- Title Information
- Title
- Refiguring Actuality: Japan's Film Theory and Avant-Garde Documentary Movement, 1950s-1960s
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Furuhata, Yuriko
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- creator
- Origin Information
- Copyright Date
(keyDate="yes", encoding="w3cdtf")
- 2008
- Physical Description
- Extent
- vii, 248 p.
- digitalOrigin
- born digital
- Note
- Thesis (Ph.D.) -- Brown University (2009)
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Chow, Rey
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- director
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Bensmaïa, Réda
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- director
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Doane, Mary Ann
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- reader
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Lamarre, Thomas
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- reader
- Name:
Corporate
- Name Part
- Brown University. Comparative Literature
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- sponsor
- Genre (aat)
- theses
- Abstract
- The aim of this dissertation is to bring to light innovative ? and until recently, thoroughly ignored ? theoretical discussions of the concepts of "actuality" (akuchuaritii),
documentary, and the "mechanically produced image" (eizô) by Japanese avant-garde critics and filmmakers. Drawing on original source materials, my work also challenges one of the most persistent
presumptions in Cinema Studies: the belief that Japanese writers and filmmakers have never produced a body of writings that deserve to be called "theory." More concretely, I map out critical
connections between avant-garde theorists (such as Hanada Kiyoteru and Abe Kôbô) and filmmakers (such as Oshima Nagisa, Matsumoto Toshio, Wakamatsu Kôji) that have been neglected in the standard
accounts of Japanese cinema. During the 1950s and the 1960s, not only did avant-garde art practice gain intellectual momentum and expressive intensity in Japan, but it also gave rise to a
politicized film discourse, which took the problematic of actuality as its basis of inquiry. Alongside the discursive currency of this concept and in dialogue with it, Japanese filmmaking also
saw a sudden explosion of particular cinematic techniques, such as citational uses of journalistic media (e.g. newspapers, press photographs, comics), freeze-frames, and extreme close-ups. I
argue that the postwar Japanese avant-garde engagement with film theory and practice offers a particularly fertile ground to examine the productive tension between avant-garde and journalistic
media, and by extension, allows us to revisit the Marxist notion of vanguardism in light of the current leftist discourse on the "common." My investigation begins with the emergence of what I
call the "avant-garde documentary movement." This movement owed its theoretical basis to the Marxist avant-garde critic Hanada's proposition to dialectically synthesize avant-garde and
documentary filmmaking. After examining the filmic works of Matsumoto, Teshigahara, Oshima, and Wakamatsu from the 1960s, I conclude my investigation with an analysis of the fûkeiron ("theory of
landscape") and two "landscape" films, which mark the endpoint of this form of politico-aesthetic vanguardism.
- Subject (Local)
- Topic
- Avant-garde
- Subject (Local)
- Topic
- documentary
- Subject (Local)
- Topic
- film theory
- Subject (Local)
- Topic
- actuality
- Subject (Local)
- Topic
- Marxism
- Subject (Local)
- Topic
- Hanada Kiyoteru
- Subject (Local)
- Topic
- Abe Kôbô
- Subject (Local)
- Topic
- Matsumoto Toshio
- Subject (Local)
- Topic
- Oshima Nagisa
- Subject (Local)
- Topic
- Wakamatsu Kôji
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1776700")
- Topic
- Avant garde
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/896079")
- Topic
- Documentary films
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/796336")
- Topic
- Actualities (Motion pictures)
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/870421")
- Topic
- Communism
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/80768")
- Name
- Name Part
- Hanada, Kiyoteru
- Name Part:
Date
- 1909-1974
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/54025")
- Name
- Name Part
- Abe, Kōbō
- Name Part:
Date
- 1924-1993
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1802508")
- Name
- Name Part
- Ōshima, Nagisa
- Name Part:
Date
- 1932-2013
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1801739")
- Name
- Name Part
- Wakamatsu, Kōji
- Name Part:
Date
- 1936-2012
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1204082")
- Geographic
- Japan
- Record Information
- Record Content Source (marcorg)
- RPB
- Record Creation Date
(encoding="iso8601")
- 20091218
- Language
- Language Term:
Code (ISO639-2B)
- eng
- Language Term:
Text
- English
- Identifier:
DOI
- 10.7301/Z07S7M25
- Access Condition:
rights statement
(href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/")
- In Copyright
- Access Condition:
restriction on access
- Collection is open for research.
- Type of Resource (primo)
- dissertations