Where Is Grandma Zheng’s Homeland?
(“Zheng obasan no kuni”)- Director: BAN Zhong-yi
1999 Chinese, Japanese Subtitled in English Color Video 88 min
Production Company: Siglo Ltd.
Producer: YAMAGAMI Tetsujiro
Photography: Ban Zhong-yi
Editing: SATO Makoto
Music: GAO Dali
Sound:International Sales: Siglo, Ltd.
5-24-16-210 Nakano, Nakano-ku, Tokyo 164-0001 JAPAN
Phone: 81-3-5343-3101
Fax: 81-3-5343-3102
E-mail: siglo@cine.co.jp
[Festivals and prizes]
[Synopsis] A Chinese journalist records the homecoming of a Korean “comfort woman” after 54 years in exile.
Activist and journalist Ban learns about a 70-year-old Korean woman who lives in a farming village in Hunan, China. Since the age of seventeen, when she was deceived and taken away to China as a sex slave for the Japanese military, she never had the opportunity to return home. Though she now lives peacefully with children and grandchildren, she has been diagnosed as having terminal lung cancer. She wishes to see her homeland once again before dying. Together with support groups, Ban helps her homecoming in March 1997. Overjoyed to step on her homeland once again, but torn to leave her Chinese family and village behind, Grandma’s emotions are mixed.
| BAN Zhong-yi
Born in 1958 in Liaoning, China. Came to Japan as exchange student in 1987. Won the 7th Asahi Journal Grand Prix for nonfiction writing in 1992 for Auntie So’s Sea. Extablished a support group for Chinese former “comfort women” of the Japanese imperial army in 1995. Published A Homeland So Close and Yet So Far in 1996. Started an organization advocating the education of children in Yunnan, China in 1998. Resident of Japan for 12 years. |