SCREEN-L Archives

April 2005, Week 4

SCREEN-L@LISTSERV.UA.EDU

Options: Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
Mark Nornes <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sat, 23 Apr 2005 14:28:21 +0900
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (57 lines)
> I am compiling a list of personal documentaries or any other films or 
> videos of an
> autobiographical nature
> Also - any journals which may have devoted issues to this type of film 
> and /or
> curated seasons, festivals.

Dear Harry,

This is the mainstream of Japanese documentary since the late 1980s. 
Much of the personal doc activity of young filmmakers centered around 
the Pia Film Festival, and also Image Forum and their festival.

The Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival has shown all the 
best work, and has also staged numerous, large-scale retrospectives of 
Japanese documentary that place the personal documentary in its 
historical context.

You will find many articles about it in our bilingual online journal 
Documentary Box (and some interviews/articles in the early issues that 
are available only on paper). See especially interviews with Kawaguchi 
Hajime (#20), Kawase Naomi (#16), Tsuchiya Yutaka (13), Koreeda 
Hirokazu (13), Oki Hiroyuki (11), Matsumoto Toshio (9), Hara Kazuo (3), 
and Suzuki Shiroyasu (2). Yamagata also published great catalogs 
connected to the historical retrospectives with numerous and excellent 
essays by filmmakers and critics about this phenomenon.

I also have an essay in Positions that lays out the historical context 
in a critical fashion:

  “The Postwar Documentary Trace: Groping in the Dark,” in Open to the 
Public: Studies in Japan’s Recent Past, ed.  Leslie Pincus, a special 
issue of Positions 10.1 (Spring 2002): 39-78.

The key filmmakers are undoubtedly Hara Kazuo, Suzuki Shiroyasu, and 
Kawase Naomi.

There are too many films to mention, many of them very fine, a few 
masterful. If you read the materials above, you'll find most of them 
described.

Two of my favorites are Hara's Kyokushiteki eros (Extreme Private Eros) 
and Kawase's Nitsutsumarete (Embracing). Also Suzuki's Kusa no kage o 
karu (Harvesting Shadows of Grass).

(Google will produce all of this; have fun.)

Markus


A. M. Nornes
Associate Professor, University of Michigan
Coordinator, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival
----
Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite
http://www.ScreenSite.org

ATOM RSS1 RSS2