Sharon Lockhart & Goshogaoka

In the class on Monday we watched we had a guest filmmaker come, Sharon Lockhart, she showed us her film, Goshogaoka,color,sound, 16mm. A film she had made in Japan while living in a small town there. She said she had gotten inspiered when she had passed a gym and saw the girls on the basketball team practicing, Sharon Lockhart watched them for three months observing and learning as much as she could about them. As she described to the class during our brief Q&A with her before the showing, she had said that inorder to film the girls she had to go through a gauntlet of buracracy and that she felt that she had gotten alot of polite no's. After we were able to ask her breif questions and were about to watch her film she had to leave to go film something for her new film about the disaperance of the lunch room in America; it sounded like an interesting film and that there would be plenty of history to work with, however it did feel a lil rude that she would be there to show us her film but leave to go do something else.
I had talked with Carl after and he had told me that yeah it was a bit wierd considering she was a professior her self and that you would think she would be better then the way she was but that was the impression i got. But anyway, when the film finally started it was something different then before. There was one stationary camera that was set in the center of the gym the background was a stage with red curtins covering the open area of the stage and the rest was a modern gym desigen, that brought back a feeling of how it looke dlike in highschool, middleschool, or grade school. It is interesting to think that when you hear Japan you most likly think wonderful Arcutechture or something different as far as what we would see but it is all very much the same.
However what is not the same is the interaction, the way the team would practice or go about their average practice which was very close yet very different the way a team will practice in America. The main thing that struck me the most with the girls as i watched them go about their average practice for them was the way the walked on the lines of the gym floor, the focus and meditation it really takes to dedicate to being on a team, playing in a sport, was something of a miss. Usually when you see a team practice it is very much like PT in the army, you constatly move, go ove rplays, condition,condition,condition. There usually isn't a time to slow down and take in your surroundings; however this is a major seperation from Japaness culture and American culture.
Another thing that got me was the way the girls would message each other after practice, that says to me how close they really are when it comes to being a team player. You have to be pretty close with your teammates to let them that close to you and help you relaxe after a hard work out. There wasn't anything erotic about it or dirty but there was something very different about it. The main thing that kept getting my attention was that the girls really didn't seem to care about being on a camera, they were focused on the team and doing what have done every day beofre, as apposed to American girls who would most likly want to show how special and great there are over the team.
As we watched the film we saw that the camera never moved, there was no enphosis on action or pointing out the stars of the team, it was all about watch these well organized, disaplined girls as they do what they do everyday. Sharon Lockhart would let a whole deck go before ending a sequence, there was no dissolve or fade, just hard cuts as the film went from one deck to the next of raw unedited film. And when you saw the girl go off screen the camera wouldn't be able to show us what was going on so there was an elemint of mystic in what weren't we being shown what was going on off camera. I found that got my attention when i was watching this film because it made me wonder what face did the girls allow them selves to have out of veiw of the camera, were they more tierd or boared then they let show of camera, did they hate knowing that many people would see them screw up if it happened and raised their anxiety, turning this practice into a stressful day.
Was there pressure from the community put on the girls to not screw up, show everyone how organized and dissapline our culture is compared to everyone elses, if you fail you will bring shame upon your family and your selves? maybe abit over dramatic on that last part i know, but Japaness culture has a high standard as far as honor and bring shame goes. As i watched this film i coulded but help check my watch every few minutes, because lets face it the film dragged and watching a basketball team practice was just not somwething to hold my attention for to long. It was especially hard to not notice that the girls really didn't have much individuality when it came to their apperiance, for the most part they had the same hair, face, bodys and it just felt like i am seeing clones in millitary fasion go about their practice. AM i making a StarWars implication? possible, but even i am not sure about that one.
Over all i thought the film was OK, i know what i hate and i didn't hate this but i also wouldn't say that this film was, THE GREATEST FUCKEN FILM OF ALL TIME!!!!! but in the end it was ok.