23-02-2007
Campaign World Premiere at Berlin Film Festival

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Directed, shot and edited by Kazuhiro Soda, CAMPAIGN (SENKYO) is a behind the scenes look at a political campaign that is uniquely Japanese. Shot in direct cinema style, Soda’s examination of Kazuhiko “Yama-san” Yamauchi’s campaign for the Liberal Democratic Party, the party that has held power in Japan for 50 years, simultaneously captures the essence of Japanese society. Humorous, insightful, detailed and unique, CAMPAIGN offers up a microcosm of Japanese politics through the campaign of the politically-inexperienced Yama-san.

The World premiere of the film took place this month at the Berlin International Film Festival Forum of New Cinema and was fantastically received. Christoph Terhechte, Director of the Forum, called Yamauchi’s spontaneous under-prepared campaign ‘a tour de force that takes him to the edge of his capacities’.

Described by the director as an ‘observational film’, CAMPAIGN makes no political argument, but the viewer is expected to perceive and interpret the complex, difficult-to-articulate reality of an election campaign run by the LDP. Soda says, “CAMPAIGN asks viewers to observe and think about what they see on the screen. In this sense, reality is not painted in black and white. Instead it is grey and complicated the way we experience it every day”.

Kazuhiro Soda was born and raised in Japan and has lived in New York since 1993. He has directed numerous fiction films and TV documentaries. CAMPAIGN is his first feature documentary.

CAMPAIGN will be broadcast globally in October 2007 as part of the Why Democracy? series

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