CJS Noon Lecture Series | Other “Punks” in Late 1970s–1980s Cinema and Visual Culture in Japan: Gender, Documentary, Ephemerality

Please note: This lecture will be held in person in room 1010 Weiser Hall and virtually via Zoom. This webinar is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Once you've registered, the joining information will be sent to your email. Register for the Zoom webinar at: https://myumi.ch/8rNVW

Scholarship and criticism surrounding the intersections of cinema and punk culture in late 1970s–early 1980s Japan are sparse, yet what does exist tends to place heavy emphasis on “DIY” independent filmmaking ( jishu eiga) and the oeuvre of director Ishii Sōgo (now Ishii Gakuryū). This talk attempts to widen the scope of analysis by examining other figures and content circulating in this context. Taking a cross-media approach and focusing on women participating in punk-adjacent image-making and performance as well as documentary films capturing various punk scenes active at the time, it demonstrates the existence of a diversity of authors and modes of expression that media and subcultural histories of Japan as well as international curatorial efforts tend to overlook.

Kirsten Seuffert holds a PhD in East Asian Languages and Cultures from the University of Southern California with a focus on postwar and contemporary cinema in Japan as well as a graduate certificate in visual studies. She received her master’s degree in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Pennsylvania with research centering on cinema, gender, and sexuality. Her dissertation project—“Adjusting Images: Women’s Bodies and Embodied Experience in Cinema and Visual Culture in Japan, 1974–1989”—takes a multidisciplinary, multimedia approach in order to look differently at cinema in Japan during the later 1970s and 1980s through the lenses of gender, bodies, and everyday life. Her research interests include performance, authorship, the writing of media histories, affect, and subcultural participation and representation. Her publications include the article “Exploding Girls, Imploding Strategies: Media-Mixed Bodies in Late 1970s to 1980s Japanese Women’s Professional Wrestling,” published in the Winter 2023 issue of Mechademia, and an upcoming article in JCMS: The Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. Currently, Kirsten is working on her book manuscript and researching recent biopics and bio-adaptations that look back on cinema in Japan from the 1960s through the 1980s.

This lecture is made possible with the generous support of the U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us atumcjs@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.