Rasen no sobyo

Kojima Yasushi, the director of this documentary, was a student of Imamura Shohei at the Japanese filmschool, until last year. Kojima specialized himself in documentary film. He submitted a proposal to make his final project about the gay community in Japan. He was interested in these men. He had a sideline in a snackbar in the 'pink' quarters of Shinjuku: every night, he saw a group of homosexual men drifting about in the streets of the neighbourhood. He wondered how these men's daily contacts were. The plan was accepted by the school board. Never before had a film been made about this almost closed off community in Japan. Kojima got in contact with four men in Osaka. He wanted to base his film on the highly different life-stories of these gay men.Kojima and his crew lived together with them for five months. He found out that great prejudices about their lives existed. If he wanted to make a subtle portrait of this community, he first had to take away those prejudices. This appeared to be impossible within the period of time set out for the project. At school, he presented a fragment from this large project. He received favourable criticisms from Imamura and Oniwa and graduated. The school board advised him to finish the film. But his staff got involved in other projects. Rasen no sobyo lay idle until professor Takeshige Kunio took care of it. He assured himself of the help of the editor of black rain, involved a friendly producer in the film, and devised a narrative structure that concentrated on one of the four men. The frame was supplied by Yano, the main character, who wanted to stage a play about gay men. The other characters were introduced as cooperators of the play. During the time of shooting, Kojima got involved deeper and deeper in Yano's and his friend Takashi's life, so much so that sometimes he even played a role in their conflicts. This film unashamedly shows how personal the contacts between the director and his characters has been. This has not resulted in a 'rough sketch' but in a documentary that sheds light upon the deepest universal emotions, of homosexual as well as heterosexual people. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)