Inhalte(1)
The city of Yokohama lies near the sea, but is all but a luxurious bathing resort or a flourishing seaport that ensures a liveable accommodation for its inhabitants. The city centre, called Kotobuki, is crammed with slum dwellings. Within a radius of 150 metres 5,000 people live above and below each other. Most of them lead hopeless lives. Some work night and day in the harbour, others do not even make enough money to eat. The number of deaths in this area rises steadily, medical assistance is hardly available. The number of incurable patients is very high. People often die unnoticed. The bodies are not buried, just burnt. Their ashes are blown away by the wind. Ogawa Shinsuke wanted to make a penetrating documentary about the inhabitants of this neighbourhood. A camera crew of three people, led by Okumara Yuji, stayed in Kotobuki for ten months, day in day out, and tried to shoot the people, without any prejudice with respect to their poverty and criminality. This resulted in 19 hours of film. The group was highly impressed by what they had seen and recorded. A worker losing his leg while working, another laughing at this because his story is even more horrible. Like this, every inhabitant of Kotubuki has his or her own story to tell. Crime runs rampant in Yokohama. Some jobless people see the pocketknife as their last resort, but not only the people slaughter each other. The winter is severe and long enough to claim its victims, too. And still, the film crew noticed mutual solidarity between the people in the slums. They are in it together and this idea gives them unbridled energy to survive. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)
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