By JOÃO LANARI BO*
Commentary on the documentary directed by Shiori Ito
Black Box Diaries, completed in 2024, occupies a place sui generis in the cinematographic constellation of the times we live in. Sui generis: without similarity to any other, unique in its genre; original, peculiar, singular. Of course, it is not the first intimate documentary, of the type that aims at an uncensored exposure of the author/director.
In Japan itself, the country of origin of Shiori Ito, the courageous director, there is a tradition that thinks of cinematographic discourse as an intimate investigation – in 1974, Hara Kazuo shot Private Eros Extreme Love Song 1974, showing fragments of the relationship with his partner, Miyuki, direct sound and images captured in 16 mm.
The digital vertigo that plagues us has added a quantum voltage to this drive. Today, the number of cameras that record the depths of human experiences and relationships is simply countless. Cell phones equipped with cameras, storage facilities and image editing have become extremely accessible.
Make these records reach higher heights, have expressive capacity and, ultimately, be nominated for an Oscar in the documentary category – in this case, Black Box Diaries – that’s another story, as popular wisdom has it. Shiori Ito achieved this feat by asking about her own sexual assault, her struggle to bring her attacker to justice and, along the way, exposing the anachronism of Japan’s judicial system. No small feat.
His illustrious predecessor, Hara Kazuo, is one of the most visceral documentarians that cinema has ever produced. For him, the camera can threaten the subject of the documentary by revealing its vulnerabilities. But it can also reveal its (the filmmaker's) own weaknesses, in the mise-en-scène or in the editing, in the very way it captures the object. The camera, he sums up, is a device through which the vulnerabilities of subject and object pass: a better way of understanding them, an instrument of discovery (and self-discovery).
Such assertions also apply to Shiori Ito and her diaries – perhaps to any and all projects that have as their premise the daily, literary or audiovisual record.
The Facts: Shiori Ito was an intern at the news agency Reuters in 2015, when he reached out to Noriyuki Yamaguchi, then Washington bureau chief for the private TV network “Tokyo Broadcasting System”. The idea was to probe about a possible job opportunity. He invited her to dinner: her last memory is the dizziness she felt during the encounter. The next memory was waking up in a hotel room with Yamaguchi, while he raped her, on top of her body. All she could remember was that it was after 5:30 am, but it was not after 6 am – in her words. She left the hotel in a hurry, humiliated and offended. Yamaguchi, who was 53 at the time of the incident, denies the accusations.
From that moment on, the director's life entered a traumatic spiral. She soon decided to record all her reactions, her pain, her impasses. As a journalist, she had experience in reporting and mini-documentaries, but this new front – an intimate record of the abyss that had opened up in her life – was, obviously, a radical novelty.
Black Box Diaries does not hide the successive moments of weakness, hesitation, and exhaustion that accompanied this process. Framing, testimonies, editing – all the language devices capture these vulnerabilities and bring them to the surface, impacting the narrative fluency of the documentary. The film unfolds as Shiori Ito delves into her troubled personal history.
The story includes the quasi-feudal legal environment in Japan for rape cases, which requires overwhelming evidence. Prosecutors claimed there was not enough evidence to support a criminal case – the only way out was to file a civil lawsuit. Yamaguchi was a friend and biographer of former Prime Minister Abe, which made any progress more difficult: in Japan, patriarchal hierarchy is complex and effective. While filming everything and everyone with her cell phone, Shiori Ito began writing a book, and made it public in an unprecedented press conference in 2017, when she was 28 years old. She became a public figure.
Shiori Ito now lives between London and Berlin. One of her projects is to visit the Amazon and film it – with her cell phone.
*João Lanari Bo He is a professor of cinema at the Faculty of Communication at the University of Brasília (UnB). Author, among other books, of Cinema for Russians, Cinema for Soviets (Time Bazaar). [https://amzn.to/45rHa9F]
Reference
Black Box Diaries (Black box diaries)
USA, Japan, documentary, 2024, 103 minutes.
Directed by: Shiori Ito.
the earth is round there is thanks to our readers and supporters.
Help us keep this idea going.
CONTRIBUTE
