GUEST SPEAKER

We are delighted to have Mr Jonathan Bunt from the University of Manchester introducing the films and leading discussion sessions at the 2020 Film Weekender.

Jonathan studied English at Bristol University, followed by a PGCE (also at Bristol) after which he went to Japan on the JET Programme and worked in schools as a teaching assistant and for the local education authorities. He remained in Japan teaching for 8 years, returning after 2 years to do an MA in TEFL at UEA Norwich, and later a certificate as a teacher of Japanese as a foreign language.

Jonathan has been teaching Japanese at Manchester for around 20 years and acted as first Head of Department for the new area of East Asian Studies when it was initially set up in 2008. He began teaching cinema initially on an Introduction to World Cinema course, and shortly after that set up a Japanese Film and Society course with colleagues.

He says "I am not a researcher in film studies and my interest is best characterised as that of an enthusiastic consumer and collector. I have watched many hundreds of Japanese films (about 700+ according to my own checklist) and know the sublime and the ridiculous. The best work is, as you would expect, by Ozu, Mizoguchi, Kuosawa and Naruse but the Japanese cinema was so large (the output was greater than Hollywood in the 50s!) that there are many many gems in amongst the dross (of which there is a great deal)."