Neo-documentarism' in Funeral Parade of Roses

During the 1960s, a younger generation of Japanese filmmakers vigorously debated the prospects for Japanese cinema in film journals such as Kiroku Eiga and Eiga Hyōron . At a time when it was common to be both a critic and a filmmaker, some filmmakers sought not only to theorize the potentialities of Japanese filmmaking but also to put theory into practice. However, with the exception of Oshima Nagisa, the critical and theoretical writings of most of this generation of Japanese filmmakers have remained relatively unknown outside Japan. In order to draw attention to the important relationship between theoretical writing and filmmaking practice in Japan at the end of the 1960s, this essay highlights an important Japanese film critic/director, Matsumoto Toshio, and his theorization of ‘neo-documentarism’, in which he proposed a ‘new realism’ by merging the two apparently distinct styles of the documentary and the avant garde. More specifically, the article will explore how Matsumoto sought to apply his theorization of ‘neo-documentarism’, or ‘new realism’, in the making of his narrative feature, Bara no Sōretsu / Funeral Parade of Roses (1969). In doing so, I will indicate the way in which Matsumoto's realism, as evidenced in Funeral Parade of Roses , not only set out to investigate the visible and invisible ‘realities’ of Japan during a period characterized by student radicalism and a flourishing underground culture, but also sought to address, to use Matsumoto's own words, the ‘independent value of cinema more distinctly as another reality’

Art · Art history · Parade · Realism · Visual arts · Cinema and Media Studies · Digital Games and Media · Multimedia Communication and Technology

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