I was reflecting on my desire for more documentary materials in another thread--that is, of a particular 'cinéma vérité' style (I suppose I should say 'cinéma direct' instead), and cited Kazuhiro Soda's work as an example. His documentary "Campaign" is available streaming for free in full here: http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2008/campaign/ (It's subtitled)

Sample: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djwd3QKQOfc


"... I've shot about 50 documentaries for NHK over the years and most of them were shot with a traditional crew - cameraman with a big camera, lighting guy, sound person, maybe an assistant. That's huge in a way and it's almost impossible for people to act naturally. I was always wishing I was alone, shooting by myself. If I wanted to make my own movies, I wanted to do it alone, not just for financial reasons but for aesthetic ones. With my type of documentary filmmaking, my ideal approach would to be invisible, like air, observing. That's possible now because of the revolution in video cameras. Small cameras can now capture fine images and good quality sound through mounted shotgun mics." - http://www.midnighteye.com/interviews/k … soda.shtml

This is his next work: http://www.laboratoryx.us/mental/

Last edited by nest0r (2009 February 08, 5:02 pm)