Abstract
In his work, the filmmaker Shindō Kaneto sought to employ various, often seemingly incongruous, cinematic styles that complicate the notions of fiction and documentary film. This paper first examines his ‘semi-documentary’ films that often deal with the everyday life of common people by means of an enhanced realist approach. Second, attention is paid to the fusion of documentary and drama when reenacting historical events, as well as the subsequent recycling of these images in a ‘quasi-documentary’ fashion. Finally, I uncover a trend towards ‘meta-documentary’ that takes issue with the act of filmmaking itself. I argue that Shindō’s often self-referential work challenges the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction while engaging in a self-reflective criticism of cinema as a medium.
Highlights
An already established screenwriter, Shindō Kaneto (1912–2012) spent most of the 1950s struggling to make his name as a film director
An amalgam of melodrama and social realism that soon became a defining feature of his works puzzled critics and it was not until the experimental semi-documentary, The Naked Island (Hadaka no shima, 1960), that he was able to gain a reputation for directing. This trend became clearer in his later work, from early on, Shindō sought ways to mix fiction and documentary styles, recording as well as reenacting, especially when making films based on true events
‘kiroku boom’: amateur writing about everyday life, news reportage, documentary film, photography and kamishibai shows
Summary
Shindō Kaneto (1912–2012) spent most of the 1950s struggling to make his name as a film director. An amalgam of melodrama and social realism that soon became a defining feature of his works puzzled critics and it was not until the experimental semi-documentary, The Naked Island (Hadaka no shima, 1960), that he was able to gain a reputation for directing This trend became clearer in his later work, from early on, Shindō sought ways to mix fiction and documentary styles, recording as well as reenacting, especially when making films based on true events. 9) points out five closely related cultural phenomena that were part of the ‘kiroku boom’: amateur writing about everyday life, news reportage, documentary film, photography and kamishibai shows This was when young filmmakers such as Hani Susumu (1928) and Tsuchimoto Noriaki (1928–2008) joined Iwanami Productions (Iwanami Eiga), a major vessel for subsequent developments in Japanese documentary film. The aim of this paper is to examine how and why Shindō employed a variety of documentary styles in his films, whether it was for attaining heightened realism, forging and reusing images of historical events, or pursuing a (self-)critique of the act of recording and reporting in visual media
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