[KineJapan] 1/6—10 From YIDFF—A Movie Capital

[Markus Nornes]

Hi everyone,

I hope it didn't escape your notice that dafilms.com is streaming 10 key
Japanese documentaries that launched from Yamagata International
Documentary Film Festival.

https://asia.dafilms.com/spotlight-on/1129-yamagata2021

The festival asked me to write up some blog posts about both the films
vis-a-vis the festival. I contributed six short essays, and since they were
only distributed by Facebook, I thought I'd post them here as well.

Cheers,

Markus
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How appropriate that this series kicks off with Ogawa Productions’ *A Movie
Capital *(*Eiga no miyako, *1989), an unconventional PR film for the first
Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival in 1989. Looking back at
that moment—on the very pivot from Cold War to post-Cold War—we can
appreciate this film as the record of a turning point in the history of
Asian documentary.

I first met the great director Ogawa Shinsuke at the 1988 Hawai’i
International Documentary Film Festival, where I was working as an intern.
He was there showing his collective’s last major film, *Magino Village
Story: Sundial Carved with a Thousand Years of Notches *(*Magino-mura
monogatari: Sennen kizami no hidokei, *1987). One of my jobs was minding
Ogawa, leading him from screening to screening and making sure he was
happy. That was no problem. He was endlessly optimistic and enthusiastic
and we swiftly became friends. I loved his film and was entranced by his
many stories; he took to me, I learned later, because he couldn’t believe
there was an American who did not possess a credit card. Apparently, I
scored points in his book for my poverty.

He told me many stories about his exploits over the decades, but he was
most excited about a new project: the Yamagata International Film Festival.
Everywhere he went, he carried a handful of festival applications and
pressed them into the hands of the filmmakers he met. I vividly recall the
gap between my first impression and his bright enthusiasm for the Yamagata
festival. He was a charismatic talker, so it sounded absolutely splendid.
However, I was not the only person that thought, “A festival in
Yamagata?  …where’s
Yamagata?” I had to look on a map, and when I saw how far it was from the
cultural hub of Tokyo I must confess I had my doubts about Ogawa’s grand
vision. Little did I know that YIDFF would most definitely put Yamagata on
the map.

Sometime after we returned to our respective homes, I contacted Ogawa. I
was considering a gap year between my MA and PhD and perhaps Ogawa knew of
possibilities for me in Japan? I was actually hoping he’d invite me to work
with his collective in one capacity or another, although I was too modest
to come right out and ask. To my delight, he immediately responded and
within months I unexpectedly found myself in Japan interviewing for a
programming position at the Yamagata International Documentary Film
Festival. I glimpsed their operation close-up, noting what seemed to be a
chasm between their relatively modest resources and their grand ambitions.
Nevertheless, they brought me on as a coordinator, and it’s no exaggeration
to say the festival changed my life just as it changed Asian documentary.
It turned out those ambitions were quite realistic. As I will explain
below, it had everything to do with the historical moment.

I started working at Yamagata in 1990, and much of the time I was living in
an apartment Ogawa Productions kept near their office. My roommate was
Iizuka Toshio, the director of *A Movie Capital. *It was a tiny one-room
apartment with tatami floors. The bathtub had been converted to storage and
was filled with cardboard boxes packed with filmmaking detritus. So at the
end of every day Iizuka and I would plod over to a nearby public bath to
wash away our weariness, and on the way home we’d pick up beers at a
convenience store. We would sit on the tatami, enjoying the day’s end
drinks and trading stories.

Iizuka was in the middle of editing *A Movie Capital. *The editing was
being done just down the street at Ogawa Productions’ Ogikubo studio. That
sounds splendid, but it was actually a typical Japanese apartment converted
into a jury-rigged post-production studio. There was a kitchen just big
enough to stand in. A back bedroom had a 16mm editing station. The space
in-between had been converted into a projection booth, transforming this
modest living room into a screening room. Over a season, I dropped in to
see the Ogawa Pro team editing away, and at night Iizuka updated me on
their progress—or lack thereof.

Iizuka was always circumspect, taking care not to criticize Ogawa. But he
felt vexed by the mountain of footage they had accumulated during the
festival. Every time he took a crack at giving it form, Ogawa knocked him
down and he had to start again. It was clearly frustrating. I recall
sitting in the screening room more than once when Ogawa was intensely
critiquing the editing. The director’s words were too rapid for me to
really grasp, but the disappointment was unmistakable. One night, Iizuka
informed me that Ogawa was “helping him edit the film” and it finally
approached completion. When it was done, they asked me to translate the
subtitles; I was surely not the best choice, but I was cheap.

I wasn’t sure what to make of that whole experience until much later, when
I found out this was Ogawa’s MO whenever one of his staff tried to direct
his own film. The idea of masters giving their apprentices the chance to
come into their own as an artist was as true of cinema as the traditional
arts, and surely Ogawa felt compelled to support his key collective members
in this way. But the three times he did this, he ended up severely
criticizing his staff and ultimately taking over the post production
process. It happened when Assistant Director Fukuda Katushiko made *Filmmaking
and the Way to the Village *(*Eigazukuri to mura e no michi, *1973),
leading to Fukuda’s departure from the collective and Iizuka’s ascension
the role of assistant director. It happened just after that when his other
assistant director Yumoto Mareo directed *Dokkoi! Songs from the
Bottom *(*Dokkoi!
Ningenbushi—Kotobukicho: Jiyu rodosha no machi, *1975); in this case, Ogawa
so severely criticized Yumoto that he left the collective never to be heard
of again.

Thankfully, Iizuka stuck in there, and went on to forge a career of his own
as a director. The film about the festival that finally came of their
collective efforts is a fascinating account of both the first outing and
the times. For those lucky enough to have visited the festival over the
years, many of the rooms, theaters, and faces will look familiar. The
continuity from then to now is striking.

But this was also a very special year. The spectre of June 4 and the fall
of the Berlin Wall hung over the festival, especially since China prevented
director Tian Zhuangzhuang from traveling to Japan to serve on the jury (a
key sequence in the film). The scene where Ogawa intensely engages Polish
director Andrzej Marek Drazewski about the future of socialism vividly
captures the moment. The world was teetering on the brink of something new,
and the space of the film festival lent itself to heady discussions about
future directions. Another transition is striking: the film opens with the
death of Joris Ivens—one of the original founders of the documentary
form—who was scheduled to show his new film in person. Sadly, Marceline
Loridan had to visit alone. But she sets the tone for both the film and the
festival when she said,

For us the most important thing was to find a new cinematic form and
method. We didn’t want to work with the old methods. To find a new form,
you must liberate yourself. You must be free. You must be bold. You must
express yourself in the film.

This captures the spirit of the festival in 1989. Japan was unique in Asia
for a tradition of documentary that started in the 1920s and regularly
brought the avant-garde and documentary into dialogue; however, by the
1980s most people associated nonfiction with conventional television and
Yamagata dedicated itself to being free and bold and exploding audiences’
preconceptions about documentary.

More importantly, the 1989 YIDFF also marked a turning point for Asian
documentary, broadly construed. Most countries in the region suffered under
dictatorships and illiberal governments where freedom of expression was
unavailable—or dangerous. Furthermore, 16mm film stock was so expensive
that only governments, large businesses and television networks could
afford to make documentaries. However, right around this time,
dictatorships fell, social movements looked to new forms of expression and
video emerged as a form of low-budget production. Shocked that there were
no Asian films for their competition section, the festival gathered these
independent filmmakers and critics from across the region for its 1st Asia
Symposium. *A Movie Capital* captures some of their discussions about the
difficulties and dreams of Asian producers. At the end of the symposium,
the great Filipino filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik drafted a manifesto which the
assembled filmmakers signed. It ended with a reference to Ivens’ new film:

We the Asian Filmmakers present here, declare our commitment to maintain a
network of Asian Filmmakers sharing of our visions, as well as our problems
and solutions. We dramatize her, our desire to plant the seeds for the
renaissance of independent documentary filmmaker in our region. We affirm
here with optimism, our determination to seek, develop and implement
approaches to deal with the obstacles, so that future international events
like YIDFF will not be short of good Asian films. We declare here, the
SPIRIT of the independent Asian documentary filmmakers is alive! And will
one day, soar with the wind!

Indeed, this is exactly what happened. Every two years, more and more Asian
filmmakers came to Yamagata to show their work. They got to know their
colleagues, and an intricate network quickly developed. Through Yamagata’s
extensive historical retrospectives they were able to see the classics of
Japanese and world documentary, which was particularly precious before the
age of Youtube and the home video. And in this way Yamagata became a
vibrant hub for Asian filmmakers, a role it plays to the present day.

*A Movie Capital* is a valuable record of this unique moment in film
history. Although it was the first film of Iizuka Toshio’s long career, it
became the last film of Ogawa Productions. Sadly, while Ogawa helped birth
this consequential international event, cancer had taken root deep in his
body. He would be unable to attend the 1991 festival, though many Asian
filmmakers visited his sick bed on their way to and from Yamagata. Those
filmmakers and the ones that followed in their footsteps circulated between
their homes and the biennial movie capital of Yamagata. And over these 30
years of festivals, Asian documentary has flourished, soaring with the wind.




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*Markus Nornes*
*Professor of Asian Cinema*
*Interim Chair, Dept. of Asian Languages and Culture*

Department of Film, Television and Media, Department of Asian Languages and
Cultures, Penny Stamps School of Art & Design




*Homepage: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nornes/
<http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nornes/>*
*Department of Film, Television and Media*
*6348 North Quad*
*105 S. State Street**Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285*
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