Puppets and People and Blok

 The site kinoeye.com  posted a collection of quotes about documentary film. There where several which  struck me as being actual in terms of the film Tokyo Journey. In the film two puppets are seen together - the  puppet human and the real puppet, mechanical.  But which is the real puppet. This interface where two masks, two puppets meet each other and respond to each other has the effect that I wished for. Are these beings sentient or mechanical and where does the one end and the other begin. What are the elements which create the impression of life and decrease the impression of life and living, in what does the character of life consist? If we met with alien life from an other planet how would we know, how could we determine its reality, its true reality when we are unable to accurately determine our own reality and embrace it as a fact or facts. Throughout the making of the film from its conception to completion Noh theatre and bungaku puppet theatre was always in the back of my mind, not consciously informing the film but certainly the work I was doing reminded me of these Japanese arts. I couldn't say they informed my decisions but something of the arts of one slide through into the other and back again. More over the Fairground Booth  by Blok was always there informing the direction of this film much like Meyerhold and and Vakhtangov. Blok's Fairground Booth informs this film as much as Japanese Theatre. Meyerhold was heavily influenced by Japanese Noh Theatre and Kabuki for many of of his innovations and were apart of the technology of bio-mechanics which Meyerhold developed as a way of training his actors in movement and dance rather than solely concentrating on words and language to convey emotion and drama.