Yamagata: Cinema Verite

[Abe' Mark Nornes]

Cinema Verite: Defining the Moment is the new documentary by Peter Wintonick
(Manufacturing Consent) about the history of doc. The most significant
aspect of the tape is its interrogation of the roots and the way it sorts
out the national articulations of this stylistic and conceptual break in the
history of documentary. He also brings his survey to the present day to look
at verite's traces in current practice. I learned a lot.

But significantly, Wintonick left out Japan. I'd like to point out two
things about this miss.

First, Japan actually experienced the breakdown of conventional documentary
style earlier than the West. It has a similar tragectory---fighting the
phony staginess of Griersonian documentary or propaganda with spontaneity.
But it first happens in 1952 with Hani Susumu's _Children of the Classroom,_
and then his _Children Who Draw_ in 1954. These films were shown in Europe
and America at the time, but had no impact. It speaks to how the discourses
on documentary were ignored by the West. However, inside Japan the
filmmakers working for Hani turned out to be the among the most prolific and
innovative documentary artists of the 1960s and 1970s. How can a documentary
that purports to give a global history of cinema verite ignore the films of
Tsuchimoto and Ogawa?!!? (And this from a filmmaker who went to the 1993
Yamagata Film Festival when they held an enormous retrospective of 1960s
work!)

Second, this seems to be a trend of history that writes out Japanese film. I
have seen so many lists and such of significant films/books/etc. of world
cinema that leave out Japan. This would have been inconceivable in ten,
twenty years ago. This has implications for all of us.

Markus