MO HITOTSU NO KYOIKU

Lessons from a Calf documents the studies of pupils of the Ina elemantary school in the Prefecture of Nagano as they raise a dairy cow named Lola: calculating the cost of the feed, cleaning the barn, the birth and death of Lolas calf, and parting with Lola. The camera follows the children and their cow-based curriculum, capturing their lively expressions and the changes which occur in them. After a year of working, I was in danger of losing sight of what I myself wanted to shoot. I wanted to reinforce it again. So I wrote lots of proposals and scripts, groping for what fit me. As part of the same process, I thought, Why not just start filming something?, and then when I thought, What shall I shoot? that television program came to mind.That elementary school had actually been in the news several times. When I was at university there was a feature on TV Asahis News Station program about the Harugumi class when they were in the first year. The faces of the children from that program leapt to mind and I thought Id like to try filming them. (Koreeda Hirokazu)