Camera Obtrusa: The Action Documentaries of Hara Kazuo

An authentic visionary of cinema, Japanese filmmaker Hara Kazuo has spent the past four decades pioneering a stark documentary style that challenged the mores of postwar Japanese society. His works feature dramatic narratives and characters--radicals, outcasts and those on the margins--who struggle against adversity: "I make bitter films. I hate mainstream society," Kazuo has avowed. Camera Obtrusa is the first English-language publication addressing his work. Composed as a straightforward handbook, the volume offers Kazuo´s technical notes on his groundbreaking filmmaking. As such, it is invaluable to students and scholars, but it is also peppered with anecdotes from the freewheeling filmmaker´s life. Camera Obtrusa also includes the full production notes to Kazuo´s controversial and award-winning film, The Emperor´s Naked Army Marches On (1987), a filmography and a foreword by distinguished Japanese film historian, Abe Markus Nornes.