Asia Trash! film series at The Freer Gallery Of Art: Versus
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As the Hirshhorn’s Godzilla-themed SummerCamp series proved, there’s nothing better than over-the-top kitsch for summer cinema. Now, the Freer Gallery Of Art is hosting an absurdist fest of its own with the unambiguously titled Asia Trash! film series. In anticipation of the event, The A.V. Club spoke with Tom Vick, the museum’s film programmer, to learn more about the series, the movies that were too over-the-top to make the cut, and why he picked gangster-meets-zombie flick Versus to kick things off tonight.
The A.V. Club: How did Asia Trash! come about?
Tom Vick: It actually was an idea I came up with along with the director of the museum, Julian Raby, who you might not think would be into that sort of thing. We thought it would be a good idea for a fun summertime series—and, of course, there are endless choices of films, so we thought we’d experiment. We used to have these evening events in the summer called Art Nights and the museums on The Mall would stay open until late, but they were discontinued for budgetary reasons. So we thought we’d just turn them into “trash” nights instead.
AVC: How did you choose the four films in the series?
TV: I’ve already been accused of not selecting trashy enough movies, so I might have failed. Because of the Smithsonian I couldn’t go too far—I mean Tokyo Gore Police is probably going to be the most extreme thing. It’s mostly films that I’ve always liked, which I thought our audience would also really like. I had to strike a balance between trying to please the cult fans who really dig this stuff and the people who may not be as familiar with it but might like something like Tears Of The Black Tiger, which is strange and fun. And The Host is of a trashy genre, but it’s not really a trashy movie—it’s a really good movie.
AVC: Which ones didn’t make the cut?
TV: There was one called Oh! My Zombie Mermaid and another one called Blind Beast Vs. Killer Dwarf—they were just a little too much. The "Blind Beast,” to clarify, is this blind masseur who lures women into his cave where he makes these really grotesque sculptures out of body parts.
AVC: Do American audiences have a misperception of Asian cinema as being overly kitschy?
TV: I think so. People immediately think with Japan, for instance, of anime and big-eyed cute things and gore and grotesquery, which is fair. But one of the things we’re doing with this series educationally is connecting it to an exhibition we have called The Tale Of Shuten Dōji, which is a famous Japanese story that has beheadings and samurai and monsters and ghouls. So you can see that these movies don’t just come out of a vacuum—they’re really rooted in folklore that goes back very far and people have always been entertained by these kinds of stories. In a way I guess that makes it kind of an educational experience to watch something like Tokyo Gore Police.
AVC: Are we going to get to see more movies like this in the future?
TV: If it’s a success I hope we can do it every year.
AVC: The first movie in the series, Versus, combines Yakuza gangsters with zombies—is there any precedent for such a weird union?
TV: [Laughs.] That’s why I think Versus is so interesting! No one before [Ryuhei] Kitamura thought of giving guns to zombies. I don’t know why nobody thought of it, but that’s why he’s so innovative. As far as I know that’s the first time zombies have had gun fights.
AVC: Where does Kitamura fit in with this new generation of filmmakers?
TV: He’s interesting because on the one hand he does these crazy genre movies but in a way he’s also a pretty serious director. With The Duel Project he and another filmmaker [Yukihiko Tsutsumi] challenged each other to a duel: Each of them had to make a film with two characters in one space that ends with a duel to the death. [Kitamura]’s is this great story about a wandering traveler who happens across a castle where there’s a samurai who’s actually a demon that can’t die, so he trains this guy to finally kill him. Kitamura has all these great ideas—fun genre ideas—and then he executes them really well. I mean, Versus is a quality movie.
AVC: So he’s in good company among other fanboy filmmakers?
TV: I think he’s like Park Chan-wook in Korea or Quentin Tarantino here, who all grew up loving these trashy genre movies but actually have serious skills as filmmakers. [Kitamura] actually takes each movie seriously and has a lot of fun with them. It’s sort of a global community of these guys who are obsessed with this stuff—they live it and breathe it, and then it comes out in their films.
AVC: So being a geek isn’t so bad anymore?
TV: In Japan it has always been taken seriously. These stories about demons and monsters and samurai have a long history, so I think these things are seen a little differently and it’s easier to accept these kinds of genre movies. I also think that the same thing is happening in Korea and here. These things change because people grow up watching this stuff and it gets ingrained—somehow it just sort of sticks in your mind.
