Hendershot Grad Research Assignment: Discussion Questions on Article

For this week I chose an article by film researcher Nada Hisashi on the creation and current state of the "Self-Documentary," a Japanese terminology, but with worldwide interest. 

Link: http://www.yidff.jp/docbox/26/box26-2-e.html

Questions for the article:

1. Hisashi makes the claim that in Japan self-documentary has developed in a unique way; this is due to the preference of the personal “petite histoire” over the grand tale. Is this claim true?

While Hisashi’s claim that Japanese “self-documentary” is primarily focused on the personal is true, the statement that this is unique to the Japanese is itself false. To begin, Hisashi references the work of Jonas Mekas within his first sentence. Mekas’ work, as a European filmmaker forms the bases of Hisashi’s ideal of the self-documentary.  One could also argue that Hisashi’s real claim is that while non-Japanese filmmakers have made self-documentary, the great majority of those self-documentarians originate in Japan, and from those filmmakers the most interesting self-documentary work is produced. The construction of this article, while highlighting the works of Japanese filmmakers and certainly makes the case that their work is of high quality, there is no way to contrast this statement without researching the work of other artist. The reader is left to assume that Hisashi has looked at most of the self-documentary work of the world and finally chosen Japan as the symbol of this style of film production. 

2. What is Hisashi’s view of subject matter in the self-documentary?

Self-documentaries stick too much to the “principle of subject matter.” This is Hisashi’s answer to the role of subject in the self-documentary. The problem with his point is that he offers no real solution to this problem. He merely makes the statement that “the more you try to present facts, the more you lean towards the principle of subject matter.” He also ties in the struggle between fact and fiction in the self-documentary, essentially stating that to deviate from fact the “formal experiment inevitably becomes staged and the facticity is diluted.” At the end of this comment on subject focused work, Hisashi’s only conclusion is “could we not ask for something more than that?” This is an interesting point that he has brought up. Although his end conclusion is very vague and limiting, it does present a question for a self-documentarian to constantly be asking himself while creating a piece. 

Bibliography information:

Hisashi, Nada. "Self-Documentary: Its Origins and Present State." Documentary box.26 (2007): 9/3/08. <http://www.yidff.jp/docbox/26/box26-2-e.html>.