As a sort of work in progress, draft for a possible future research, or more probably simply as a trace of a significant and very rare viewing experience, in the past weeks I published the unedited notes and reflections I took while attending the Noda Shinkichi‘s retrospective (Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, October 2023).
A total of 38 films were screened in 5 days (you can read the synopsis of each film here).
My thoughts on days 1-2, 3 and 4.
Final thoughts
Unfortunately, I could not attend the last day of screenings, day five, at the festival. Mental and physical exhaustion kicked in, as usually does at these kind of events, but I also opted to see some of the films presented in the main program, after all I had to write a general piece on the event for the Italian publication I freelance for. As a sort of justification and excuse, I recall people saying that the films presented on the last day were the “less interesting” ones of all the Noda’s program. ..
That being said, I can definitely say that the retrospective was a very impactful viewing experience; as a film writer interested in Japanese documentary, I found the program to be revelatory. It was a very well curated showcase, and I really appreciated the fact that the films were not presented chronologically, but divided into thematic blocks.
There are some incredibly powerful and fascinating works in Noda’s filmography —personally Forgotten Land, The Matsukawa Incident, Nitiray A La Carte, The Feast of the Gods, and Good Road for the Living and the Dead are some films that, for different reasons, still resonate with me to this day. However, the stongest point of the event was, in my opinion, that it presented a significant section of Noda’s filmography, and in doing so it highlighted the developments of Noda’s style and interests in the course of almost five decades, but also, and perhaps more importantly, the developments and transformations of post-war Japanese documentary. All the films screened hint, in their totality, at connections, coincidances (cit. Joyce), and constellations with other works and names in the field of Japanese non-fiction cinema: Matsumoto Toshio, Ogawa Pro, Haneda Sumiko, Kitamura Minao, and others.
Each day of the program, there was at least a talk or a discussion with experts and documentarians, the one, by far, most deep and fascinating saw the great Kitamura Minao, a filmmaker and visual anthropologist (or visual folklorist as he, probably, would like to be called), talking about his personal experience with Noda, with whom, in 1978, he co-founded the Japan Visual Folklore Society. I believe Kitamura, his films and his writings, should be (re)discovered, sooner rather than later.
Some of the films that were shown in Yamagata are available on streaming, legally and for free (see below), or for rental. After the festival I was able to revisit some of them, especially The Feast of the Gods, and Good Road for the Living and the Dead deserve probably a longer treatment and a specific focus, an article or a longer essay (?).
Asian Docs 