Hani Susumu question

[Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow]

>Children in a Classroom (1955)
>Children Who Draw (1956)

Both of these are central films in the history of postwar Japanese 
documentary.  At a time when documentary was made up essentially of 
either PR or education films, and most works were completely scripted 
beforehand, Hani tried to film children "as is" by simply setting up a 
camera in the classroom and filming as much as he could.  The amount of 
film shot to the amount used was greatly higher than anything else at the 
time, and the first film in particular was influential in its new 
attitude towards documentary reality (an attitude reflected in Hani's 
later work).  You can read a little bit on the production of some of 
Hani's documentary work in English in an interview Monma Takashi and I 
did with the producer, Kudo Mitsuru, in the Yamagata Film Festival's 
Documentary Box:

http://www.city.yamagata.yamagata.jp/yidff/en/home.html

Aaron Gerow
Yokohama National University
KineJapan list owner
For list commands: send "information kinejapan" to 
listserver at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
Kinema Club: http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/Markus/Welcome.html