Yamagata: ode 1 & Oishi Apartments

[GavinRees at aol.com]

Yes, I too went to Yamagata and I am somewhat regretting it. Don't get me 
wrong, the festival itself was excellent. After 2 days back my immune system 
still hasn't recovered from sustained alcohol poisoning. I am withdrawn, a 
sickly white colour, and barely able to look at the sun anymore. (Being in 
all those darkened rooms, you see.) I am certainly planning to go next time 
in 2001, if I can. 

I have to admit, I didn't think as much of Ode as Markus did. I found the 
material in it sociological interesting, ie it said something about two women 
playing at SM and the kind of theatrical space they contruct for themselves. 
A gestural kind of  costume play. It is S&M without anybody getting hurt 
(which I thought was the point, at least a little bit.) The tatamae of 
transgression,  perhaps. They seemed to be playing in front of two very 
different kinds of audiences. In the first venue, the customers appear to be 
trendy young media types, in the second, presumably a strip club in Shinjiku 
or somewhere, they are straight laced salarymen. The contrast between the two 
was quite striking I thought. 

One thing that really irked me about it, and a lot of the lower budget works 
in the Japan Panorama section was the complete  lack of craft skills. The 
film makers seemed often, unaware or even proud of their inability to hold 
the cameras properly, frame shots, or understand how to record audio. It is a 
pity really, because it takes away a lot of the impact of the material. I 
don't really understand why they seem proud of it. Maybe it is gesture of 
defiance against hollywood, and the conventional media, I am not sure. People 
shooting on DV in the UK, are squeezing out broadcast quality images, from 
the same little cameras that people use here. (The visual quality of most of 
the work shot on DV from Taiwan and Korea was much better than much of the 
Japanese material.)

One exception to this complaint,  might be a film called Decchi, which was 
shot on Super 8. The director Manabe Kaori, clearly hasn't had that much 
instruction in the technical aspects of what she does, forinstance she is 
recording on the banks of a river in the wind, and doesn't use a wind-sock on 
the mic. (This is a good place or me to declare an interest here. I wrote the 
English subtitles for it, and so had to struggle through all the places I 
couldn't hear.) Sound aside though, there something very satisfying about the 
way she throws the camera around. The lens is a fixed standard lens, and so 
she films everything in close up, or mid shot. She has great control over the 
story too, it's like  a self peeling onion: the layers of the narrative slip 
off gently by themselves. She meets an old man she has seen fishing on the 
river, and asks if she can film him. He says yes, and what follows is a short 
history of a man's life from his days as an orpan to a semi-happily married 
man, a dissection of a marriage, and a very touching account of the 
relationship of a young female filmmaker from the country, and an oldman 
living in Shitamachi. He is at first reluctant to let her film all aspects of 
his life, and accuses her of being a papparazi, but  by the end of the film 
he is advising her that if she wants to get the best results, she should be 
more like a paparazzi, and not hold back so much. 

That takes me  back to Oishi Appartments. I agree with everything Markus 
wrote. The material is stunning, but unfortunately I doubt that the filmmaker 
has the right to use it. 

She seemed to be implying in the Q and A session afterwards, that she had 
left the camera on just be accident and that she didn't know it was rolling 
at first. I might have misheard that, she definitely used the word "guzen" 
but she may have been referring to the opportunity, rather than the fact the 
camera was on.  One of the disturbing things about the situation, was that 
the two old ladies seemed very lonely for company, and went out of their way 
to be hospitable and open towards her , and I suspect that she has abused 
that.　Towards the end of the piece her voice starts to get tenser and she 
tries to beat a retreat. It sounded to me like the same tension I feel, when 
I notice that I am running out of tape or battery during shooting an 
interview. 

I was wondering what the legal implications of this might be. If a 
hypothetical filmmaker in Japan, were to enter a home, and film somebody 
naked without their verbal or written permission, are they in danger of 
becoming liable? It would be interesting to know. 

All the best, 

Gavin Rees