Shishōsetsu 1

Writes Kawanaka, "Video is a medium of image as well as sound. Walking on a gravel road with a camera, the crunch sound is captured in real time. Such [an] observation seems obvious, but as a filmmaker, the ability to record sound in real time was very new to me. Referencing a can-kicking game I played as a child, I followed the rolling can and recorded the resonant sounds of the can hitting the ground."

Video began as a medium that inspired discovery. This art documentary traces the expressive roots of “media art” in Japan — works of video, performances, and installations created using video technology that allowed for free and creative visual expression.

Masato Hara made his directorial debut in high school in 1968 and achieved a reputation as a young prodigy. Many years later, he continues to make films and show his old experimental 'live-screening' films, but is saddled with massive debts. This film follows eight years in his life.

In recent years, my older colleagues and friends have begun to pass away one after another. I wonder if I'm reaching that age myself, and I feel like time is chasing me. I had a brush with death when I was diagnosed with stomach cancer in 2005, and I was able to enjoy that situation with more objectivity and acceptance than I thought. In 2011, I had major surgery and lost my vocal cords. Since then, I've had surgery almost every year, and this life on the edge is my "landscape." (Nobuhiro Kawanaka)

The first installment in the "Video Letters" series, in which two artists exchange images. The story unfolds as each artist incorporates the other's images into their own, like nesting layers.

Since she was a little girl, Nagisa Yoko had two dreams: one was to have a song written for her by Aku Yu; the other was to sing at the Shinjuku Koma Theater. Aku Yu had already had written an original song for her. When Nagisa heard that the Shinjuku Koma Theater was to close down, she decided that she would have to rent the hall herself, in order to realize her dream. The concert was a great success, aided by many of her friends, including Wakamatsu Koji, Yamaya Hatsuo, Naito Chin, and Mikami Kan, who grew up in Shinjuku. Director Kawanaka Nobuhiro has fond memories from decades ago, when he was delivering milk and had a chance to talk with the Shinkokugeki actor Ogata Ken in the Shinjuku Koma Theater dressing room. He returns to that room in this film.

Lately, I cannot help thinking; “What if the gods created life and death by mistake?” I find it odd that as I age, my body withers. If, as I slip into old age, my heart becomes young, then it would be appropriate if my body could follow suit. Wouldn’t it be nice if humans were born elderly, and in reverse, died of old age in an infant’s body?. (Hagiwara Sakumi)

A five-part documentary chronicling Toshio Matsumoto, the legendary filmmaker known as a pioneer of experimental cinema in Japan and also active as a film theorist, who exerted a profound influence on innovative film expression from the 1950s onward. Directed by filmmaker and critic Takefumi Tsutsui—himself both a filmmaker and critic like Matsumoto—the project was filmed over the course of ten years. Interweaving excerpts from Matsumoto’s works with an extensive series of interviews with collaborators and critics, the documentary retraces, through the figure of Matsumoto, the tumultuous decades from the 1950s to the 2000s across five parts, totaling 700 minutes.

A nostalgic work, which attempts to reconstruct the materials of postwar 35 mm newsreel footage given by the filmmakers’ friend and old tinted picture postcards. He frankly describes in his own coherent style of filmmaking how he was moved when he saw these films and photographs for the first time. An attempt to rediscover fresh and new images in the past products.

Photographs of a nude, arranged into stop-motion sequences on the left half of the screen, are juxtaposed with a close-up of the film itself passing in front of a viewer, gradually revealed on the right half of the screen.

As demonstrated by the film's title, Kawanaka has been exploring the theme of “Shishōsetsu” (“realized” fiction) for some time. For the author, there is a personal tension which develops between the self which experiences life, and the self which attempts to record images filtered through time and imagination. (Karen Keane)

Video short by Japanese filmmaker Nobuhiro Kawanaka, premiered at the Image Forum Festival in 2012.

Short film about the personal life of Nobuhiro Kawanaka.

A compilation of Kawanaka's representative "Shishōsetsu" series. "The title of my film series, 'I-novel,' is easily misunderstood. The 'I-novel' is a traditional Japanese literary form in which the filmmaker depicts his or her life as if poking around in a box. That's why I didn't shoot it like a regular documentary film. I'm filming everyday life, but it's fictionalized into a scene I've never seen before." -Nobuhiro Kawanaka