The
#NutmegsCurse by
#Amitav Ghosh keeps making me think of scenes from
#HayaoMiyazaki's
#宮崎駿 movies: a river god purging pollution in
#SpiritedAway #千と千尋 the noise and smoke from the Industrial town in
#PrincessMononoke #もののけ姫, along with the little forest spirits, the big deer god.
#水俣曼荼羅 #MinamataMandala's producer
#HaraKazuo said the
#LocalGods of a place
#地神 #地公神 take part in movies. It would be interesting to see
#原一男 talk with
#DaviKopenwa about the
#xapiri of the
#Amazon.
> Making documentaries is searching for the “right way” with the camera... The most important thing is finding the right protagonist, pointing a camera towards them and always thinking: who do I want to be? ... In Japan, and the world at large right now, we have horrible politics... we waste our money on wars...taking taxes from the poor... politics of cruelty,
ー http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2021/interviews/the-violence-of-privacy-a-conversation-with-kazuo-hara/
#documentary #film #movie #HaraKazuo #KazuoHara #原一男
The Violence of Privacy: A Conversation with Kazuo Hara – Senses of Cinema
> If Sennan Asbestos Disaster is THE Japanese documentary of 2010s, Minamata Mandala will likely be THE Japanese documentary of 2020s. Kazuo captured the power of life in such a pure way. 2K DCP, Shanghai International Film Festival
- https://mubi.com/films/minamata-mandala
#Minamata #Movie #水俣曼荼羅 #水俣病 #原一男 #HaraKazuo #Documentary #MinamataMandala
Minamata Mandala
For decades, Minamata disease patients struggled within the Japanese judicial system for their rights to receive compensation as victims of environmental disease. Those different aspects of these patients’ lives have been filmed by director Hara for the last 15 years.
Japan Society Film | MINAMATA Mandala
_“Minamata disease”_ is a neurological disease caused by methylmercury poisoning named for its identification in Kumamoto Prefecture, where industrial wastewater from a Chisso Corporation chemical plant contaminated fish and shellfish consumed by communities around Minamata Bay and the Shiranui Sea. Filmed over 15 years, this sprawling documentary lays out this history of pollution dating back to the 1930s and decades long legal battles against the government for diagnosis certification and reparations. However the film gives itself over to the network of survivors, care providers, and supporters keeping the fight alive, following unexpected chutes and ladders from gregarious researchers’ theories pushing back against an intransigent medical establishment, to the passionate song lyrics of a woman suffering since childhood. Here Hara and Kobayashi return to core commitments of disability rights and individuals’ demands of the state, extending Noriaki Tsuchimoto’s landmark series on the Minamata struggle, and issuing a cry against political apathy.
"Hara Kazuo—considered his generation’s documentary master—displays headstrong patience and allegiance to his subjects, something that has become characteristic of his late-career period of prolific filmmaking.”—International Film Festival Rotterdam
***
Streaming in the U.S. from June 4-July 2 as part of _[Cinema as Struggle: The Films of Kazuo Hara & Sachiko Kobayashi](https://film.japansociety.org/page/cinema-as-struggle-the-films-of-kazuo-hara-and-sachiko-kobayashi/)_ | [Also available in the U.S. as a part of our discounted 3-Film _**Bundle 2**_](https://film.japansociety.org/bundle/cinema-as-struggle-the-films-of-kazuo-hara-and-sachiko-kobayashi-bundle-2/) for $20
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