Imamura

[David Desser]

Markus makes a very good point about the lack of comparison between THE
EMPEROR'S NAKED ARMY MARCHES ON and Japanese documentaries in the Ruoffs
monograph on Hara's film.  They do, however, compare it, at least very
briefly, to other documentaries with an international reputation, ranging
from THE SORROW AND THE PITY to SHOAH to SHERMAN'S MARCH, along with
well-known American experimental films, the latter being a speciality of
co-author Jeffrey Ruoff.  They do also mention Imamura's own documentary
worklike HISTORY OF POSTWARJAPAN AS TOLD BY A BAR HOSTESS.  Clearly what's
happening is that the Ruoffs rely on the best-known examples of Japanese
cinema and international documentary, but have not been able to digest the
still-little known world of Japanese documentaries.  We'll count on Markus
Nornes to correct this.

David Desser


At 12:49 PM 8/23/99, Abe-Nornes wrote:

>The agenda is clear, and is not an unusual one in film studies.
>Well-meaning writers (teachers, programmers, etc.) who are promoting a
>marginalized form of cinema (documentary, video art, porno, etc.) draw in
>prestigious narrative cinema to legitimize and "glamourize" the object of
>their affection. I do it all the time. Pretty much everyone does.
>
>The Ruoff's case is probably a little more complicated, as little is known
>about Japanese documentary. If there is any weakness in this very fine
>book, it's that virtually every film reference is to a fictional film. On
>the one hand, this helps to level the differences between famous directors
>like Imamura and Oshima and a great documentary filmmaker like Hara,
>working against the general prejudice against documentary. On the other
>hand, it helps people who have seen a little Japanese cinema make sense of
>a film they may not have seen (and is hard to access).
>
>The problem with this strategy is that it pretends to be context, when what
>we really need to know is what was going on in the Japanese documentary
>world at the time. The fiction and documentary film worlds are, of course,
>deeply interconnected. However, at the same time they are relatively
>autonomous, and the discourses swirling around the documentary in Japan
>have a life of their own. This context is missing from the Ruoff's book,
>especially when you look at the excellent job they do with the production
>process and postwar politics of war memory.
>
>Markus