Encyclopedia of Documentary Film

[Mark Nornes]

The Routledge Encyclopedia of Docoumentary Film is just out, a huge 
three volume set. You'll find a number of essays on Japanese 
documentary, many by your friends on KineJapan. They include Japanese 
Film (Nornes), Japan: Newsreels (Aaron Gerow), Ogawa Productions 
(Nornes), Iwasaki Akira (Fujiki Hideaki), Prokino (Jeff Isaacs), Kawase 
Naomi (Gerow), Tokyo Olympiad (Nornes), Kamei Fumio (Nornes), 
Tsuchimoto Noriaki (Richard Suchenski), Ichikawa Kon (Ronald Wilson). I 
think that's all of them.

I was an editorial advisor for the encyclopedia project, and thought 
I'd mention a few things that come to mind upon its release.

First of all, these encyclopedias have great power over our 
understanding of film history. While I wasn't particularly attracted to 
the work, I couldn't say no when I saw their provisional list of 
entries and introductory materials. Asia was getting shafted. And 
considering the sheer size of Japanese documentary relative to the rest 
of the world, the slight was particularly egregious for Japan. Their 
advisory board did not seem to have any expertise in Asian documentary, 
so I joined on. This kind of book will have a huge impact on the 
documentary canon, so I thought I'd give my best shot at opening it up. 
I wrote to the editor with many suggestions, lists of people, films, 
and institutions that could not be ignored.

I got ignored. Somehow my email to them never got where it was supposed 
to (one problem may have been that correspondence always went to an 
assistant and never the editor directly). It's too bad, because it left 
the book seriously compromised. Way too late in the project, I noticed 
that my comments did not have an impact on the process. It was too late 
to affect things by then, but I did manage to get some things in...and 
partly thanks to the authors who agreed to come in late and write fast.

Although I have yet to sit down and read it, the selection and coverage 
for Euro-American film is excellent. When it comes to Asia, it's 
miserable. Japan is the only Asian country with its own article. 
Southeast Asia gets lumped into one essay (that doesn't mention Kidlat 
Tahimik, an indication of what the rest of the article is like). No 
Asian film institutions, such as the Yamagata festival, are listed. 
China is ignored, except for Iven's films! India? Korea? Taiwan? etc. 
etc. All cut out.

As for Japan, their initial list only had Ichikawa Kon and Tokyo 
Olympics. That says it all about the place of Japan in the canon (I 
can't remember if my book was out by then). I argued that Ichikawa was 
insignificant, but they wanted him (I wrote a rather dismissive essay 
on the film). When I complained that my suggestions had been ignored, 
they gave me a few slots and the people above were nice enough to write 
up their essays fast. We went for filmmakers rather than individual 
films, because it would allow for the listing of more films.

It all feels like a missed opportunity. Japan came out OK, even if the 
filmmakers' names are backwards (another warning ignored....Ichikawa's 
is correct, of course). But the treatment of Asian filmmakers was 
pretty bad.

Markus