Documentary Talks

[Aaron Gerow]

The long-awaited, first book edited by the Tokyo Office of the Yamagata 
International Documentary Film Festival has just been published:

Title: Dokyumentari eiga wa kataru: Sakka intabyu no kiseki
Publisher: Miraisha, 2006
ISBN 4624710916
Price: 4800 yen

This is a compilation of the series of interviews with major Japanese 
documentary filmmakers that has run in the YIDFF magazine, Documentary 
Box, since its inception. Filmmakers featured include:

Tsuchimoto Noriaki
Hara Kazuo
Matsumoto Toshio
Koreeda Hirokazu
Kawase Naomi
Mori Tatsuya
Kuroki Kazuo
Haneda Sumiko
Tamura Masaki
Takamine Go

Some of these interviews have been available online at the YIDFF site 
(with English translation), but all them have been reedited and updated 
for the book, and several that were never online (such as the ones with 
Hara and Haneda) and an extra interview with Mori have been added. The 
book also includes new introductions and historical explanations 
written by Abe Markus Nornes, Yasui Yoshio, Ishizaka Kenji, Murayama 
Kyoichiro, Okada Hidenori, Monma Takashi, Aaron Gerow and Sato Makoto.

The interviews cover a wide range of topics, including prewar leftist 
documentary (Prokino and Kamei Fumio), high economic growth and PR 
filmmaking, documentary and radical politics in the 1960s and 1970s, 
WWII and war responsibility, the disabled and government welfare 
policies, documentary and the avant-garde, Okinawan and zainichi 
cultures, personal filmmaking and youth culture, women filmmakers, Aum 
Supreme Truth, Minamata, the Narita Airport struggle, queer filmmaking, 
etc. One of the unique aspects of the interview series was that it also 
focused on important figures who were not directors, such as the 
cameramen Tamura Masaki and Otsu Koshiro, the producer Kudo Mitsuru, 
the sound recordist Okubu Tatsuo, and the composer Matsumura Teizo. It 
provides an unparalleled view of the production of Japanese documentary 
and the history and culture from which it grew and which it 
relentlessly recorded.

Aaron Gerow
Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University
53 Wall Street, Room 316
PO Box 208363
New Haven, CT 06520-8363
USA
Phone: 1-203-432-7082
Fax: 1-203-432-6764
e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu