A Documentary Despite Fictional Elements… The film Nippon koku: Furuyashiki-mura [“Nippon”: Furuyashiki Village], which we finished in the meantime (in 1982), is quite a scientific approximation of our experiences in Magino and the surrounding area. Until then, we let the peasants speak in front of the camera by way of interviews. In the new film, however, the peasants played themselves. By then we knew the characters, temperaments and “stories” of a couple of people, and we asked them if they wanted to play themselves in front of the camera. After we got past the initial insecurity, we wrote the “screenplay” together, each of us making suggestions which were then thoroughly discussed. For us, what mattered were not the episodes as such, but what was told, the essence reflected in the transposition. As we knew each other well and as there was a relationship of trust between us, there was no reason for them to fear burning their fingers on their self-portrayal and exposure. A problem that is especially delicate when it comes to documentaries.
In this way, we tried not just to revive the stories through acting, but also to keep the documentary element, whether through props and clothes or through the fact that we were portraying the nature of the storytellers themselves.
Postscript When transcribing the interview, I find out that Ogawa and his collaborators are planning a big party and a screening of the film in Magino, the so-called breeding ground of the film. Already for New Year he has screened the film in the village. It is important for him, he believes, that the film is first shown where its roots are and that it is not immediately funnelled into the big city by a huge marketing machine. To each film its own distribution system… This is just a small example of Ogawa’s consistency in defending his cause. Regula König
From various sides, I heard words of praise about the natural, skilled way they were portrayed. I believe it has to do with our mutual trust, maybe also with the way of working. In a sense we “rehearsed for years”. Both “interludes” were performed by professional actors, together with the peasants. We chose the theatre form because it crystallizes the essential, the “essence” in a much clearer way. But the documentary elements are far from absent in that approach. In the story of “Yoki, the beggar”, the women from the village went digging in old trunks for fitting clothes from the Meiji period for Naka, Yoki’s sister, in order to dress her the way she was remembered by some. For the “uprising of the peasants”, the villagers went looking in attics for clothes and props that were left behind by their ancestors. We wrote a screenplay, constructed a stage, the peasants played their roles, but the personal memories of the acts of their ancestors are clearly present. The stage was placed where the uprising had really taken place. The document the governor shoves under the leader’s nose is real, just like the annals the village elder is reading…
From the interview published in Informationsblatt (Berlin: 17. Internationales Forum des jungen Films, 1987). Translated by Sis Matthé
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