Sound on Tsuchimoto Afghan films

[Justin Jesty]

Dear Roger,

In terms of a source, the book "Dokyumentarii no umi e - kiroku eiga
sakka Tsuchimoto Noriaki to no taiwa," might be helpful for you.

I've just been glancing through the sections on Tsuchimoto's
Afghanistan films, and it confirms that the reason those two films
don't have original sound is that the audio tape was lost. The first
film ("Mou hitotsu no Afuganisutan Kaaburu nikki 1985 nen") was shot
in 1985, and the second about the Kabul museum was shot in 1988.
Apparently neither was released at the time, and when Tsuchimoto went
back to them over a decade later he couldn't find the sound tape.

I haven't seen "Afghan Spring" either so I can't make any reliable
comments, but it seems that that film was shot in 1988, so it might
not be correct to think of the 1985 film as footage that didn't make
it into the 1988 one. As far as I can tell from reading about it,
"Afghan Spring" has original sound.

Hope that helps
Justin

On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 11:36 AM, Roger Macy <macyroger at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> I have a question on the 'Zakka' DVDs of the 2003 Tsuchimoto Afghan
> record-films.
> There is no original sound. There's no explanation of this on the DVDs or
> the booklet or anything I can put my hands on.  But I think I did learn
> somehow that the sound tracks for his Afghan work were lost.  The only place
> I can think that I might have learnt that is in Fujiwara Toshi's 2006 doc.,
> Eiga wa ikimono no kiroku de aru: Tsuchimoto Noriaki no shigoto. Or is this
> written up anywhere else ?
> But these films are from unreleased footage of Afghan Spring = Yomigaere
> karézu, 1989. I've not seen that. Does it have original sound? Since an
> internet description says it's built up from interviews (as you'd normally
> expect from a Tsuchimoto film), I presume it did. Can anyone help me fill in
> the gaps, please ?
> Roger