Ama-San is a documentary by Claudio Varejão, but it’s unusual in that it doesn’t actually give you any information beyond what you see.
Varejão doesn’t appear in the film at all. There is no narration. It’s pure observation: the daily lives of the Ama-San, Japan’s “women of the sea”.
Ama-San dive into the cold ocean with no scuba equipment hunting for abalone, shellfish and even the occasional octopus. They do this for hours before they head back to land.
The style of this documentary is a little hard to get used at first (“what am I even watching?”) but once you get used to the format, it is very interesting to watch. You don’t need a voiceover feeding you all the information.
The film actually includes surprisingly little diving footage, instead looking at three generations of divers and their day-to-day lives. One of the things you notice immediately is how composed and comfortable the divers are on screen. It almost leads you to question whether or not it is in fact a documentary. Ama-San is the most superior form of fly-on-the-wall and made very beautifully.
Ama-San is screening the Sydney Film festival.
