venice in 1997. When acting, he goes by the name of Beat Takeshi. When directing, he's Takeshi Kitano. "My core activity is trying to avoid being pigeon-holed by the public," he explains." I am Takeshi Kitano, I am Beat Takeshi, and you can't tell what I'm going to do next. It keeps the public interested."

Personally, I like Beat Takeshi’s movie, by the way he created violence movie, there is a lot meaning behind his movie. His violence movie always go with Yakuza which means Japanese mafia, back to modern times, mafia helped build Japan government, and that makes the relationship between government and Yakuza is more complicated nowadays in Japan. To some point, Japan might be the only country in the world which has legally existed mafia. From his movie we can see mafia’s daily bedrail, loyalty, brothership. What is most important is by the violence medium, we still see moral in personality, such as honesty, faith, strength and beauty.

What is my violence for this project, I think behaviors no matter including body touch or not, involving physical force(including weapon) intended to hurt, damage or kill someone or something. For my project on this topic, I am going to collect violence movies by Kitano Takesh. Considering of time, I am focusing on 5 movies of his. The first version I made is the moment right before hitting each victim, the second one is scenes that hitting the victim, and the last one is scenes that visual will fade into black leaving the audience in audio only enviroment for couple of second. For these clips I made them in sequence of violent method, punch, blunt, knife, and gun.

Trigger His Violence