> 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

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