[KineJapan] Iwanami Productions retrospective at Ill cinema ritirovato

[quentin turnour]

I might have missed something, but has what the Ill cinema ritrovato, Bologna go-to-for-Japanese screen heritage team of Jacoby and Nordstrom are doing this year already been mentioned on the listserv. Or is it that Bologna is out of bounds again for many of us. So it's been overlooked?
https://festival.ilcinemaritrovato.it/en/sezione/iwanami-productions-il-vero-giappone/

Alexander and Johan have been mining Japanese archival sources for Ill cinema ritrovato for a while now. But this is the first time I think they've done a strand on documentary. And its perhaps not the most obvious choice to make as an entry point into classic Japanese documentary, leaping over the most likely subjects and (mostly) focusing on the work of pioneering woman director Haneda Sumiko, with a few other minor classics of post-war sponsored Japanese documentary slipped in, such as Kuroki Kazuo's KAIHEKI/THE SEA WALL. 
Ill cinema retrovato started a streaming strand last year, and are running it again this year. But its pale compared to the live program. But no doubt due to rights issues, or that titles have never been digitised. The later is the case wth the Iwanami titles; Alex and Johan have burrowed fairly deep in the NAJ and Japan Foundation's probably now little-used 'Culture Film' 35mm collection. Marcus and others here have written about Sumiko and some of these filmmakers in English, and a few interviews turn up in translation in old back issues of Documentary Box. But these films are not easily seen. I caught KAIHEKI at a Yamagata screening once, but have to confess that's all I've seen (although no doubt someone may know of on-line sources). 
I wonder how often any sort of Japanese documentary heritage retrospective has been run in Italy? In the Udine Far East festival? (Matteo Boscarol might know this).
There is a conversation about the program series that can be accessed here: THE REAL JAPAN: THE DOCUMENTARIES OF IWANAMI PRODUCTIONS (0) - Il Cinema Ritrovato. But you'll have to go the E50 festival streaming fee to have a look. Maybe see if there are any other titles in the streaming line up of interest. A restoration of US documentary filmmaker James Blue's early French dramatic feature LES OLIVERS DE LA JUSTICE might interest to readers here, or restorations of Govindan Arvindan's KUMATTY or some of Lionel Rosgin's key films.
Quentin TurnourNational Archives of Australia/ Cinema Reborn Film Festival, Sydney.





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