Érica Faleiro Rodrigues

This paper is based on a set of exclusive interviews the Portuguese filmmaker Edgar Pêra has granted to this author. Edgar Pêra is, by far, the most renowned and prolific 3D filmmaker in Portugal, with films released in cinemas and main cultural art centres, including mainstream venues. From his wide-ranging 3D oeuvre, we can highlight “Cine Sapiens” (2013), part of a tryptic titled “3x3D”, which also included 3D works by Jean-Luc Godard and Peter Greenaway.

Pêra’s constant search for experimentalism and multidisciplinarity has also resulted in “Cine- Koncert 3D “(2019), a collaboration with Portuguese musician Vitor Rua. The title of this paper arises from a text by Edgar Pêra in which the filmmaker explains the major difculties he found when trying to screen the 3D film “The Amazed Spectator” (2016) in Portugal with the right technical conditions. The aim is to probe and articulate three diferent topics. First, Pêra’s creative process, focusing on the process by which his films materialise from the ideas that underpin them and the materialities that support their execution. Second, the reasons that lead Edgar Pêra to start a body of work in 3D and the impact a longstanding reputation as an experimental and avant- garde filmmaker has had on this. And third, the main obstacles that have arisen when trying to screen his 3D films in Portugal.

Eduardo Calvet

One of the most important cinema exhibitors in history was the Loew’s, whose comfort and architectural features were among the best in the world so far. ‘Cine Metro’ was the first movie palace in Brazil by Loew’s, inaugurated in 1936. Its comfort and convenience determine the moment when the ‘Cinelândia’ region of Rio de Janeiro was one of the Brazilian’s most important moviegoing centers. However, almost a century after its inauguration, the remaining spaces from the previous period are very scarce, erasing the city’s cultural, architectural and social heritage. This paper highlights the applicability of technical practices of virtual heritage as a methodology for the development of immersive experience and expansion of film exhibition cultural preservation. The historical aspects of ‘Cine Metro’ – such as the marquee and visual signs, art deco architecture, elaborate interior decoration, projection booth and seat model – will be pointed out to help us understand the importance of recreating it in a virtual reality experience. Finally, this work describes all the steps made towards the Cine Metro’s VR digital recreation, with the intention of making the viewers feel as if they were present at the palace’s opening night.

Yosaku Matsutani

Osamu Tezuka (1928–1989) remains a leading cartoonist in Japan. Before the Second World War, his father Yutaka Tezuka had been a famous amateur photographer and filmmaker. When Osamu was a child, Yutaka showed him many 9.5 mm films (e.g., Chaplin films and Disney animation) that Yutaka owned and photographs that Yutaka took. That Yutaka and his image-making greatly influenced Osamu’s later creative activity is well known. For example, one of Osamu’s masterpieces is “Message to Adolf,” which focuses on humanity around Jews, the Germans, and the Japanese. One source for this work was photographs Yutaka took in March 1941 in Kobe. In the frame, Yutaka included many wandering Jews that had escaped Nazi persecution, crossed Eurasia, and landed in Kobe. We cannot guess how Osamu, then 12 years old, perceived those photographs, but 40 years later, they were certainly one of the triggers for Osamu’s masterpiece. In Japan until about 1940’s, amateur photography and film permeated homes or small local communities, whose members were thus affected, such as Osamu Tezuka’s case. However, previous researchers into that era’s amateur photography and film, especially into small-gauge films such as the 9.5mm “Pathé Baby,” evaluated such image-making as “artistic” film and detached it from home or small local communities. Then, they intended to connect Pathé Baby image-making with experimental or avant-garde films made after the Second World War and, eventually, to establish a genealogy of alternative Japanese films against normative commercial movies based on narrative. However, based on analyses in previous research, we might not be able to understand the case of Osamu Tezuka. Because of Pathé Baby’s characteristic compactness of scale, economy, and mentality, it remained in homes or small local communities until the 1940’s and associated people, objects, and media. Consequently, Pathé Baby became a dynamic system wherein society, culture, and history were rearranged. In this paper, based on studies about Pathé Baby’s images and devices, contemporary media (newspaper and magazines), and 9.5 mm film stock, I discuss the rich aspects of Pathé Baby before the Second World War in Japan.

Yosaku Matsutani works on problems of film style, film history and film culture, problems of art practices since the aesthetic turn, and the relationship between science & technology and art. He is currently Associate Professor of Faculty of Letters Department of Philosophy at Kokugakuin University, Tokyo. His published works include papers on amateur image practices in Japan before the second World War, on the aesthetic experience of the insect, and on image practices in outer space.