Extreme Private Ethos: Japanese Documentary Series

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Thursday, 16 February 2012 05:00

Written by Sean Cusack and Renzo Adler

While a new wave of Japanese documentaries emerging from the fallout of the March 11 tsunami and nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, The Asia Society (725 Park Avenue at 70th Street, NYC)  will mark the anniversary of this inauspicious occasion, from March 10 to the 31st, 2012, by looking at doccumentaries past with Japan in Extreme Private Ethos: Japanese Doccumentaries.

This special film series features six films made by Japan's most controversial douccmentary makers. The Society, founded in 1956 by famed philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, provides a forum for the issues and viewpoints reflected in both traditional and contemporary Asian art, and has become a cornerstone in the proliferation of quality Asian films and performance art in the United States.

Japan in Extreme Private Ethos probes into extremely private experiences combined with commentary on social and political ills. From treatises on mortality (Death of a Japanese Salesman), the unresolved ghosts of WWII (The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On), and the effects of North Korea on world politics as well as on the family unit (Dear Pyongyang), these films push the boundaries of doccumentary film-making to create unique works that probe some of the darker corners of Japanese society.

Director Naomi Kawase will attend for the screenings of his films Embracing and Tarachime

Asia Society Film Curator La Frances Hui said this about the series: “What is shocking about these films… is how far each one goes to expose the most intimate experiences, motives and thoughts of individuals...they convey extremely personal statements made by the filmmakers.” .

Some of the films featured in the series include:

Death of a Japanese Salesman
Sunada Tomoaki
2011
Recently retired from a company after some 40 years of service, Sunada Tomoaki, father of filmmaker Sunada Mami, is diagnosed with terminal cancer and only has a few months left to live. True to his pragmatic core, Sunada sets out to accomplish a list of tasks before his final departure: playing with his grandchildren, planning his own funeral and saying “I love you” to his wife, among others. In a voice over, using words taken from her father’s diary, filmmaker Sunada speaks tenderly in first person as his own father.

Dear Pyongyang
Yang Yonghi
2005
Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, this film focuses on how a second-generation Korean Japanese, director Yang Yonghi grew up not understanding why her father -- originally from the southern part of the Korean peninsula -- decided to pledge loyalty to North Korea, became the local leader of a pro-North Korea organization, and sent his three teenage sons -- Yang’s brothers -- to live in Pyongyang in the '70s. Shot in both Osaka and Pyongyang, this film documents the family's various reunions in the North Korean capital, the ritual of sending large boxes of supplies to Pyongyang, and the filmmaker's complex relationship with her father, marked by both ideological conflicts and affection. The film provides a rare glimpse into the life of ethnic Koreans in Japan as well as life in Pyongyang. Yang has been banned from entering North Korea due to this film and its follow-up, Sona, My Other Self (2009), about her young niece growing up in Pyongyang.

Embracing
Kawase Naomi
1992
Against the advice of family members, Naomi Kawase sets out to search for the father she has never met. As the filmmaker looks up old photographs and public registries to locate her father, a sense of loneliness and quiet perseverance permeates the screen. Made when Kawase was 23 years old, Embracing charts a deeply emotional journey filled with pain, emptiness and longing.

The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On
Hara Kazuo
1987
62 year-old war veteran Okuzaki Kenzo is known to be an erratic and attention-seeking man. He has made a declaration to assassinate Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei and was found shooting pachinko balls with a homemade slingshot at Emperor Hirohito. While stationed in New Guinea during WWII, several soldiers in his unit died mysteriously. Filmmaker Hara Kazuo follows the unpredictable Okuzaki as he tracks down and stomps into the homes of fellow veterans to seek out the truth about these deaths. His behavior turns increasingly violent as he learns of gruesome and savage acts committed on Japanese soldiers within the army unit.

Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974
Hara Kazuo
1974
In this impossibly private documentary, filmmaker Hara Kazuo follows his ex-wife Takeda Miyuki around with his 16mm camera claiming that it is "the only way to stay connected with her." A radical feminist of her time, Takeda is an independent spirit who ventures into the tough world of Okinawa's go-go bars, gets herself pregnant by sleeping with an American GI, resides in a commune for single women with children, and rants about the filmmaker's shortcomings. Shockingly provocative and at times masochistic, the film exposes the rawest of emotions as the filmmaker confronts his own love life and the world around him.

As a Japan has emerged from a major crisis, its people have begun to ask some very difficult questions about the state of its society. These films offer a glimpse into a long standing tradition of Japanese film makers that have dared to push social and political boundries in the name of cinema and contemplation on the human condition.

Tickets are $9 per show for students and seniors, $11 for the general public. Discounts for the entire series are available upon request.

To view trailers and for more information on the series, visit: AsiaSociety.org/ExtremeJapan  

Extreme Private Ethos: Japanese Documentaries
March 10-31, 2012

Asia Society
725 Park Ave
New York, NY 10016

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