Yamagata: Docu-karaoke

[Mark Mays]

I'm really enjoying the recaps, this one is especially fascinating. Thanks.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> [mailto:owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu] On Behalf Of
> amnornes at umich.edu
> Sent: Monday, October 08, 2007 10:30 PM
> To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> Cc: doc at ctools.umich.edu
> Subject: Yamagata: Docu-karaoke
> 
> Yesterday, an Australian bloke accused me of being the prime
> propagandist for the Yamagata festival, and I guess I:m guilt as
> charged. But still just telling it as it is. It:s really a special,
> living animal---as director Yano wrote in his Documentary Box article.
> 
> Of course, there are low points. Just came from one. Fujioka Asako had
> the brilliant idea of a set of workshops/master classes on sound and
> documentary. Sound rarely gets the attention it deserves, in theory,
> pedagogy or practice. And I think it:s particularly bad in Asia.
> Documentarists here clearly aren:t paying attention to sound. It:s
> obviously enough for them that it:s being recorded by the mike on their
> camcorder, which signals either an overemphasis on the image or on the
> basic recording functions of the documentary. In any case, the
> workshops are very much needed. Costa was an interesting choice, but
> the first thing he said was, "Well, I didn:t prepare anything. I never
> do and that:s the point."  That sounded like trouble. He went droned on
> for an hour about his filmmaking, so catatonic I thought he was going
> to drop his head on the table and go to sleep. He opened with a
> dismissal of theory, and when he finally got to sound an hour later he
> held up the Soviets as his idols---obviously, never read Eisenstein,
> Pudovkin et al's theoretical statement on sound. In between, he decried
> the monstrosities he was forced to watch upstairs as a member of the
> competition jury, and advised the assembled young directors that they
> only needed to watch Chaplin to understand cinema. How watching a
> silent film helps you craft a better sound track was unclear. He did
> get into sound, stating that his basic message was that it was
> "expensive." That you can:t do anything with amateur equipment (not
> helpful for this crowd of Asian independents), and then the next minute
> he asserted that the trick was how to eliminate money from the
> equation. That's about the time I left for lunch.
> 
> Luckily, yesterday was fantastic. There was the second installment of
> J-Pitch here, a UniJapan project initially created by John Williams. I
> think this was another collaboration Asako brought to Yamagata. Great
> idea. Basically to have producers of one sort or another come in an
> explain how the system works. There was a nice session with a serious
> and impressive NHK producer, and then yesterday's bit with Kawase's
> producer from France (she joined him for the first part). He was quite
> interesting and, although Costa just got in a direct dig at the guy, I
> thought he was refreshingly supportive of the artistic end of things in
> ways that I rarely see in American producers.
> 
> There was also a nice panel on postwar German documentary. Their theme
> was on war memory and the documentary. Four directors on stage. After
> discussing their own work and positions, which were strongly
> self-conscious about generational difference (moving from accusatory
> attitudes to more reflective and sympathetic ones). The panel had been
> taken to the Japanese doc Ants (Ari no heitai), which is about a vet
> who gives testimony to the atrocities he witnessed and participated in.
> The panel spontaneously invited the Japanese director to the stage,
> which initiated a fascinating back and forth about differences and
> similarities between Germany and Japan. Andreas Veile asked a series of
> pointed and great questions of the director. He noted that the Japanese
> vet's assertation that he was just an ant, no choice but to follow
> orders, was a discourse familiar to all Germans. They hear the same
> thing, and he felt this was a way of avoiding taking responsibility. He
> noted that the Japanese director intercut those scenes with close-ups
> of ants, and wondered if that meant there was no ironic or critical
> difference between the vet and the filmmaker. He worried that there was
> none, considering that he reiterated the ant image in the title of the
> film. The Japanese director responded by veering into well-worn tropes:
> hi no maru, national anthem, victim consciousness, basically steering
> around the question. Andreas wasn:t satisfied---I love follow-ups, they
> are so rare----and he reiterated the question and phrased it more
> directly. Same result. The Germans later wondered if there was a
> translation problem, but I suspect that the Japanese director wasn:t
> equipped to understand the question in the first place.
> 
> They also noted that his film had many images of the war in China, and
> they asked the Japanese director if this was the first time such images
> were inserted into the public sphere here (the film gave them that
> sense, and the heroic posturing of the intro and Q&A did as well). The
> Japanese director and the MC explained that there were few images out
> there, that the war was taboo in Japanese society, and cited only
> Emperor's Naked Army when they asked about films. The Germans, on the
> other hand, explained how a series of films---most especially Holocaust
> and Shoah---rocked German society. I suppose this is the way most
> Japanese see the situation, but in conversations with the Germans at
> Komian last night we discussed how it's a little different. WWII is
> everywhere in japan, all the time----in contrast to the states where we
> really don:t hear much about it unless "the greatest generation" is
> being invoked to start a war somewhere. I suspect there are as many tv
> shows, reports, newspaper and magazine articles as Germany. But the
> German directors talked about the incredible impact Shoah had, how
> everyone knows the film and most saw it. But I'd bet good money that
> the people walking around outside without festival badges have never
> heard of Hara Kazuo. Fascinating how all those films about the war
> create no reverberations like in Germany. We wondered if it said
> something about the two societies, or does it have something to do with
> the relative position and prestige of film?
> 
> The day ended with a big bang. Another Asako and Company project was
> documentary karaoke night. It was a crazy and wonderful idea. The
> festival staff approached a number of directors---from India, Japan,
> China, Philippines, etc.----to create music videos\documentaries to
> which they added karaoke subtitles. The Fins did their revolutionary
> music. The science film staff created a wonderful film with the
> Tetsuwan Atom song. Kawase danced to her film with her child on stage.
> But the highlight had to be, again, the Germans. But less because of
> the Germans than the film that the Tokyo office put together. The tune
> was Beethoven's 9th, the finale, which clearly needs a conductor. So
> there was festival director Yano, who is famous world-wide for being
> invisible during the festival, off in some corner smoking and never
> ever taking any stage. Yano conducting the 9th, probably stumble-down
> drunk, in the office, out on the street at night in a lovely image
> befitting a jazz album cover, a bunch of Germans next to the screen
> leading the entire theater in a rousing chorus. Yano will never live it
> down. When he arrived at Komian later that night, the entire place
> erupted in En Die Freude as he slinked away to another room.
> 
> Markus