Sorry for the string of publication announcements, but I just had to note two more interesting books that have just come out.
Nakamura Hideyuki, Gareki no tenshitachi: Benyamin kara eiga no mihatenu yume e 『瓦礫の天使たち—ベンヤミンから“映画”の見果てぬ夢へ
Nakamura-san is really one of the smartest people writing on film in Japan today and this book, a collection of his previous essays, uses Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault to reconsider the relationship between film and urban space, focusing in particular on Chaplin, Keaton, and King Vidor.
Matsumoto Toshio, ed., Bijutsu x eizo 『美術×映像
Matsumoto-sensei is, of course, well known to many as the director of Funeral Parade of Roses
and of many great experimental films and documentaries, but he is also a major theorist of art and cinema. This is his most recent book, compiling conversations between Matsumoto and some of the major new Japanese media artists such as Kano Shiho, Ishida Takashi, and Maeda Shinjiro. There's also a talk with Japan's most prominent writer on experimental cinema, Nishijima Norio.