Into the Picture Scroll: The Tale of Yamanaka Tokiwa
02004HD
This extraordinary film presents Japanese classical scroll painting as never before. The Yamanaka Tokiwa comprises twelve scrolls painted by Matabei Iwasa some 400 years ago. Haneda redefines the art documentary and demonstrated that a film about a masterpiece can be equally masterful.
Women’s Testimonies - Pioneering Women in the Labor Movement
01996HD
In 1982, the socialist researcher Ishidō Kiyotomo organized a round table with women activists who had participated in the rise of the labor movement, from the Taishō era (1912-1925) to the Shōwa era (1926-1989). At his request, Haneda records this meeting. Stimulated by her desire to...
Devotion investigates the extremely complex and heirarchical relationships among a committed group of Japanese filmmakers who dedicated up to 30 years of their lives making films for one man-Ogawa Shinsuke. Members of Ogawa Pro filmed the student movement of the late 60's; the fight by farmers to...
Shot in a retirement home over a period of two years, this film raises the question of "how to take care". The director films with great tenderness, not only the daily life of patients with senile dementia, but also the work of caregivers. Widely broadcast, the film sparked lively debate on the...
Toru Iwakawa is elected mayor of Takanosu on the platform of improving welfare. With the support of a group formed by residents, he aims to develop a "care town" to stop the isolation of the elderly. However, the town council refuses to support his proposal.
School for Village Women, Women’s College in the Village
01957HD
Haneda’s debut as full director, made after four years spent as an assistant, is set in a farming village in Shiga Prefecture (east of Kyoto). The film depicts the traditional architecture, lifestyles and customs of the village, its agricultural and domestic labour, but its central focus, as with...
Haneda employed various cinematic and scientific technic to explore the world of cabbage butterfly, and the result was a completely new type of educational film.
Iwate Prefecture, Ohasamacho. In the foothills of Mt. Hayachine, the kagura (devotional dance) offered to the mountain goddess by the mountain priests is still performed today nearly unchanged from mediaeval times. This dance, which has been handed down along several lines of succession in the...
Commissioned by the Tokyo National Museum, this film, regarded in some quarters as the masterpiece of Haneda’s Iwanami period, is one of several in which she documented Japan’s ancient and classical artistic treasures. Here she focuses on the Tokyo National Museum’s collection of art from the...
Mayor Iwakawa was voted into office in 1991, promising better welfare for senior citizens. As a result of his efforts to create a town with resident participation, while battling against anti-reform forces of the town council, Takanosu-machi becomes the best welfare town in Japan. In the nationwide...
This film depicts the life of the 19th-century Portuguese writer Wenceslau De Moraes by means of nine ancient ballads from China. The writer married a Chinese woman after he left his wife and family to go live in Macao. Later, he moved to Japan where he fell in love with a Japanese woman, staying...
Short documentary made for the communities at the foot of Mount Hayachine. Not satisfied with it, Haneda expanded it into what eventually became Ode to Mt. Hayachine (Hayachine no fu)
The Japanese Settlers to the Manchuria and Inner Mongolia of Mainland China
3.32009HD
Set in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, the tragic theme of the film is the destruction of millions of lives in the 13 years before Manchukuo collapsed with Japan’s World War II surrender in August 1945, and the years of suffering it brought in its wake.
Sumiko Haneda returns to film what will be the final bits of Akiko Kanda's life, documenting Kanda's will to dance as she struggles with terminal cancer.
