The First Emperor
In 1971, Hara Masato and a group or actors started shooting his 16mm film, The First Emperor, based on an old Japanese book about history and myths that is known as the Kojiki ('Record of Ancient Matters'). He did not finish the film. A year later, he started filming again with a small Super8 camera, all on his own, now intending to make some shots of the locations he had not previously been able to film. On the way, he reconsidered his ideas and realised that the myths could not be found anywhere outside and were not filmable in a material sense, but that they were located in cinema itself or in the making of cinema. He decided that recording his hunt for locations was the best way to finish The First Emperor, in which the Japanese myths could also serve as material. The smallest universe known as cinema corresponds with the universe of telling myths about Creation.
Masato Hara
Director
Also Directed by Masato Hara
Making of "20th Century Nostalgia"
A tragic love story set in a mountain village in the Showa era, waiting for a fiancé who died in the war, but it is more than that. It breaks through the existing concept of a film with a beginning, middle, and end, and like Fellini or Godard... Hara Masato's cosmic film philosophy on the theme of "human history and media" unfolds like a symphony.
A young student believes that the spirit of an alien from another planet has gone back in time and taken over his body to infiltrate and study humanity, to find the reasons why our civilization is doomed to future destruction. He replicates the spirit of another alien in a girl that he meets, and together they use their video cameras to document modern urban Japanese society.
At the age of 63, Masato Hara becomes father to a pair of twin sisters, and for the first time in his life must work part-time jobs to make a living.
Hara's new film 「焼け跡クロニクル」 is a documentary film about Hara's attempt to rebuild his life from scratch after his house burned down in 2018 and he lost all his household goods and film equipment. Co-produced with Maori Hara, his partner in both public and private life, the film combines 8mm film salvaged from the ruins of the fire with digital footage shot on an iPhone to tell the story of his recovery from the fire.
Filmmaker Masato Hara and his teenage son set off on a road trip, following the route of Basho's Narrow Road to the Deep North.
Film director Masato Hara welcomes MAORI as a partner and begins a new life. The two of us routinely turn the 8mm camera and make songs while the days go by. The time between the two will soon be the time for the three with their newborn eldest son, KOBOH. And a small family trip. Head south from Kyoto to Hiroshima, Kyushu, and Okinawa. Put enough luggage, shooting equipment and accordion in a small car.
