Inland Sea (2018/Kazuhiro SODA/Japan-USA)

Opening sequence :

A brief black screen with the sound of water nearby, so that the film starts by titillating our ears first with a calming, soothing tonality. The soundscape lingers as the screen opens, in black & white, on an embankment with the setting sun straight ahead. Two old people, backlit beautifully, are busy working ; one crouching over a bucket full of water and the other bending over an entangled fishing net.
– Konnichi wa, says the cameraman off-screen as the old lady turns to the camera, and replies likewise. The film begins with a welcoming greeting (as we are casually introduced to who will become the two main characters of the film).
In the foreground, the old lady calls for Wai-chan in the distance. But she soon adds he doesn’t hear well. Cut to the reverse shot, looking back at the lady, and slowly panning toward the legs of the old man who has sit in the shade of a shack. Tilt up, revealing his head, hidden under a cap. Close up of his face, eyes down, from under his visor. He’s mumbling to himself, ignoring the camera. Cut to his hands mending a net by tying several solid knots. His wrinkled hands manipulate netting needle and scissors. Cut to the next shot as the old man cuts with the scissors (cut on cut). He raises the net, out of focus – as a nylon prison over his face – satisfied with his repair.
Now on his boat, he throws another net to the quay. Trice he repeats « it’s to catch rockfish ». A woman voice off screens asks a question twice, but doesn’t get an answer. He complains about the the price of nets, and how fishes are cheaper than the tools nowadays. At 86, fishing on his own... It’s dangerous. He should retire, he says. The cameraman films him at a low angle shot because he’s hunched over his net, his body folded in half. And we see the lovely tiny harbor of Ushimado behind him.
These were the first ever spontaneous takes of the shooting, without meeting, preparation, rehearsal or guidance. As per the filmmaker’s own « Commandments ».

Origin of the project

Inland Sea is the 7th « Observational Film » of Kazuhiro SODA since 2007. It emerged from the impromptu collection of side footage on location in Ushimado for his previous film Oyster Factory (Observational Film #6, 2015) [my review] – if you want to see these two main characters, from the opening sequence, in full colour and more, you should watch Oyster Factory. In fact Kazuhiro SODA was kicked out of the oyster factory after a week, so with two weeks left before his return to NYC, he decided to film a fisherman met on the waterfront. And from then on following several villagers, came to be Inland Sea.
Ushimado is the hometown of his mother-in-law, so he was familiar with the area where they spent vacations with his wife and producer, Kiyoko KASHIWAGI.

Observational film #7

This film comes after a series of documentaries in the same vein, following strict ethical rules : The Ten Commandments of « Observational filmmaking ». There was Campaign (2007) & Campaign 2 (2013) following a Tokyo University classmate who ran for office twice, once for the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party), once for himself to address environmental issues due to the Fukushima disaster. There was Mental (2008) a formidable exploration of the daily lives of outpatients from a neighbourhood clinic ran by the one of a kind psychiatrist Dr. Yamamoto, a kind old man who provides the most humane services pro bono. There was Theatre 1 & 2 (2012) a 5h 42min long documentary on the essence of theatre, through the work of playwright and director Oriza HIRATA.
There was Oyster Factory (2015) and Inland Sea (2018). And followed by The Big House (2018) his first documentary outside of Japan, on and around the largest USA arena : Michigan Stadium, filmed with the help of co-directors and students from the University of Michigan.

The Ten Commandments of « Observational filmmaking »

All these films were made according to his self-imposed rules (à la Dogma 95) which he developped during his experience as a TV director-editor for the NHK (National Japanese television) and perfected during the writing of his book on Mental. See the page on his website for futher informations.
From his experience he learnt how to make documentaries in everyway unlike the fabricated « world » of television. He’d rather skip the research and script part, to focus on the spontaneity of his characters discovered on the spot. And, like Frederick WISEMAN, he favors long takes, without narration, titles nor music.
This reminds me of a graphic I made to explain all the obstacles to contemplation in traditional cinema, with a set of interdictions in forbidden pictograms.

CCC & Observational Films

This is where Kazuhiro SODA’s « Observational Films » might meet the minimum (technical) profile forContemporary Contemplative Cinema (CCC) : Plotlessness / Wordlessness / Slowness / Alienation…
Plotlessness corresponds to his Commandment #3, #7 & #8. Wordlessness (doesn’t mean without speech altogether, but rather laconical and natural conversation) corresponds to #8. Slowness corresponds to #5, #6 & #9. And Alienation (with the caveat : distanciation of characters does not mean complete separation but the natural boundary we experience with strangers in real life) corresponds to #1, #2 & #7.
CCC is not necessarily documentaries made guerilla-style, like advocates his « Ten Commandments »… although these are conditions to produce a free and independant film form that film companies eschew. But the natural, free-wheeling, patient, extensive types of images resulting from his method correspond more or less to what other CCC filmmakers record in their films. Natural like Lisandro ALONSO, because the approach to the characters is genuine and direct. Free-wheeling like Naomi KAWASE, because she lets things happen in front of the lens and goes with the flow. Patient like Raymond DEPARDON, because he takes time to meet people and makes his camera become invisible. Extensive like Alexander SOKUROV, because he register hours and hours of footage.
For one thing CCC is not a homogenous stylistic block, it is more a general regimen of images that contrasts with everything else on the theatrical circuit. And it is a family of filmmakers who share the same spirit of dailylife rhythm and extended takes.

 

Observing, interpreting, observing, interpreting…

The rapid succession of these actions on location, defines in situ the framing of his images : Observing first ; interpreting second... Always going from on to the other, to and fro, in order to nurture and combine one another. The quick-witted interpretation that succeeds each passive observation leads to a transformation into an active observation. Thus the images reflect what is taking place on site. If the observer wonders what the onscreen characters are glancing, or addressing, the camera moves automatically toward this off screen space, with a continuous reverse shot, sans cut. The frame chiefly shows on screen what the audience wants to see at the right moment.

Observing, listening

If « To observe & to interpret... » governs the framing of each sub-part of a shot, what instructs his directing style is another motto, two conjoined verbs again : « To observe & to listen ». The cameraman doesn’t frame static shots on a tripod but engages with the motion of the people on a mobile hand-held camera that interacts with the action, the words and the gestures.

Looking and Listening

Observational doesn’t mean distant or detached. The filmmaker must be part of the world he captures and describes. In Japanese, there is this concept of « Looking and Listening », two words combined to generate a « participative observation ». The matter is to look deeply, but to be attentive and reactive to what is going on, and what is being said.

Participative Observation

Here is another mantra of Kazuhiro SODA that explains his unique style of filmmaking. This is the combination of all these aspects of filmmaking : framing, directing, editing. After his first « Observational Film », he realised his observational style had to be participative.

Five Portraits in-situ in circle

Wai-chan (MURATA-san). First character, an 86 year-old fisherman who drives his boat, all alone, at night, like a hero ! He’s the first person contacted – the raison d’être of this documentary. He lays his net in the day, pulls back up his net at night (before the fishes die), sort out the rockfishes from the shrimp, and goes to the local fishmarket. There he auctions his catch. And KOSO-san – the only woman – buys some fresh assorted seafood as the sun rises...

KOSO-san. Back at her store, she preps, weights and condition the fishes under clim film. Then she drives her pick-up truck around town directly to her faithful customers. She calls herself a « late-stage eldery » (75 years-old and over). She’s been doing this job, alongside her husband – until he passed away – for more than 55 years straight. One customer at her shop is KUBOTA who came to collect offal (fish heads rejects)...

KUBOTA. Back at home, always accompanied by her son, she cooks the fish heads with rice. The heads are cut up in close up. Her numerous cats seem fascinated by this cook. Sure enough, the food was prepared for the cats. Some stray cats from the neighbourhood. As the filmmaker chats up with them outside their house, in a narrow alley, passes by MURAGIMI in a haste, embarassed by the idea of disturbing the documentary shooting...

MURAGIMI. Enticed by the KUBOTA family advice, the filmmaker follows this way, where people attend a flower festival. On his way, he finds again MURAGIMI crouched on the side of the path. She visits the neighborhood cemetery, up hill, to tend to her old ancestors tombstones overtaken by grass. Precisely on the day of the Chrisanthemus flowers contest. From this vantage point we can see Wai-chan’s boat entering the harbor. Call back to the seafront, where Kumiko is talking to an old lady friend on the embankment...

Kumiko « Kumi » (KOMIYAMA). Last story but first character on screen (she says « good afternoon » in the opening sequence). So the film comes back full circle by following this singular lady around, down on the shorefront. She is quite a character, full of pernicious comments, gossips and bizarre stories. She knows everything and guides the filmmaker and his wife up and down hill, from one extremity of the port to the other, and back, according to promises of great shots for the film...

Villagers directors

Kazuhiro SODA goes with the flow of real life. Following character after character, upon chance encounter, to their full extent, after exhausting the slow time spent with them, he assembles a formidable array of slices of life. He lets villagers direct the « show » at their will. Some appear camera-shy, some seem uncomfortable, some feel uninteresting. All want the best for his documentary.
Thus we hear « why don’t you go there ? » « Why don’t you shoot this or that ? » « Look ! » « Show this on camera instead »... And amused, confounded, complicit, he follows suit, aiming the camera in the right direction, chasing their footsteps. He also keeps those underachieved moments with camera adresses, these neutral transitions in the final cut, because they are integer part of the process of filming a documentary, moreover full of truth and sincerity.

The filmmaker who doesn’t cut out « camera address »

The « camera address » – looking directly into the lens for an actor – is the staple of Cinéma Vérité and La Nouvelle Vague. Jean-Pierre Léaud in the last shot of « Les quatre-cent coups » (The 400 blows, 1959, Truffaut), or the eponymous character in Monika (1964, Bergman). In documentaries, it is far more prevalent, even though most documentarians prefers to cut them out, for it stresses too much attention to the cameraman, and distracts from the narrative. Frederick WISEMAN, for instance, remains invisible behind the camera : never he utters a comment or a question, never he’s seen on camera, never he keeps the camera address in the final cut. He lets the images speak for themselves sans intervention from the filmmaker.
But Kazuhiro SODA doesn’t mind. He welcomes these little incursions of reality like a moment of complicity with his characters and his audience as well. He believes « observation » has to be « participative observation » ; meaning the involvement of the filmmaker-cameraman on location, amidst a crowd of people aware of the camera in their environment, is matter of fact and should not be concealed on screen.

Hands and faces

In particular, Kazuhiro SODA is fond of framing hands and faces as he films people who talks to him or just work. He films the hands manipulating objects or accomplishing a task. He films talking faces, listening faces, quiet faces, thinking faces.

Labor at work : an unspoken language

After the 5 minutes one-sided laconical chatter with Wai-chan (who is hard of hearing), from the opening sequence, the film goes wordless for 8 minutes, as the fisherman drives his boat out in the bay to lay down his net until he comes back at the harbor. A segment only animated by the sounds of the engine and the waves. Another 16 minutes wordless interlude – only briefly interrupted by a couple questions – while the fisherman retrieves his fish-full net at night. This is a powerful statement from the filmmaker who offers images free of commentary. Therefore he lets the audience swim solely in visual cues, without interferences, to simply enjoy the bare unspoken beauty of sounds with images and images with sounds.

Cycle of fishes

We first see the fishing net being repaired on the embankment : a testimony of previous fishing. Then the fishing net is lowered into the opaque sea. And it is only a few hours later, at night, when the boat comes back that we see the actual fishes caught – ensnared – inside the net, as it is slowly pulled from the dark waters. With some difficulty the fishes are disentangled one by one and thrown into a bucket of water. They flap around in an empty basket or spit out a jet of water in a full bucket. Before the first light of dawn, the seafood is sorted out by spieces, one basket each. At the fish cooperative, trays of seafood are weighted and auctionned for the retailers. The shopkeeper then cleans up the fishes and sells them at the shop or on the road from the back of her pick up truck. The fishes are cooked by one customer and fed to the stray cats. A long way from the sea to the mouth of these felines. A shorter way is illustrated later on, with a cat catching a fish rejected by a line fisherman on the pier.

Connections with Kazuhiro SODA filmography

Mental (2008) : Presence of Dr Yamamoto (from the Chorale Okayama clinic) at the oyster bar
Peace (2010) : feeding stray cats
Oyster Factory (2015) : cooked oysters (from the Hirano Factory) at the oyster bar. Presence of Kumi and Wai-chan two characters first met in this film.

Comparison with CCC (Contemporary Contemplative Cinema)

Leviathan (2012/Véréna PARAVEL, Lucian CASTAING-TAYLOR/FR-UK-USA) video excerpt
This couple of filmmakers from the Ethnographic Sensory Lab in Harvard, made an extraordinary performance art piece by strapping 10 « Go-pro » cameras to a fishing ship : to the mast, to the cables, to the forehead or the chest of a fisherman, to a pole plunged underwater… As many surveillance cameras perched to peer and survey each move of the fishermen and women, each activity on deck, each process of the labor chain. No narration, no interview, just the cadence of images colliding with one another making sense of a fragmented whole.


Profil Paysan (2001-2008/Raymond DEPARDON/FR)
Former photographer, DEPARDON filmed a series of three documentaries on the aging rural world of French peasants, each three years apart : L’approche ; Le quotidien ; La vie moderne. There we follow the daily lives of old peasants and their successors when present. He films them with a static lens, at work, in the fields, at home, in a very intimate yet respectfully distant way. He lets them, taciturn introverts, talk to the camera with their own words, and collects memories and despair.

Desertification : The twilight of Ushimado

The little town of Ushimado is getting older. People are aging and passing away. The youth and families are moving to the cities. Seafront houses are empty because nobody takes the sucession. Even the cemetery is deserted because families bring their tombstones with them closer to the city where they live. This is a problem of the countryside towns : only the eldery rooted in Ushimado for so many years, all their life and many generations past… This town sees its last days since in a few years, when the eldery have vanished for good, there will be nobody to inhabit these houses, to work those jobs, to eat and drink, to walk around the pier, to fish, to smile and laugh in the twilight…

A dedicated ascent to the Hospital

BONG Joon-ho : « The scene in which one of the subjects briefly takes over the film – bringing the camera with her to finally tell a story she probably had never told anyone – was so calmly stunning, raw, and emotional. It didn't feel forced or manipulated. It just seemed like something very naturally walked into the filmmaking. It's an art of documentary filmmaking. »

Indeed this sequence, with Kumi, toward the end of the film, is a piece of art. It starts on the embankment in the harbor, where Kumi and Wai-chan always hang out. Kumi, as usual is pointing at somewhere else, up hill, behind them, to drag the shooting there with her. « You should film the hospital » The filmmaker is first reluctant to go, but eventually follows along, for what will become the best scene at the heart of the film : a 10 minutes of confession non-stop, after a couple of minutes of walk.

From the director’s statement : « In Japanese noh theatre, there is a popular form called “mugen noh,” in which a traveler meets a ghost who tells him what happened at a specific site. »

This moment is like an oracle.

Related :

• Oyster Factory (2015/Kazuhiro SODA/Japan-USA)

Oyster Factory (2015/Kazuhiro SODA/Japan-USA)

Opening Sequence 

Up close, a white cat basking in the sun on the pier, then it walks off screen. Painterly framing of the Ushimado bay, with micro islands in the distance, and a tree branch striking the foreground of the frame top like a Japanese etching. Another view of the bay from higher ground, with the sea cluttered by oyster farms and a boat crossing at mid-screen.
Now the camera is handheld onboard of a fisherman boat, looking in at an oyster rack approaching. It’s made of bamboos. Cut to a crane flying off of one of those racks. Face of the fisherman through the windshield of his driver cabin. The fisherman is walking on the bamboo rack without leash or safety gear, wearing a yellow vinyl overall finished with boots. Whip zoom on him crouching to untie one rope. Several shots of him retrieving the ropes.
Back on the boat, the hydrolic crane is pulling out of the water a bunch of ropes tied together, revealing clustered oysters hugging the ropes as the ensemble elevates in the sky, slowly moves over the deck and is promptly dropped into a rusty wire crate. Then slowly raised again in the air and violently dropped again to free the oysters tightly secured to the ropes. One last time dropped from high up in the same long take. A drop of mud splashed in the corner of the lens. Whip-zoom to the fisherman piloting the crane in the background to put the splash out of focus. He’s now approaching with a stick and starts beating the ropes to unleash the oysters left attached.

– It may splash, says the fisherman as he rakes his stick between the ropes hanging down.

Cut to another batch of ropes being pulled out of the sea in a similar fashion. Whip-zoom on the clusters of oysters covered in algae and mud, dripping down heavily, with the fisherman in the background. Once again he beats down the persistent oysters glued to the ropes, in close up, with the ropes in the foreground barring his face. He operates all this by himself, alone on the boat (the cameraman being an unparticipating companion). Cut to two static shots of the bay from higher ground and a trucking of a boat passing by, against the sound of waves lapping on the beach.
9 more quick shots taken from the boat approaching the harbor against the noise of an engine. The fisherman on the quay, tying up his boat to a mooring bollard. Opening credits on a black screen.

Origin of the project

Kazuhiro SODA and his wife (and producer), Kiyoko KASHIWAGI, use to spend vacation time in Ushimado, hometown of Kiyoko’s mother. On a dare, he decided to film there, for three weeks, a fisherman he met on the seaside. Upon shooting him, some times later, having arrived from New York, the fishing season was over and the fisherman was starting to care for another activity of his : aquaculture. So the fishing documentary became about oyster farming by necessity. This is how Kazuhiro SODA proceeds to pick and film a subject without preparation nor script.

(Director’s statetment)

Companion piece : Inland Sea (2018)

Alongside Oyster Factory, which shooting only lasted 1 week out of the three required, Kazuhiro SODA decided to continue to film the area, on a whim, until his planned return to NewYork. This side project became a documentary on the local population of the small harbor of Ushimado : Inland Sea, released three years later. In this new film, we meet again, in depth, two figures appearing in Oyster Factory ; as well as the vernacular cycle of the local fish commerce.

Observational Film #6

Since 2007, Kazuhiro SODA makes « Observational Films » following a strict set of rules of thumb, and Oyster Factory is the sixth of them. Observation as mantra both for the filmmaker and the audience. « Observation and Interpretation » are guiding his framing; « Observation and Listening » are guiding his directing. These rules he calls the « Ten Commandments of Observational Filmmaking » Interesting remarks about the making and post-production of a guerilla-style documentary, such as « no research », « no script », « shoot as long as possible », « no narration », « use long takes »… These principles are the customary routine of CCC (Contemporary Contemplative Cinema). See the (Technical) Minimum Profile here 

Hirano Oyster Factory

Next to « Toyota Seafood », there is a huddle of ancillary oyster factories implanted in the harbor all assembled together around the Hirano Oyster Factory, directed by Watanabe. They are perched up there on the pier, between the sea – the Inland Sea – and the town – Ushimado – in direct liaison between oysters and consummers. The oyster farms are dispersed racks anchored in the bay, around the Mouse Island. The boat comes and goes between the farms and the harbor at harvest season. Docking next to the factories, the boat empties its three metal crates of oysters forthwith into the wall of the chucking room, where oysters are opened and reserved. Promptly carried around in a bucket they are unloaded by the hundreds onto a cart that wheels straigth to the nearby collective warehouse (because they cannot be frozen),where all the neighbors work in unisson. They are then transferred by truck to the Okayama Fishery Cooperative.

The cycle of oysters’s life

Buying seeds. Farming at sea. Harvesting. Chucking. Storing oysters in buckets with frozen water bottles. Moving them to the cooperative. Cleaning the workshop. Cleaning the buckets and water bottles. Cleaning the vinyl aprons. Collecting and cleaning shells. Cleaning the mud. Cleaning the crates. Cleaning the boat. Repeat.

Kazuhiro SODA doesn’t film the cycle in its chronological order, but rather accumulates daily footage, day after day, in situ. This disparate aggregation of tasks and practices develops nonetheless into a mirror of this local industry. And we piece together, in after thought, like a mystery game, the process in the right order, after seeing it done over and over, at different factories and on different days. True observation puts the spectator in the pilot seat, engaging with the natives and forming a portrait of each recurrent character, each at a precise place on the chain.

Slow pace of daily life

The ingenious cameraman masterfully captures a monotonous labor with poignant dexterity. He follows effortlessly in the footsteps of various colourful characters, mingles with everybody, enters their homes… His enticing camera, which records direct sound synchronously, projects us inside an underestimated world, little known and self-sufficient. Interspersed by « pillow shots » (à la Yasujiro OZU) of still life, landscapes, building corners, abandonned tools, the scenes and days unfold like a treasure trove of compelling activities and genuine behaviors. One shot after another, the vicissitudes of a millenary tradition manifest before our eyes at an unhurried pace. The faces tell a tale of sudden mutation. A microscopic metamorphosis, with each discerning minute, transitionning old habits to reluctant new ones.

Work and Talk

People do not sit down for an interview in « Observational Films »… unlike with Errol Morris’s Interrotron, with a lot of talking heads. Preferably, Kazuhiro SODA’s immersive style of documentary catches off guard the people at work, while they are busy doing other things. Busy hands : loose tongues. We might not get eye contact all the time, but the conversation is more natural, unrestrained and relaxed. Hollywood has the « Walk and Talk » to show protagonists busy while delivering exposition dialogue. « Observational Films » have « Work and Talk » to capture the speech in its natural habitat, its ordinary context.

One of these lasts 3min 30sec, when the filmmaker questions Watanabe about the tsunami and his move to Okayama prefecture, in Mushiage, as a nuclear refugee. Watanabe washes the rusty crates full of mud, and shares about his painful past. As one of the Chinese worker just quit, Watanabe feels compassion for someone who is away from home, like him.

Again with Watanabe, another day, this « Work and Talk » long take reaches 5min of confessions as he and the cameraman walk around the truck.

Not only that, but Kazuhiro SODA films extensive takes of the « action », whether they are talking or not, whether they are working or not. And he keeps the down times in the final cut. These intermediary moments without conscious activity, but where a lot happens : hidden body language, meaningful pauses, suggestive faces, demonstrative expressions…

Tsunami refugees

Watanabe, who is one of the main character of this documentary, used to work in aquaculture in Miyagi prefecture, before the 2011 Tsunami hit Fukushima on this coastline. They had to move out because the government declared their land restricted area, and the consumption of oysters forbidden. From his own admission, he moved first and foremost because his kids could not live in an irradiated zone. But he’s not a « nuclear refugee », insists his boss, Mr Hirano, he’s a « tsunami refugee ». This only superficially removes the stigma. Watanabe was removing debris in Miyagi. He moved to Mushiage (Okayama prefecture), not far away from Ushimado. He’s now directing the Hirano factory, and will succeed to the owner who is retiring.

In another scene we learn that oysters seeds from Miyagi are banned in Okayama, because of the rumors of nuclear radiations. Ironicaly, they buy them instead from Hiroshima !

The workshop contraption

This family factory, partly mechanised, partly manual, is pretty ingenious. With the simplest means. Fresh from the sea, the oysters collected are carried through a motorised conveyor belt into the main room of the factory built on a raised floor and split in two halves. In the middle of the room stands high a double wall within which is stored the live shells shut closed. Each wall, on either side, is pierced with trap doors to catch the oysters pouring in from above. And a man can walk between these walls to scather the oysters towards each hatch. The oysters are picked up onto a counter, through the hatch, one by one, by the workers who are seated on the raised floor. And underneath is another motorised conveyor belt collecting the emptied shells, between the two walls, dropped by a hole in the counter. Thus the course of the oyster : in come the full shells, out come the empty shells. These shells are then automatically cleaned up outside and evacuated by trucks (probably recycled and sold).

Chucking Oysters

Oysters have sharp shells. Workers wear thick gloves. Shells are muddy. Work is messy.

This is hard work. Arduous and repetitious. Workers in this agrarian region are getting old. The rural exodus of the youth depletes the workforce for local businesses. The next generation hates this backbreaking job, and prefers one of a salaryman. Mostly eldery female workers, they have the skills to chuck oysters at a breakneck pace ! The rare younger helping hands struggle to keep up. The eldery are kneeling on the floor, Japanese-style. The youngsters are seated on their asses.

One hand picks up an oyster, pivots it in the right direction (mouth to the palm). The other hand plunges a pointy knife, or a hook, between the two calcified valves. And with a twist of the wrist, it breaks open the mollusc. The mantle is delicately but swiftly scraped and dumped into a bucket. At the bottom of each bucket sits a frozen water bottle to maintain a cool temperature. The empty shells are soon discarded downstairs. And the reiterating operation begins all over.

« China is coming. »

This decaying workforce needs new blood. And the Japanese don’t want to do this anymore. One employee, Watanabe, calls it a « hard, dirty and dangerous work » , he later adds « People who come here are kind of losers, aren’t they ? ». The next best thing is to hire help from abroad, in this case, from China. And the local community is not ready for this « invasion ». Japan, being one of the most homogenous ethnicity in the world, is not acquainted with foreign visitors, let alone labor force from their arch enemy : China. They are afraid. One standbyer confides « Chinese are terrible, they steal anything they see ! »

The neighboring city has 200 Chinese workers. And there is a total of 10 in Ushimado. However, the Hitano Oyster Factory has ever employed indigenous workers, despite, is getting ready to accomodate two new Chinese aids. On the calendar is noted « Saturday the 9th, China is coming ». Not even « The Chinese workers are coming », but that deprecative metonymy…

At the factories nextdoor, there are already a couple of Chinese expatriate working on the line. The Chinese language is not subtitled, so the foreigners stay at a distance, behind a language barrier. And with their rudimentary Japanese, they hardly interact with the filmmaker or others. Regardless of English.

More than a factory

This is an idiosyncratic microcosm of Japanese society, with a dozen Japanese figures surrounding half a dozen Chinese expatriate workers. This multigenerational bunch spans all ages. From a toddler carried on her mother’s back at work ; to young girls playing around the facilities ; to teenager worker from China ; to young adults, married, ready to take over the succession ; to older men from the neighborhood ; to 65 year old bosses about to retire ; to eldery workers on the line… Kazuhiro SODA’s camera alternates the viewpoints, jumping from one person to the next.

Assorted points of view

Watanabe, father of four girls, the nuclear refugee who empathizes with the Chinese expatriates.

The Hirano family old boss who is retiring, and hands his family business to Watanabe

Hirano junior (salaryman) who would « never » succeed to his dad.

The bubbly daughter-in-law of the Toyota factory who is interested in the world.

The Toyota factory owner who has opinions on the state taxes on succession.

The A/C repairman with racist views on Chinese immigrants.

The cameraman and his wife, from NYC, who have seen the world outside of Japan.

Self-references

We find recurrent themes that have been treated in previous « Observational Films » :

LDP (Liberal Democrtatic Party) political poster from Campaign (2007)

Mental health problems (attributed to a Chinese quitter) from Mental (2008)

Feeding stray cats from Peace (2010)

Nuclear meltdown consequences from Campaign 2 (2013)

Shiro the cat, Kumi and Wai-chan from Inland Sea (2018)

Contemporary Contemplative Cinema documentaries

We could contrast Oyster Factory with Frederick WISEMAN’s Belfast, Maine (1999) where he films a mechanised line in a canned sardines factory. Or compare it to Niklaus GEYRHALTER’s Our Daily Bread (2005), a wordless documentary on agricultural industries in Europe. With a succession of symetrical static shots filming the robotized food collecting, calibrating, processing and conditioning. But « Observational Films » are not from a cold surveillance camera, and much more immersive and reactive to the workers being filmed.

Crisis

Out of nowhere, when the time for the new Chinese employees to arrive came, the shooting of the documentary is interrupted by Hirano, the old boss. Seated back to the camera at the counter, without stopping his oysters chucking, unwavering, he utters these damning words. According to him, the shooting may offend them and you never know what could happen… You’d need to get their permissions first, and the permission of the agency. Will the documentary stay at a stand still ?

Comedic relief

The documentary is peppered with touches of laughters – often the filmmaker’s own infectious laugh.

An old lady asks for the fish price, twice, with a puzzled look on her face because she gets no answer, before realising she was asking the cameraman ! She then walks away in shame but also amused, followed by the laughing filmmaker.

Another impromptu scene : we see the chucking workers laugh without knowing what is the fuss all about. Then a guy walks in from behind a wall, approaching bent over, looking into a plastic tube, without a word. « What are you doing ? » asks the filmmaker. As he realises he’s being imitated, he bursts in laughter with everyone else.

A long scene where Watanabe and his wife pay for the prefab house bought in for the new Chinese workers. Money goes from Watanabe’s hands, as he counts the bills one by one, in stacks of tens, to his wife’s hands, who counts again ten bills by stacks, and in the hands of the seller, who also counts the bills by tens. Ultimately, the salesman counts the number of stacks and counts again and counts again : 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6… Everyone, eyes on the stacks, notices there shouldn’t be a 7th stack. There is too much money ! Everybody laughs out loud nervously.

The daughter-in-law of the Toyota Seafood is interviewed while she is preparing a miso soup for lunch. Pots and lids fall on the floor. The filmmaker laughs. She asks « What is so amusing ? You’re not going to use this ? » Concerned about coming out well on screen, she asks « Am I doing OK ? » between each question asked...

To the Chinese workers, recently arrived, the filmmaker asks « Speak English ? », then again in Japanese. But they reply « Yes. No. » in a laugh.

The cat periodically tries to come in the house of the filmmakers.

Shiro the cat and the circadian rhythm

Kazuhiro SODA can’t help but film cats when he sees them. And they stay in the final film. On the seafront, there is a white cat with a bell, roaming around, looking for food and petting. Everybody calls him « Shiro » (white in Japanese). He opens the film. He’s the punctuation of each new day passing. We see him at night, or in the morning, in between two days of shooting. So every time we see the cat’s frolicsomeness we know another day of shooting went by.

Repeat Viewing

The characters in the documentary are not named on screen, but at one point or another they stand out with a particular conversation or a gag. Therefore their personality is imprint in our brains. And with a subsequent viewing, it is easier to notice their presence in the background, or in a crowd. Thus connecting different scenes together and tying the relations, geographical and interpersonal, between all onscreen characters.

How to see early silent films (68mm Biograph)

The IMAX of the 1890s | How to see the first movies (2019/Dave Kehr/MoMA) 11'

Related :

• Louis Lumière (Rohmer/Renoir/Langlois)
• Les films Louis et Auguste Lumière 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12 (YouTube)

Flânerie 2.0 (Chloé Galibert-Laîné)

Flânerie 2.0 [ENG SUBS] from Chloé Galibert-Laîné on Vimeo. (11'13") 11 march 2018

Walter Benjamin (1938) La contemplation et la perception distraite


Related :

• Propos sur la flânerie
• Flânerie urbaines sans parole (EIKAWA Yuki) 
• Flânerie and (Post)Modernity: Links in memory of Anne Friedberg at Film Studies For Free
• “The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project” (Susan Buck-Morss, 1989)
• “Passagenwerk” / Arcades Project (Walter Benjamin)

On A Dirt Road (contemplative video)

The Unbearable Lightness of Being from Janos Kish on Vimeo.(2018/Janos Kis/Cambodia) 13'18"

There is a cow lounging on the side of a dirt road. Is it a sacred cow? This is not a postcard... the cow is ruminating patiently.  She whips her tail to chase away the flies, and shakes her large black ears. She is alone, abandonned on the side, at a distance in the frame. Not too estranged, not too familiar.

The landscape is planted there for eternity. The road, although losely defined, with patches of grass here and there, is mostly sand, stretching perfectly in the axis of the shot. A symetrical composition only distracted by the excentric position of the cow and a huge tree on the opposite side of the road, as a counterbalance. And behind the cow, a power line with dancing posts that can't seem to keep a straight posture.
The road has no end in sight it seems, as it unrolls up to the horizon, rigth into a perpendicular line of trees, which probably follows a perpendicular road. We can see, from time to time, silhouettes driving the horizon line, through the trees, from the right side to the left side and vice versa.

It's only when the first motorbike, in yellow, drives through the road, at the 3 minutes mark, that we see it slalloming in the background, following a hook on the right, behind a dense bush, then turning to the left again to exit the frame behind a row of trees. Another motorbike, all black, rides the same road at the same moment, but from the back, where we didn't see it coming in, toward us, after crossing the first motorbike.

When the yellow motorbike did its first hook, we notice something moving on the road at this place. There is in fact a second cow that was lounging and merging its grey colour with the sand, like a rock on the road. Now it is standing and moving around, we can definitely see a second cow in the distance, with a whipping tail and long black ears. She is standing right in the axis of the shot, or nearly so, presenting her profile to us. The two cows are a plastic duo. One is close, one is far. One on the left side, one on the axis. One is lounging, one is standing. One is looking at us, one is ignoring us.

This scene is reminiscent of the famous opening of Satantango (1994) where Béla Tarr and Agnes Hranitzky film cattle in an enclosure until the cows move outside in the streets of an abandonned Hungarian village. Tarr and Hranitzky slowly track down the cows as they make their way outside, like if the herd was pulling the camera with its slow locomotion.
But here, Janos Kis chose to keep a static camera (like in most of his short contemplative films), because the cows stay in place and it is the frame that defines the storyline of the shot. The composition is extremely calm and peaceful. Only brievely interrupted by the passage of bikes or trucks, whiches are merely scratching the road surface, like floating on a dirt cloud, dispersed by the wind. The immobile cows dictate a static shot. The animation of the shot comes from the intermittent crossing of vehicules along this road.

The static camera reminds of the work of the Lumière brothers (who shot only short documentaries of a single view by technical constraints, in black and white and silent of course), Andy Warhol (who used extreme long takes of the same view in black and white), James Benning (who films experimental documentaries of static shots of empty landscapes), Niklaus Geyrhalter (who is a German documentarian compiling single takes of various length of places and landscapes)...

My first thought was it must be India. But Janos confirmed me it was located outside of Siem Reap, nearby the world famous Angkor Conservation Park, in Cambodia. It is an ode to this country's peaceful landscape, of a rural back lane, almost abandonned, but still used daily by some lonely riders.

The title refers to Milan Kundera's 1984 Czech book about a handful of adulterous intellectuals living in Prague during the year 1968 when the political liberalization allowed for the Prague Spring, a period of artistic florish and protests. The book was put into film by Philip Kaufman in 1988.
Far from the intellectual romance of this book and film, the title still evokes, out of context, a Buddhist mantra, a Zen koan, which is examplified by the look at this passive cow. This unmoveable cow represents the spiritual detachment of the contemporary world full of attentions and notifications, This dirt road is the antithesis of the speedways of information, back to the roots of humanity in a simplier world, more grounded, closer to nature, more laborious than industrious, in one word pastoral.

*  *  *

A few words from the filmmaker Janos Kis :

"It was early morning, the sky was beautiful when I was driving my car on the dirt road and suddenly realised a cow in a picturesque background. I parked the car nearby but not very close to observe what's happening. I'm not sure how long it took but I realised this was what I was looking for. Everything looked like a painting. My camera equipment was on the backseat. I chose the lens with soft tones, perfect for the occasion. Set up the tripod, camera, microphone and was waiting for the right moment. I never just start rolling if I don't feel the time has come.

Sometimes it takes 5, 10, 15 minutes or more to wait before I start rolling, and at the end : "Did you see the angel going through?" as Lajos Koltai (HSC/ASC Cinematographer) told me once during a directing and cinematography workshop in Budapest. Istvan Szabó (Oscar winning director) used to ask frequently L. Koltai on set after an important shot.

So that day everything was at the right place in the right time. Not only the two cows, but all the motorbikes, the trucks, even the birds and the pagoda music from the distance. I just had to wait for an Angel and cut.

I hardly cut even the beginning or the end of my film's if not necessaries nor do I color correct them. As for all my films, this one is shot on a Pro Canon DSLR camera with the appropiate lenses and I used a Pro Rode shotgun mic.

The most difficult thing is when shooting extreme long takes outdoor the lighting is constantly changing.
My films are shorts but very slow, a kind of Zen films. All the stories have beginning, middle and end within an invisible timeline.
The storyline is written by the life itself. I'm not directing the film in the classical meaning of the word. I'm just a messenger.

The audience must be very much devoted. As the respected director Bela Tarr used to say "They must make their decisions at the first few minutes they leave, or stay and watch the film till the end."


Find more of Janos Kis's short contemplative films on Vimeo and on YouTube.
His blog is JanosKisPhotoAndVideography


See also :

• Stasis film 3 (behaviourist) 
• 10 min of life at the time
• Live in the moment : Make a 10min pause for a change
• Losing the ability to contemplate nature for itself 
• Oversparse 

Rooftop under construction (contemplative video)

Building (2014/Arthur Caria/Brazil)1'58"

This shot is not only Black & White, but devoid of greyscale as well. Strictly pure black and pure white. For the most part. We notice a shadow on the bottom right corner which divulges a possible video effect used to saturate the contrast to the max. With an odd canted angle this view could be a photograph of the Soviet Constructivism. The aesthetic is sublime. But it is very frontal. This scene is a black cardboard cutout (pure shadow) against a white background (pure light) as only a camera could see it. These minuscule silhouettes remind me of the fine paper cutting of one Lotte Reiniger (The Adventures of Prince Ahmed/1926). But these stickmen aren't animation, this is real life.

From a high vantage point we observe the last level of a building under construction, and a team of busy workers : 8 on top and a couple more on the lower levels (they are caged in a prison of wires). The handheld camera emphasizes the voyeur point of view of a James Stewart in Rear Window (1954).The telelens and the monochromy flatten the perspective and hang the characters as if on a clothline. Their walking around looks even more perious than it probably is. It's like if all of them walked the edge of a wall top, and were about to fall to their death. Yet they hang around with the most natural decontraction. Look at this one kneeling over. See that one crawling on all four. This is scary!

From time to time appears the steel bars left naked awaiting for the next concrete pillars to be poured in for a higher level. These are like weapons erected to kill. And the workers, like magicians, pass through without harm, seamlessly. If you look carefully, you could see a white reflection coming from above, on their hats, shoulders and backs. Especially when they move one over the other, the white delimitation can still define the silhouettes mixed together.

Then the zoom comes in and reaches closer. Two guys hold a hammer. Another two roll up a rope or a wire. Others stand there idling. But who is the boss? It is difficult to tell. One seems to talk while others around him listen. He's got their attention. But look at the one crawling, he's now bending over the edge and slaming a hammer downstairs. This one will surely fall over.
We contemplate their whereabouts without sound, without words, and figure out bit by bit what is going on, who they are, what they want... This is the power of minimalist narration.

Part of a series of "One-Shot-Video-Poems" filmed in 2015 by Arthur Caria. See his website Cinemática Expositiva for more clipoems like this one. Or Unheimlich here.


See also :

• Stasis film 3 (behaviourist) 
• 10 min of life at the time
• Live in the moment : Make a 10min pause for a change
• Losing the ability to contemplate nature for itself 
• Oversparse 

Sidewalk - Exterior : Night (contemplative video)

Unheimlich (2015/Arthur CARIA/Brazil) 3'31"

One take, one point of view, one subject, one continuous temporality. 

It is difficult at first to figure out what is going on in this seemingly stolen shot from an overlooking window. A God's point of view. The  grainy light is gloomy and crepuscular. It is challenging to make out shapes from shadows, foreground from background, representations from reflections, impressions from illusions... 

The curious high slant at an almost perfect 45° angle composes an eerily deceptive axonometric projection, which can revert inside-out the perspective depending on the viewer's inclination.

Are we looking at a valley or a mountain fold? Is it a precipice or a wall? The shadows disappear on the edge, but is it because the shadows are projected down below at the bottom of the wall or is it a wall standing on the edge hiding the end of the shadows? Cars pass by furtively, with their headlights sweeping the scene from below. However this additional light doesn't help to reconstruct the volumes. And a puddle rests there between the road and the sidewalk like a fortunate mirror, which is completely black unless an automobile drives by reflecting its lights.

The flat night lighting doesn't help much... It takes time to accustom onelsef to the perspective and the geography of such a simple place. It is almost a theatre stage, with two animals.

But what are they? This is not evident at first sight to determine what we are dealing with. They must be dogs! One of those giant dogo Argentino. It is only on second viewing that I could be certain of them being horses, very calm horses, abandonned there for the night.

. 

Two horses on the sidewalk in the night. Why ? Why not ? Maybe these are the questions of this piece.

Are they Turin horses, escaped from a Béla Tarr and Agnès Hranitzky film or a Nietsche biopic. The two of them are standing in place like two statues. Parked there by their elusive owners like a car on a parking lot. Two stallions without their cowboys, outside the saloon. No saddle. No halter. No lead. Yet they await patiently. These lonely horses are incredible. The symbol of freedom they stand for is frustrated by this picture. The surrounding is not the wilderness, nontheless they are arrested (if not attached) in one place, between a road and a wall, as if their savage nature was robbed from them.

The title refers to a 1919 (a century ago!) Freudian concept Das Unheimlich or The Uncanny which describes an experience that is "strangely familiar". Indeed, everything in this picture seems familiar, but nothing falls in place just right. Something is strange about it, and keeps us from looking away. Is it because we imagine them on the verge of falling off a vertical drop to their instant death? Or is it because they seem abandonned by all humanity, left on their own in an indifferent world, for who knows how long more? Is it the perplexed human or the outraged animal in us watching this short scene?

Without a plot, without protagonist, this contemplative video clip, frozen in stasis, is packed with mystery, ambiguous environment, mude offscreen, slow mood and stranded alienation. The components of Contemporary Contemplative Cinema.

What a fluke to capture this instant! What an eye to frame this out of context! What a patience to film it entirely!

Part of a series of "One-Shot-Video-Poems" filmed in 2015 by Arthur Caria. See his website Cinemática Expositiva for more clipoems like this one. Or watch Building here.


See also :

• Stasis film 2 (landscape) 
• 10 min of life at the time
• Live in the moment : Make a 10min pause for a change
• Losing the ability to contemplate nature for itself 
• Oversparse 
• Observer l'animal (Ariane Michel)
• L'animal protagniste 

Late 1890s - A Trip Through Paris, France

The origin on Contemplative Cinema :

A collection of high quality remastered prints from the dawn of film taken in Belle Époque-era Paris, France from 1896-1900. Slowed down footage to a natural rate and added in sound for ambiance. These films were taken by the Lumière company
(speed corrected with added sound)

• Notre-Dame Cathedral (1896) 
• Alma Bridge (1900)
• Avenue des Champs-Élysées (1899)
• Place de la Concorde (1897) 
• Passing of a fire brigade (1897) 
• Tuileries Garden (1896)
• Moving walkway at the Paris Exposition (1900)
• The Eiffel Tower from the Rives de la Seine à Paris (1897)

Posted on YouTube by Guy Jones on Sept 16 2018

Khondji & Parreno on "Zidane, un portrait du XXIe siècle" (Cinémathèque 2017)

À PROPOS DE « ZIDANE, UN PORTRAIT DU XXIE SIÈCLE »
DIALOGUE AVEC DARIUS KHONDJI ET PHILIPPE PARRENO
Video de la conférence à la Cinémathèque française (18 mars 2017) 1h

À la suite de la projection de Zidane, un portrait du XXIe siècle, Philippe Parreno (co-réalisateur) dialogue avec Darius Khondji, directeur de la photographie du film. Rencontre animée par Frédéric Bonnaud.
« Zidane c'était du 35, du Super 16 et du numérique HD enregistré avec des Sony 900. Douze caméras étaient en 35 avec de la pellicule 500 Asa poussée d'un diaph ; deux caméras Super 16 à l'épaule et deux Sony 900 équipées de zooms expérimentaux hyperpuissants, construits par Panavision pour l'armée américaine, qui ne pouvaient être montés que sur des caméras numériques. (...) Je suis très attaché aux optiques. Ce n'est pas toujours rationnel, plutôt du domaine de l'inspiration, mais ça a une importance énorme depuis le début de mon travail. Je suis attaché à la forme de la caméra, sa proximité avec le corps, avec l'œil. » (Darius Khondji)

Makala (2017/Emmanuel Gras)

Opening sequence:

The back of a man walking across a village, carrying one tool on each shoulder. The camera follows him, staring at his nape like a Dardenne film. His body shakes at each step, moving up and down. We only see the tool handles hanging in his back. The camera overtakes her subject and pans to the right to show his profile. We discover his face, closed, focused on walking, and the end of one of the tools. It's an axe, which blade is hooked around his shoulder. A voice off screen says "Hello, you're already awake?" This must be quite early in the morning. And the camera pans towards this villager after seeing the face of our protagonist lighten up, the camera pans back toward the path he's walking on.

The film cuts several times during the progression through the bushes, pasting together several stages of this journey. Until he arrives at the foot of a big tree. The camera contemplates the summit of the foliage. Off screen we hear the impact of the axe that has already started to cut the trunk. The camera is spinning around the tree, slowly panning up and down as the loop around the tree comes to an end. This is when we see the origin of the sounds, he's cutting down the tree. The size of the trunk is too big for a man alone, yet he hits the tree relentlessly, opening a gap that will eventually fell down the tree and its high-reaching branches to the ground.

This opening sequence reminds me of Lisandro Alonso's La Libertad (2001). Whereas Misael in Alonso's film cut down trees and sold them as long pillars to a buyer who came on site with a truck, Kabwita in Gras' film makes charcoal out of the branches and go sell them to the nearest city, 50km away, in equilibrium on a rickety bike. What the opening sequence doesn't tell us is that Kabwita lives in Congo and that "makala" is charcoal in Swahili.

The episode with the traditional charcoal oven made out of dirt is reminiscent of Michelangelo Frammartino's Le Quattro Volte (2010) (analysis here). Smoke lifts off from places on the dirt mount, for a couple of weeks, to burn down the timber without oxygen and turn out cristal-sounding pieces of black wood.

But the longest part of this film is the road between his village and the city. He leaves in the dark of dawn and spends 2 or 3 days pushing this bike stuffed with dozen of charcoal bags, day and night. The night shots are only illuminated by the headlights of incoming traffic, backlit when the car is behind the bike, and shining on the bike when the car arrives behind the camera.

This journey is unbearable, not to mention the hard-hitting sun. Soon he joins other sellers who also slowly push their bike. They are stopped by a few men who demand baksheesh for permission to pass on a road, at a random point. The camera stays far back and watches the transaction from afar as if it was forbidden to film. Kabwita begs but gives up one bag of charcoal to pay the ransom.

This film is labeled a documentary, but the credits list Emmanuel Gras as the director, writer and cinematographer. So the film is written, staged, rehearsed and mis-en-scène. It's more a drama with non-actors acting under their own names, than a real documentary of real slices of life. And the camera viewpoint is indeed different, more aesthetic like a fiction, and less spontaneous like a documentary.

Les Cahiers du Cinéma deal with it like a pure documentary and blame the filmmaker for being a selfish bystander at the sight of a struggling man, pushing a mountain of charcoal under the sun. But it's a fiction based on this man's life, the scenes we see are fabricated and the trip is abbreviated.

I much preferred his first documentary called Bovines (2012), which, as I remember, was more contemplative with less cuts and longer shots, without human voices, only with shots of cows. Nothing like this 8h long documentary on sheep (which is strangely post-synch with ubiquitous sheep noises): BAA BAA LAND (2017)

Makala received the Grand Prix of La Semaine de la Critique in Cannes 2017.