When filming a documentary, you might expect the director, or rather the camera, to keep a certain distance towards the subject, thus allowing the audience to make up its mind about the events which unfold. When dealing with issues such as war, abuse and politics, a level of distance may encourage a thought process in the viewer’s mind, but then again if you, as a filmmaker, feel strongly about a topic or want to uncover perhaps more, which might otherwise be hidden from the eye, perhaps this distance can be quite an obstacle. In the case of the documentaries by Japanese director Kazuo Hara, this concept comes into place, and is maybe best suited considering the often quite personal connection of the subject to the filmmaker’s biography. In his 1987 feature “The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On”, one of the most well-known documentaries by the director, he chooses...
- 6/22/2021
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
Japan Society Celebrates the 50th Anniversary of Independent Film Company Shisso Productions with Online Retrospective that Includes their Latest 372-minute Documentary Epic Minamata Mandala
June 4–July 2
Japan Society announces Cinema as Struggle: The Films of Kazuo Hara & Sachiko Kobayashi, a career-spanning online retrospective that celebrates the 50th anniversary of Shisso Productions, the independent film company founded by influential Japanese documentarian Kazuo Hara and his wife, producer and collaborator, influential Japanese documentarian Kazuo Hara and his wife, producer and collaborator, Sachiko Kobayashi in 1971. The series includes nearly all of the pair’s films, including their most recent release, “Minamata Mandala”—a sprawling three-part epic 15 years in the making. All films will stream nationwide through Japan Society’s virtual cinema from June 4-July 2 with some films also available to stream in Canada.
Widely-recognized for their complicated and deeply personal portraits of iconoclastic individuals, Hara and Kobayashi’s work—hailed by documentary luminaries...
June 4–July 2
Japan Society announces Cinema as Struggle: The Films of Kazuo Hara & Sachiko Kobayashi, a career-spanning online retrospective that celebrates the 50th anniversary of Shisso Productions, the independent film company founded by influential Japanese documentarian Kazuo Hara and his wife, producer and collaborator, influential Japanese documentarian Kazuo Hara and his wife, producer and collaborator, Sachiko Kobayashi in 1971. The series includes nearly all of the pair’s films, including their most recent release, “Minamata Mandala”—a sprawling three-part epic 15 years in the making. All films will stream nationwide through Japan Society’s virtual cinema from June 4-July 2 with some films also available to stream in Canada.
Widely-recognized for their complicated and deeply personal portraits of iconoclastic individuals, Hara and Kobayashi’s work—hailed by documentary luminaries...
- 6/5/2021
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
Conceived by Shôhei Imamura, Kazuo Hara’s audacious, deeply unsettling documentary feature follows Kenzo Okuzaki, a 62-year-old WW2 veteran who has fought tirelessly and often violently to bring to justice Japan’s Emperor Hirohito and the Army commanders whom he holds responsible for the countless deaths and other atrocities involving Japanese soldiers during the war in the Pacific.
Harrowing, unflinching and extraordinarily powerful, Hara’s film pushes against the proprieties of Japanese society (the film remains unreleased in its home country), and forces us to question the relationship between documentary filmmaker and protagonist.
Special Features:
• A new filmed interview with Kazuo Hara, shot exclusively for this release.
• Kazuo Hara Masterclass: the filmmaker in conversation at the 2018 London Open City Documentary Festival event.
• 20-page booklet featuring writing by film historians Tony Rayns, Jason Wood and Abé Mark Nornes.
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• Region free Blu-ray and DVD.
Harrowing, unflinching and extraordinarily powerful, Hara’s film pushes against the proprieties of Japanese society (the film remains unreleased in its home country), and forces us to question the relationship between documentary filmmaker and protagonist.
Special Features:
• A new filmed interview with Kazuo Hara, shot exclusively for this release.
• Kazuo Hara Masterclass: the filmmaker in conversation at the 2018 London Open City Documentary Festival event.
• 20-page booklet featuring writing by film historians Tony Rayns, Jason Wood and Abé Mark Nornes.
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• Region free Blu-ray and DVD.
- 10/26/2019
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
Sennan Asbestos Disaster. Image courtesy of Shisso Productions.With Sennan Asbestos Disaster (2017), iconoclastic director Kazuo Hara makes a return ten years in progress, following his previous film The Many Faces of Chika (2005). At three hours and thirty-five minutes (usually screened with a short intermission), the film has many apparent differences from the past breathless titles for which he became known beginning in the early 1970s. Focused on a strong central protagonist pursuing a radical goal, these works depended on sustained conflict and collaboration between filmmaker and subject, defining a model of filmmaking he would theorize as “action documentary.” In distinction, this latest work is an ensemble piece assembled over a long period of time. Sennan Asbestos Disaster is focused on members of the Citizen Group for Sennan Asbestos Damage and their long legal battle that began with the filing of a lawsuit against the government in 2006 and went up to the Supreme Court.
- 11/28/2017
- MUBI
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