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Youtube Kurosawa documentary

Youtube user forbesnation has put together a two-part documentary discussing “the Western influences and influence of legendary director Akira Kurosawa”. The work, which was made as a High School project, perhaps feels a bit patchy, but has nevertheless been edited together quite nicely. You will probably recognize the sources used for the video and much of the audio material.

For some reason, currently only Part 2 of the documentary is available.

Update: Part 1 is now available, and can be viewed here.


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Ben

Certainly admirable because it was done by a high school student, but yes definitely patchy. I watched out of my own interest as a co-teacher for a high school doc class.

While I was impressed by how much material the student collected (albeit readily available) that was off set by the fact that he kept repeating the same bit of information, usually 3 times in a row, as in the John Ford influence and most of all in regards to Japan’s feelings regarding Kurosawa. We first hear it from the student, then AK himself and then Lucas… It was so obvisouly redundant…
Perhaps I am being too harsh but I am just annoyed as a whiney ol’ filmmaker.

The guy has got to be an AK fan nonetheless for what appears to be quite a bit of time and effort collecting and editing footage and facts, which is admirable and also cool to know that there are some teens out there that dig AK films.

It was also cool to see AK recieve the Oscar. I had not seen that before. What he said about not yet understanding cinema was wonderful and just the honest truth. How can we when it is still such a young art form?

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Jeremy Quintanilla

Docmentaries are very hard to do right, and although his was rough, a little dry and repetitive, it was a great job. I think must of the problem lay within the limited tools and experience to edit and produce a movie. Overall am quite impressed, I would even say its better then most of the documentaries that play on the Doc. Channel, now those are boring and poorly edited.

I do envy anyone young that shows interest in movies the likes of Kurosawa and other such greats. Along with the mindset to tackle such a relativity difficult project. Around that age I had no interest in movies, did poorly in school and spent most of my time in detention or jail. If I spent my free time watching Kurosawa movies instead of getting in trouble, perhaps I would be much further ahead then I am now and not playing catch-up.

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Vili Maunula

One thing that I thought was really quite well used was the still imagery. Although much of the documentary consisted of them, the film itself never stopped moving, as the still images were being moved and zoomed around.

This was certainly better than the documentary I made on the 8th grade about our school. 😉 Of course, the equipment here must have been much better, as well. I made mine back when 486 processors were still a big thing…

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Vili Maunula

I’d just like to point out to Ben that footage from the 1990 Academy Awards with Kurosawa receiving his Lifetime Achievement Award is now available at the Other Clips section of this website.

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