Beauty of the Ancients

The care facilities for the elderly in a small town in Gifu prefecture, and the comparison with the welfare in Denmark, Sweden and Australia.

This extraordinary film presents Japanese classical scroll painting as never before. The Yamanaka Tokiwa comprises twelve scrolls painted by Matabei Iwasa some 400 years ago. Haneda redefines the art documentary and demonstrated that a film about a masterpiece can be equally masterful.

Shot in a retirement home over a period of two years, this film raises the question of "how to take care". The director films with great tenderness, not only the daily life of patients with senile dementia, but also the work of caregivers. Widely broadcast, the film sparked lively debate on the care and support society in Japan.

Documentary film from Japan.

The poignant focal point for this film is a cherry tree that is over 1400 years old. Beginning with the tree, the director then explores the families and environment around the tree. The editing and music contribute to the sense of a haunting past contained within the solid structure of an ancient natural wonder.

Shot in the foothills of Iwate Prefecture’s mystical Mt. Hayachine, the film records a year in the life of the area’s villages.

Set in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, the tragic theme of the film is the destruction of millions of lives in the 13 years before Manchukuo collapsed with Japan’s World War II surrender in August 1945, and the years of suffering it brought in its wake.

This film depicts the life of the 19th-century Portuguese writer Wenceslau De Moraes by means of nine ancient ballads from China. The writer married a Chinese woman after he left his wife and family to go live in Macao. Later, he moved to Japan where he fell in love with a Japanese woman, staying in Japan for the rest of his life. Mixed in with the career and loves of Moraes is the history of Portugal at home and in its colonies.

A short documentary about the behaviour of Japanese primary school students.

Sumiko Haneda returns to film what will be the final bits of Akiko Kanda's life, documenting Kanda's will to dance as she struggles with terminal cancer.

“I have three tasks in my life: to dance, to teach dance, and to create dance,” says the pioneering Japanese performer Akiko Kanda in this intimate portrait of creativity and individuality, After seeing a Martha Graham performance in college, Kanda left her family behind in Japan and arrived in New York City, where she studied under the legendary Graham and became a principal dancer with the troupe. Following the wiry artist as she moves from practice floor to performance hall, and from the cramped single-room apartment she lives in to a trip home to see her aging mother, director Sumiko Haneda reveals a woman who has rebelled against traditional ideals of marriage and motherhood, and who nearly single-handedly brought modern dance to Japan-and kept it alive. “When I die,” Kanda tells the director, “I will be content if I can just say, ‘I danced.'”

Documentary on pioneer Japanese feminist Hiratsuka Raicho

Haneda Sumiko, documentary filmmaker who was born in Dalian, Manchuria in 1926 and was there to experience the conclusion of the Pacific War. Following her previous work , she revisits Dalian and Lushun, places where she spent her formative years. Lushun has served as an important naval port in modern times, and in 2009 was finally fully opened to foreigners. Haneda joined a tour organized as part of that opening, and delves into memoires as she visits the house where she grew up and the school she attended.

Mayor Iwakawa was voted into office in 1991, promising better welfare for senior citizens. As a result of his efforts to create a town with resident participation, while battling against anti-reform forces of the town council, Takanosu-machi becomes the best welfare town in Japan. In the nationwide local elections in 2003, however, Iwakawa, loses by a huge margin against the opposing candidate who promises the consolidation of local municipalities.

In 1982, the socialist researcher Ishidō Kiyotomo organized a round table with women activists who had participated in the rise of the labor movement, from the Taishō era (1912-1925) to the Shōwa era (1926-1989). At his request, Haneda records this meeting. Stimulated by her desire to " preserve the history of these women ", the director adds additional sequences to the recording. In the film, the discrimination and domination suffered by these activists are told in the first person.

Haneda’s debut as full director, made after four years spent as an assistant, is set in a farming village in Shiga Prefecture (east of Kyoto). The film depicts the traditional architecture, lifestyles and customs of the village, its agricultural and domestic labour, but its central focus, as with many of Iwanami’s early films, is on education.