The Leaping Gaze--The Dawn of the 100 Million Documentarists (1969)

The Leaping Gaze--The Dawn of the 100 Million Documentarists (1969)

In 1969, amidst a shaken society, television was beginning to transform itself beyond mere entertainment and news reporting into a device that questioned the human gaze itself. At the forefront of this trend, documentary director Junichi Ushiyama tossed around the phrase "100 million documentarists. He believed that images were no longer the preserve of the privileged class, and that each citizen could have a point of view to record in his or her daily life. And then there is the idea of the "double camera. His suggestion that the camera not only records culture, but that the filmmaker himself must also be observed, predates the vlogs and meta-documentaries of our time. Ushiyama says, "Documentary is not a theory of works, but a theory of authors. This statement reflects the rigor with which he confronts reality. The gaze that leapt across the boundary between projecting and gazing amidst the murmurs of the times still resides at the root of our visual culture today.