japanese

AND presents: Image and Documentary

One-person video filmmaking, from shooting to post-production, is now the norm for independent directors, and worlds that can only be depicted through personalized filmmaking have opened up. But compared to the days when filmmaking was, by necessity, a team operation, contemporary documentarists who shoot and edit alone lead a solitary existence. This master class series, begun at YIDFF 2007, allows filmmakers to hear from veteran professionals in the technical end of filmmaking. This year’s focus is on cinematography.

With the cooperation of: Documentary Dream Center

Masters of Image: Lecture 1

Oct. 13 (Tue) 13:30–15:30, Forum 3
Speaker Nurith Aviv (Director of Photography, Filmmaker)   Moderator: Osanai Terutaro (Coordinator)

- Nurith Aviv

Please see her biography as International Competition juror.

As the first female director of photography of fiction films in France, Nurith Aviv has shot over a hundred fiction and documentary films, with directors such as Agnès Varda, Amos Gitai, René Allio, and Jacques Doillon. Working in a crew “is like playing music together,” she says. “I never work alone.” She will speak about the joys of her career as a director of photography on films like Agnès Varda’s Daguerreotypes, René Feret’s The Story of Paul (Prix Jean Vigo 1974), René Allio’s Moi, Pierre Rivière . . . , Amos Gitai’s Field Diary, and her own 5-minute short Allenby: Passage.


Masters of Image: Lecture 2

Oct. 13 (Tue) 16:30–18:30, Forum 3
Speaker Otsu Koshiro (Cinematographer)

- Otsu Koshiro

Born in 1934. Otsu began working at Iwanami Productions in 1958, going freelance in 1963 to work as a documentary cameraman with independent production houses, including Ogawa Productions, Seirinsha, and Siglo. He was cinematographer on Ogawa Shinsuke’s The Oppressed Students (1967) and Summer in Narita (1968); and on many of Tsuchimoto Noriaki’s films, including Pre-Partisan (1969), Minamata—The Victims and Their World (1971), Minamata Revolt—A People’s Quest for Life (1973), Shiranui Sea (1975), and Minamata Disease—Parts 1–3 (1974–75). Other films as cinematographer include Islands (1993, Dir: Semyon D. Aranovich, Otsuka Hiroshi), dolce . . . (1999, Dir: Alexander Sokurov), and Sato Makoto’s Artists in Wonderland (1998) and Hanako (2001). In 2005 he made his debut as director with Butoh Dancer Kazuo Ohno.

Starting his career at Iwanami Productions and going on to work with the leading figures of Japanese documentary—Ogawa Shinsuke, Tsuchimoto Noriaki, Sato Makoto, and others—it is no exaggeration to say that Otsu Koshiro has set the course of Japanese documentary from behind his camera lens. This year’s YIDFF program includes Fence (Dir: Fujiwara Toshi) and dolce . . . (Dir: Alexander Sokurov), both of which Otsu shot. Using footage from Tsuchimoto’s Minamata—The Victims and their World and Shiranui Sea, and Sato Makoto’s Hanako, he will speak to the filmmakers of the digital generation about the density of films “kneaded together through the multiple eyes” of the film crew, and the weight of “being tested by the documentary subject.”