Abraham Ravett in Person Tonight's films present three distinct approaches to looking at the East from the West. Abraham Ravett's An Abu's Warning (1992, 50 mins, Silent, B&W, 16mm) is an exquisite silent portrait of Japan which opens with film scholar Donald Richie's observation that "in Japan the ostensible is the real." Ravett sees Japan through its representations of itself: his formal compositions recall Japanese scrolls and are intercut with quoted scenes from Japanese films. Chris Marker's The Koumiko Mystery (1965, 54 mins, Color, 35mm), the first of his essays on Japan, is a series of conversations with Koumiko Muraoka, whom he describes as neither a typical Japanese woman, nor an example of anything. But her poetic responses to her estrangement can readily be related to a contemplation of women and Japan as enigmas. Unfortunately the color of our print, as well as that of all other subtitled prints of The Koumiko Mystery, is extremely faded so that the dominant color is red. Adynata (1983, 30 mins, Color, 16mm), which Leslie Thornton defines as "sometimes a confession that words fails us," directly addresses the construction of the "Orient" by the West. The concept of an unknowable other is linked to the exotic, the erotic, women and culture-to those terms which are perceived as "difference." Abraham Ravett teaches film at Hampshire College.