Film Blog: Daido Moriyama – Stray Dog of Tokyo

Screened for one night at the Substation Theatre as part of the 2012 Singapore International Photography Festival (5 October–17 November), the 2001 documentary Daido Moriyama: Stray Dog of Tokyo (84 min, Japanese with English subtitles) was chosen by this year’s SIPF film curator, Tan Ngiap Heng, to balance the festival’s roster of films, which include many documentaries about American and European photographers, including Bernh and Hilla Becher, Erwin Olaf, Susan Meiselas and JR. The film features intimate interviews with the reclusive and media-shy Moriyama in his home, as well as interviews with photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, critics and curators, about Moriyama’s work. The majority of the film’s scenes were either shot in the celebrated Japanese photographer’s studio or follow him on his night walks in the rabbit warren of Tokyo’s Shinjuku neighborhood, which he is famous for capturing in several volumes of photo-books, the first of which was published a year after the film’s release.

• Japan
• Singapore