On the pair of documentaries and drama:
Naomi Kawase(河瀬直美)‘s drama film and documentary

HAN Dong-Hyunk, Editor

 

A lot of directors make the drama film and documentary at the same time. To access the target which cannot be approached using the drama film, they select the documentary while to access the target which cannot be approached through he documentary, they select the drama film. Of course, there are cases that get out of this standard. Some directors think that it is not required to differentiate the drama from the documentary, or the fiction from non-fiction. They sometimes make the film which belong to or does not belong to either of drama film or documentary. As now is the time when the possibility of film get bigger, it may be futile to identify the individual film and the director with respect to the difference between drama and documentary.

However, it would be a good starting point in understanding a director if we try to find out at what moment of time a director who makes both a drama and a documentary at the same time follows the tradition of drama film and at what moment the director follows the features of documentary. For example, why did Jia Zhangke make both the documentary “Dong” (2006) and the drama film “Still Life” (2006) at the same time. How could the fiction and non-friction coexist in the film of Apichatpong Weerasethakul? Are the characters appearing on the film of Pedro Costa actors or not?

 

Questions and thought in the same context. The director who I want to talk about in this paper is Naomi Kawase. She has made both the drama film and documentary at the same time even before the era of digital arrived. She did not start the filming after learning the film from somebody. She happened to hold a 8mm film camera for the report at the school and felt that the camera has the power which can cut out the current time and space to reconstruct them in the future. Then, she alone continue to shoot her surroundings and herself.

The first film she shot is (1992), which is about herself who misses her parents who left her alone. Naomi Kawase traces back to her parents while asking questions on her parents to people around her one by one. She visits the space appearing in her photos with the photos of her parents on one hand and a camera on her other hand and takes picture of the scenes with her own camera. She continues to shoot her surroundings without any staff and put the narration on the images she met saying her own emotion. At the end of the film, she finally reaches her father through phone and makes her first phone conversation with her father. The film ends while making us hear her voices of making conversation with her father.

“Katatsumori” (1994) which was produced with , is a film on her grand mother who had adopted and raised her after her abandonment. The former film focuses on the alternation between the image of the past (of her parents) and the current image (her own 6mm film camera) while tries to fully contain the time of this moment of herself and her grandmother. The image of the hand of grandmother touching the flower and her own hand reaching toward the cloud are the things of current time but not those of the past time. The film continues to show the face of grandmother. The camera is approached to the face of grandmother close enough to make the shadow of camera on her face. These images vividly record the wrinkles on the face of grandmother who suffered a long hard time in the past.

Famous stories. The above-mentioned two films of Naomi Kawase got the awards at 1995 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. A master filming director Tamura Masaki (film director for Ogawa Shinsuke and Aoyama Shinji) who found out the truth in Naomi Kawase , held the camera on his own and helped her to produce her first drama film . The film was put on Cannes Film Festival for competition and she became the youngest winner of the la Caméra d’Or award (best new director) at the Film Festival. After , Naomi Kawase produced the film (2000) and put the film on the Locarno International Film Festival for competition and got award, thus letting her name be known around the world.

Even though those two drama films let Naomi Kawase get the international reputation, she kept her own position without any big changes. One is the position as a loner. Naomi Kawase did not cooperate with Damura Masaki again after Suzaku. It was also true for Mr. Imonoto Masami, a filming director of . The other position is the one as a space. She never left her own hometown Nara, which is also the background of her films and . As before, she continued to shoot the documentaries by herself in her hometown. The film (2001) which is between the drama film and documentary is on her relation with her father after the film . Naomi Kawase put not only her father but also grandmother and mother into this film, thus filling her thirst for the family love which was not fully filled with her early two films made 10 years ago. It can be called as a film curing herself. This film ends with the marking of the tattoo which is the same one of her father on her own body, thus showing us that the film goes further from the ending of the film produced by her 10 years ago.

Naomi Kawase’s drama film “Sharasojyu” (2003) was produced with the documentary called “Letter from a Yellow Cherry Blossom” (2003) during the same year while her film (2007) which she said depicts the process of preparing for the grandmother’s death was produced with the documentary “Tarachime” (2006) which shot her giving birth to her own son. Death and birth. Birth and death. It can be said that Naomi Kawase has undergone two big events at the same time while making two films. The documentary “Chiri” (2012) is a film connected to the film “Katatsumori”, in which she remembers and records the life and death of her grandmother. It uses again the images taken 20 years ago for the film “Katatsumori”, which show that Naomi Kawase has finally got the power of finding out the “beauty of life which can be produced in the process of film by overlapping the images in the past with the images in the present” or an ability which she did not have when she shot the film “Embracing”.

Recently, she went further to shoot the film “An” (2015) in Tokyo for the first time. What is mysterious is that she also shot the documentary “Amami” (2015) which was also shot in the same year in the place other than her hometown of Nara. Though Naomi Kawase had thought that Nara Prefecture is her hometown, she got to understand that in fact she was born in the island of Amami Oshima, which is located in the southern part of Japan. She visited Amami along with her young son and met the people there and faced the nature of Amami. There, she got more information on her past. I do not consider lightly the fact that as soon as she stepped out to other place than Nara Prefecture where she had film up to then, she realized that there appeared “Amami”.

She produces the films for herself. The start of her filming was motivated by a small camera of her own, which beame the friend of her own. Her own deficiency and loneliness. She has kept the cause of her making her film for more than 20 years since her first film. She goes on to look for someone whom she loves or who would love her with courage to fill it.

The drama film of Naomi Kawase is the extension of the documentaries of her own making and at the same time, the reconstruction of the imaginary images which cannot be realized in the documentaries. Naomi Kawase continues to call out herself and the people around her in her dram films. Wind or a man who looks after her father who left her. A woman who tries to connect the love with that man. A wise and kind grandmother. A character who continues to miss her family members from who she was separated in her childhood. Daughters who prepare for the acceptance of the mother’s death. A boy and a girl who swim naked in the broad ocean as if they were just born.

Naomi Kawase’s making the drama film and documentaries at the same time are not caused by her own aesthetical determination or her strategic choice. She accepted two types of movies as her own fate at the same time. In the filmography which is accumulated as growth, I learn the actual life of through her documentaries and learn the desired life of through the drama film. Two types of films communicate each other in a healthy and beautiful way. I believe that the dramatic power of her work gets bigger when her drama film and documentary meet together.