Japan
9.5mm
B&W
Silent
"The most stylistically experimental film among Kaneko’s works but also one of the most self-reflexive Japanese films of the interwar period. In this film, Kaneko featured the process of 9.5mm filmmaking by means of visual experiments and abstraction. By constructing the film in a way to trace the process of shooting, self-developing, editing, and projecting a film, he manipulated montage and multiple exposures as well as the use of light and shadow, while he elaborated the use of close-up shots that captured film devices and the filmmaker (presumably Kaneko himself) at work... Many advanced amateurs considered the process of filmmaking as an essential part of defining the idea of amateurishness. Unlike commercial productions that involved many casts and crews, amateur productions had the privilege of creating a work individually by going through the entire process of filmmaking, which allows the filmmaker to make every decision on his or her own. Kaneko’s Film Study 9 1/2 visualized this process by reflecting his artistic sensibilities." - Noriko Morisue, "Filming the Everyday: History, Theory, and Aesthetics of Amateur Cinema in Interwar and Wartime Japan" (Yale University: PhD Dissertation, 2020): 111.
Mie Bebī Shinema Kurabu [Mie Baby Cinema Club]
Zen Nippon Patē Shine Kyōkai [All-Nippon Pathé Cine Association]
Tsu City Board of Education
Amateur Cinema