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

Tue Feb 1 20:38:00 EST 2022

Thanks, Markus.
I pasted these into a Word file for easier reading (though without the
evocative photos). Landscape orientation was the best I could do.
John

On Wed, Feb 2, 2022 at 5:13 AM Markus Nornes via KineJapan <
kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:

> 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
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
>
> 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.
>
>
>
>
> ---
>
> *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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>

-- 
John Junkerman
jtj53213 at gmail.com
2-18-6 Ehara-cho, Nakano
Tokyo 165-0023
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