10 Feet Project

Japanese filmmaker Susumu Hani was a founder of Iwanami Productions and through the early '50s the one-time journalist made numerous high-quality short and medium-length documentaries. His series on children, including Children Who Draw (1956) earned Hani international recognition. He began directing feature films in the early 1960s, but returned to documentaries a decade later. The latter documentaries appeared on television. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

1930—96, Japanese composer, b. Tokyo. In 1951 in Tokyo Takemitsu organized the Experimental Workshop, the first of several avant-garde groups he founded. Championed by Igor Stravinsky, he was the first contemporary Japanese composer to become known in the West. In 1970 he designed the "Space Theater" for the exposition in Osaka. His best-known work is the Requiem (1958) for strings. His other compositions include Undisturbed Rest (1952) for piano, Dorian Horizon (1967) for string orchestra, the piano trio Between Tides (1993), and many other works of chamber and orchestral music. He is also noted for the dozens of evocative scores he wrote for Japanese films, e.g., Woman in the Dunes (1964), Ran (1985), and Black Rain (1989). Takemitsu successfully combined serial music and other techniques from Europe and the United States with traditional Japanese modalities.