Thursday, July 08, 2010

New Texture Publishing II

Luke Ford writes:

Official bio: Chris D. (aka Chris Desjardins) has written off and on for various American fringe film buff/alternative music/media publications such as Phobos, Slash Magazine, Forced Exposure, Asian Cult Cinema (when previously known as Asian Trash Cinema), and Cult Movies since the early 1970s. He has recently seen publication of his book Outlaw Masters Of Japanese Film, which features essays/filmographies/interviews with such Japanese genre film directors from the sixties/seventies as Kinji Fukasaku, Seijun Suzuki, Teruo Ishii, Kihacho Okamoto, Koji Wakamatsu, as well as such nineties directors as Takashi Miike and Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

He is currently finishing work on a voluminous, completist study of Japanese yakuza (gangster) films called Gun And Sword – An Encyclopedia of Japanese Gangster Films 1955-1980. Chris’ knowledge of classic mainstream and ‘arthouse’ as well as offbeat genre and cult films, both domestic and foreign, led to his job as one of the programmers at The American Cinematheque in Los Angeles in 1999. He has co-programmed or programmed series on Film Noir, Mods And Rockers (American & British music/youth/psychedelic films from 1960’s - early '70’s), The New Hollywood (breakthrough Hollywood films from mid-1960’s - early 1970’s), Angry Young Cinema – The Original British New Wave, Fantasy/Horror/ Science Fiction (annual series since 1999 featuring old and new films from U.S., Europe and Asia, etc.,), The Golden Age of British Horror 1955-1975, Japanese Outlaw Masters series #’s 1/2/3/4/5/6, Screwball Comedies 1935-1960; retrospectives on directors Kinji Fukasaku, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Donald Cammell, David Cronenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Russ Meyer, William Friedkin, Mario Bava, Val Guest, et. al -- as well as a tribute to sixties Japanese action film icons, Shintaro Katsu and Raizo Ichikawa.



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