Abstract

In 1972, the Japanese entertainment listings magazine Pia was established, providing information on film screenings, theatre and concert events happening in Tokyo each month. It quickly cultivated an engaged readership of teenagers and young adults. Among this readership were participants of a burgeoning nationwide phenomenon of do-it-yourself film production, referred to in Japanese as jishu seisaku eiga (meaning ‘self-made films’), which typically saw young, aspiring filmmakers produce short and feature-length narrative works using 8 mm (and sometimes 16 mm) film cameras. This article contextualises the emergence of Pia magazine and its role in centralising and providing opportunities to Japan’s growing ‘self-made’ filmmaking community throughout the 1970s, 1980s and beyond. This can be viewed on two fronts: firstly, from within the pages of the magazine itself and its strategies to stimulate reader-to-cinema engagement; and, secondly, through the magazine’s organisation of an annual self-made film screening event in the late 1970s that would come to be known as the Pia Film Festival (PFF). PFF remains an essential national showcase for new Japanese filmmakers to this day, but, more importantly, it would herald its own system of independent film production in the form of the PFF Scholarship. This article concludes with a discussion about the PFF Scholarship, and its importance at a time when early career filmmakers were struggling within the Japanese film industry.

摘要

1972 年，日本娱乐列表杂志Pia成立，每月提供东京电影放映、戏剧和音乐会活动的信息。它很快培养了一批青少年和年轻人的积极读者群。这些读者中包括正在兴起的全国范围内的“DIY 电影制作”现象的参与者，这种现象在日语中被称为“ jishu seisaku eiga ”（意思是“自制电影”），通常由年轻、有抱负的电影制作人制作短片和长片。使用 8 毫米（有时是 16 毫米）胶片相机的叙事作品。本文介绍了Pia的出现背景杂志及其在 20 世纪 70 年代、1980 年代及以后为日本不断发展的“白手起家”电影制作界提供集中和提供机会方面所发挥的作用。这可以从两个方面来看待：首先，从杂志本身的页面及其刺激读者与电影互动的策略来看；其次，该杂志在 20 世纪 70 年代末组织了一年一度的自制电影放映活动，后来被称为皮亚电影节 (PFF)。时至今日，PFF 仍然是日本新电影制片人重要的全国展示场所，但更重要的是，它将以 PFF 奖学金的形式预示着自己的独立电影制作体系。本文最后讨论了 PFF 奖学金，