Interview with Observational filmmakers Kazuhiro SODA & Kiyoko KASHIWAGI
On the occasion of the release of Inland Sea on digital platforms (25 November 2019), Rock Salt Releasing contacted me to review it and offered me to interview the filmmaker Mr. Kazuhiro SODA and his producer and wife Kiyoko KASHIWAGI. Both are working jointly since Mental (2008; Observational Film #2).You may find his other films on his website (at Laboratory X). Kazuhiro SODA used to be a director-editor of 20 min TV documentaries for the NHK, between 1997 and 2004 : a series of over thirty portraits of NewYorkers. But the intensive TV practice and timing was everything he didn't want to do. Thus he conjured up his " Ten Commandments of Observational Filmmaking " and went on to produce his own feature length films independently (self-financed, directed, edited and never scripted). Trained as a fiction director, his vocation for documentaries was initiated by the films of Frederick Wiseman. I could draw parallels between some of his films and Frederick WIS