Full Frame Documentary Film Festival: "A Man Vanishes"

(Shohei Imamura, Japan, 1967, 130 min)
In the 1960s, Tadishi Oshima, a Japanese businessman, goes missing. Or did he choose to disappear? Either way, his fiancée, Yoshie, who is desperate to find him, leads a filmmaking team on a trail to his whereabouts. Together, they set off interviewing his associates, neighbors, and even past loves. An odd set of circumstances slowly comes into focus: Had Tadishi embezzled funds? Could it be that his relationship with Yoshie’s sister was not what it seemed? As the testimonies deepen, Yoshie’s role in constructing the narrative of Tadishi’s disappearance comes into question. Even the filmmaker’s role is subject to speculation. Shot in black-and-white, with purposefully out-of-sync sound, this examination of truth and fiction may have taken over forty-five years to be released in the United States, but the questions at its core are remarkably current.
This film is part of the thematic program “Stories About Stories”.
 
The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is an annual international event dedicated to the theatrical exhibition of non-fiction cinema. Each spring Full Frame welcomes filmmakers and film lovers from around the world to historic downtown Durham, North Carolina for a four-day, morning to midnight array of over 100 films as well as discussions, panels, and southern hospitality. Set within a four-block radius, the intimate festival landscape fosters community and conversation between filmmakers, film professionals and the public.
The festival is a program of the Center for Documentary Studies (a non-profit, 501 c 3), and receives support from corporate sponsors, private foundations and individual donors whose generosity provides the foundation that makes the event possible. The Presenting Sponsor of the Festival is Duke University.
Click here for ticket information and pricing.
 
DATE: April 6, 2013
LOCATION: Durham Arts Council, 120 Morris St.
TIME: 7:30-10:05pm