Tarō Nakayama

Born in 1917 in Fukuoka, Japan, Tarō Nakayama began making home movies in the 1930s using his father’s small-gauge film camera. Trained as a medical doctor, he opened a clinic in 1951 while pursuing filmmaking with 8mm equipment that he acquired in 1952.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, he independently produced fiction and documentary works and mentored local amateur filmmakers. His film Little Bear Story (1956) and the documentary The Travelling Actors (1958) received awards at the Festival International du Film Amateur in Cannes in 1960 and 1962, respectively. From the 1970s, he made 16mm documentaries commissioned by institutions including Kyushu University and the Fukuoka Prefecture Board of Education. He was awarded the Fukuoka City Cultural Award in 1985. He passed away in 1992.