Iwanai Bebī Shinema Kurabu [Iwanai Baby Cinema Club]

Year Founded:

1929

Location:

Iwanai, Japan

Resources:

"Yuri Masaharu, an amateur filmmaker in the rural town of Iwanai, Hokkaido, lamented in the May 1929 issue Bebī shinema that, given that Iwanai was a fishing village far from urban areas, Yuri was the solo member of the Iwanai Bebī Shinema Kurabu (Iwanai Baby Cinema Club) with no peers to organize the group or discuss filmmaking. In addition, Yuri complained that he had to get all the necessary equipment shipped from Tokyo, since there was no camera store in his town." - Noriko Morisue, "Filming the Everyday: History, Theory, and Aesthetics of Amateur Cinema in Interwar and Wartime Japan" (Yale University: PhD Dissertation, 2020): 15.