Photo/Illutration Kenzo Horikoshi (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Many people in the filmmaking industry felt a sad sense of loss this past weekend as news of a film producer’s death spread around the world.

Hengameh Panahi, who was based in Paris and had long been working to promote art films from various countries, passed away at the age of 67 after a battle with illness.

Panahi had been making a significant contribution to the international reappraisal of Japanese cinema since the late 1990s.

She founded a company dealing in international rights to films that identified and supported talented filmmakers and brought their work to a global audience. The name of her company, Celluloid Dreams, was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s reference to his fellow filmmakers as “merchants of celluloid,” playing on the base material for film stock.

She had a strong preference for cinemas d’auteur, or auteur films, and executives at major film festivals such as Cannes highly trusted her taste in movies.

I met Panahi in Paris 14 years ago. Despite claiming to be a person who “stays behind the scenes and doesn’t grant interviews,” she spoke for seven hours over two days.

She shared her experiences of being an Iranian native who moved to Europe before the Iranian revolution and the joy of discovering talented directors in the Middle East and Asia.

She loved Japanese cinema and respected masters such as Kenji Mizoguchi. She foresaw the arrival of a new era for Japanese films. Guided by her unique artistic sensibility, Panahi introduced works by Takeshi Kitano, Hirokazu Kore-eda and Naomi Kawase to the world.

It was Kenzo Horikoshi, 78, a film producer who heads Eurospace, who first showed her a Kitano film 27 years ago.

“Without her strong power (to sell and promote films), the resurgence of Japanese cinema would not have occurred,” Horikoshi said.

Kitano’s crime drama film “Hana-bi,” which was entered into the 1997 Venice International Film Festival under her carefully crafted overseas promotion strategy, won the Golden Lion, the festival's highest prize.

In Panahi's Paris office, six clocks showed different times. Tokyo, New York or Sydney? I wonder where her keen gaze is searching for films now.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Nov. 12

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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