Japanese Cinema(S): Film Form And The Problems Of Modernity
The rise of documentary filmmaking in the wartime period made popular in Japan what would be one of the most influential styles of filmmaking. Documentary film is based on the attempt to document reality, and inherent in that application is unclear boundaries and constant evolution. The attraction to documentary films and documentary style filmmaking is because of its relation to reality. By attempting to capture reality, the audience is drawn in to wholeheartedly believing the contents of the film. This leads to the view that documentaries are unbiased. However, as with all film, documentaries are not a capture of any situation in its entirety, but only a small sliver of it; only one perspective. This alone imposes a bias on the situation, and the director’s ability to edit the film further extends that bias. Perhaps even by definition, documentaries are rooted in reality; they tend to carry more weight than non-documentaries. This is one of the reasons why some non-documentary films mimic the style of documentary films. They try to impress upon the viewers that documentaries, like non-documentaries are still just films and carry the bias of the director. In the postwar era of Japan many films have blurred the distinction between documentary and non-documentary in order to help them represent something intangible such as how to capture memory in relation to one’s self, or the problem of trying to represent people who are fighting for representation. This was in part due to the large amount of economic and social, though unequal, growth in the postwar era. The transformation from destruction to prosperity was due in large part to the economic miracle. However, this period of high economic growth came at the cost of grinding jobs with long hours, unequal distribution of benefits, and immense environmental damage. Social changes came at a much slower rate, but a new society, one completely different from wartime, took root in the 1950’s and...
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