[KineJapan] Hara Kazuo's Cinema Juku wraps up

[Markus Nornes]

Japanese self-documentary was completely cut off from its foreign
counterparts. And the choices were not the obvious ones. They were people
that have already had contact with Japanese, often through Yamagata.

That he could have all these foreigners and not make any substantial
connections says a lot about the generally hermetically sealed discourse
that goes on here. There's a lack of translation, so they are not aware of
the way "self-documentary" has been discussed through Montaigne and the
idea of the "essayistic." No one is reading English texts, so no one has
introduced that. The only scholar that was called on what a fellow named
Serizawa, who came from a psychological POV. Discussions were strictly
between panelists; if you wanted to pitch in, you had to wait until the end
of the day and submit a question in writing and hope Hara chose it from the
pile. I had plenty of things to say or add, but was never called on. Too
bad.

It resulted in a strange disconnect between how its perceived here and
what's been going on abroad for decades. Abroad, you have mature filmmakers
like Marker, Hammer, Varda, Trinh, McElwee, and many others. There is a
strong attention to film form, while being tied to a personal POV. In
Japan, the discussion kept devolving toward a group of one-hit-wonder young
people making films about their families and then disappearing. This was
one of Sato's main complaints in the debate with Yasuoka. And in the years
before his death, he was increasingly exploring the essayistic films abroad
and beginning to make his own. Thus, yesterday Hara showed (and made fun
of) a TV program Sato made about the birth of his second daughter—made in a
direct cinema style with a television network, over two decades ago and
just after his first big film, and probably just to make some cash; it's
significant that not a single person mentioned Memories of Agano, a truly
essayistic film and Sato's late attempt to push the self-documentary in a
new, formally inventive direction.

Sato Makoto's death was a huge, huge loss for Japanese cinema.

Markus

On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 11:48 AM, Alex Zahlten <Alex.Zahlten at gmx.de> wrote:

> Markus, thank you for a great description of the Cinema Juku talks! I was
> wondering how Hara set up the relation of documentaries made in Japan and
> those made in other contexts. Since the Juku explicitly makes the
> distinction via the title of "Kaigai ni okeru serufu" I wondered how Hara
> handled this in the talks themselves.
>
> Best,
> Alex
>
>
>  *Gesendet:* Samstag, 28. März 2015 um 14:05 Uhr
> *Von:* "Markus Nornes" <amnornes at umich.edu>
> *An:* "Japanese Cinema Discussion Forum" <kinejapan at lists.osu.edu>
> *Betreff:* [KineJapan] Hara Kazuo's Cinema Juku wraps up
>
> Today was the last day of Hara Kazuo’s Cinema Juku. This was a year-long
> series of talks with the theme of documenting the self. Hara gathered
> people at Athenee Francais once a month for sessions featuring a mix of
> screenings and discussion with filmmakers. It included foreign filmmakers
> like Gina Kim and Wu Wenguang. You can see the whole lineup at their
> website: http://newcinemajuku.net
>
>
>
> Today’s session was to sum up everything, pivoting around the debate
> between producer Yasuoka Takaharu and Sato Makoto in 2003. Sato was quite
> critical of the “self-documentary” that had taken over Japanese
> documentary, and Yasuoka was a supporter. They touched on the debate, but
> constant sidetracks (some pretty interesting) kept them from really
> wrapping things up in any serious way. It’s too bad.
>
>
>
> Today’s juku also suffered from a problem that ran through the entire
> year. The place of women in the project was really quite problematic. This
> was true from the start, when the largely female staff bailed and left the
> juku after the first month or two. And while Hara did feature a number of
> important women, like Kawase Naomi, Hamano Sachi, and Yang Yonghi, too
> often they were relegated to themes connected to women; thus, it was not
> surprising that no women were invited to today’s meta-level wrap-up of the
> year’s efforts. Hara also treated men and women very differently. Men were
> cut a lot of slack, given mostly softball questions, and questionable
> behavior was excused with little to no comment. For example, pink director
> Hirano Katsuyuki talked about the children that he fathered (ultimately in
> absentia, except for the sex act) he admitted he doesn’t really care to
> even see them, but sometimes gives them presents. Hara did little more than
> laugh. But when when women took the stage, Hara relentlessly questioned
> them about their most intimate personal lives. It was sometimes quite
> uncomfortable, as when he pressed Kawase Naomi about the state of her
> marriage.
>
>
>
> Just today this blind spot about gender was particularly obvious. One of
> today’s films was Kazoku Ketchup, one of the earliest self-documentaries,
> which begins with the main character urinating on his mother in front of
> the family shrine. Hara said little about this scene except that it “took
> courage.” In contrast, later in the day Hara showed Sato Makoto’s diary
> film about the birth of his second daughter, and ridiculed Sato and the
> film. He didn’t get far into his reasons, but it was clear he couldn’t see
> how a well-functioning couple going through childbirth—together—had any
> social dimension. He seemed blind to what was going on in the film, perhaps
> because there was nothing extreme or provocative in it. Or it could just be
> that the two never got along. But it could just be Hara’s blind spot;
> earlier in the juku he was perplexed why his daughter from Extreme Private
> Eros—who he admitted he hardly spent time with over the decades—refused to
> go on stage when he showed the film….in turn perplexing many audience
> members who wondered why he didn’t get it.
>
>
>
> This was all rather unfortunate, because Hara is very smart otherwise,
> listens to people with a special intensity, and generally holds great
> discussions. I learned a lot in the juku, and admired the ambition to hold
> such sustained discussion. Just today, there were several high points with
> Kawanaka Nobuhiro and Matsue Tetsuaki.  But I also understood why so many
> people stopped coming halfway through.
>
>
>
> Markus
>
> --
>   *Markus Nornes*
> Department of Screen Arts and Cultures
> Professor of Asian Cinema, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
> Professor, School of Art & Design
>
> *Department of Screen Arts and Cultures*
> *6348 North Quad*
> *105 S. State Street*
> *Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285*
>
>
>    _______________________________________________ KineJapan mailing list
> KineJapan at lists.osu.edu https://lists.osu.edu/mailman/listinfo/kinejapan
>
> _______________________________________________
> KineJapan mailing list
> KineJapan at lists.osu.edu
> https://lists.osu.edu/mailman/listinfo/kinejapan
>
>


-- 
*Markus Nornes*
Department of Screen Arts and Cultures
Professor of Asian Cinema, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
Professor, School of Art & Design

*Department of Screen Arts and Cultures*
*6348 North Quad*
*105 S. State Street*
*Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/kinejapan/attachments/20150329/b43e3ae8/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
KineJapan mailing list
KineJapan at lists.osu.edu
https://lists.osu.edu/mailman/listinfo/kinejapan