One of the special events of the 11th edition of the One World Romania International Human Rights and Documentary Film Festival (March 16-25) is the retrospective programme dedicated to the director Kazuo Hara and to the producer Siachiko Kobayashi. The two of them will be in Bucharest between March 16 and 21, will take part in Q&As after all the screenings and on Monday, March 19, they will hold a Masterclass at ARCUB, starting with 20:30.
Kazuo Hara is the most esteemed Japanese documentary filmmaker. With a career spanning over five decades, during which he has made five documentaries, he has collaborated throughout his entire life with Sachiko Kobayashi, who produced all of his films, four of them being part of the retrospective programme put together by One World Romania 2018.
Kazuo Hara and Sachiko Kobayashi`s latest documentary –
Sennan Asbestos Disaster – will have the European premiere in March, at One World Romania. It is their first documentary in 20 years and until now it was presented at the Busan Inteernational FF, Yamagata International Documentary
FF and Tokyo Filmex International FF and in March it will have the premiere in the Japanese cinemas.
For eight years Kazuo Hara has followed the legal battle between the Japanese government and tens of former workers in the asbestos mine of the small town of Sennan. They are survivors of specific diseases – asbestosis, lung cancer – that most of the people who had been through those working conditions suffered and still suffer from, not knowing anything about the dangers that they had been exposed to. Through an unpolished style – like life itself – the documentary first draws individual portraits of these aged people who have to suffer unbearable pain. Beyond the specific case of this group of people who seek justice in this world, the recurrent themes of the film are the sufferings caused by illness and death.
In the section dedicated to the two filmmakers, we will also see three other famous documentaries:
Goodbye,CP,
Extreme Private Eros Love Song 1974 and
The Emperor`s Naked Army Marches On (this film ranks the 23rd place in a top of all-time best documentaries, published by BFI in January 2017).
You can notice in the films of the couple Hara – Kobayashi their trying to offer a voice to the people that are out of the ordinary, sometime eccentric, capable of pushing their wish to make justice beyond the acceptable social limits. They are also recognized for their voluptuousness of breaking the cultural taboos, often stirring hot debates on (i)morality and on the “correct” way of relating to the characters. And they have one more thing in common: their being concerned with revealing the intimacy, many times in brutal, therefore shocking, ways.
Details:
One World Romania
