Asahiza
(Asahiza)
JAPAN / 2013 / Japanese / Color / Blu-ray / 80 min
Director, Photography, Sound: Fujii Hikaru
Source: Asahiza Production Committee
The Asahiza Theatre in the City of Minami-Soma, Fukushima was founded in 1923 as a playhouse. It closed its curtains in 1991, but in 2008 its supporters formed the Asahiza Appreciation Club, which remains active today. Even after the earthquake and tsunami, its members’ faces continue to light up while they share their memories of their city’s movie theatre.
InterviewA View of the Coast
(Enganbu no fukei)
JAPAN / 2013 / Japanese / Color / Blu-ray / 100 min
Director, Photography, Sound, Producer, Source: Suzuo Keita
While traveling up the Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima coast, the camera pauses on the forms and voices of people who remain—an elderly man constantly moving her hands in attempts to recover lost things, and youth who just sit on the ground. While on a map, this may just be one continuous coastline, the flow of time is different in each place.
A Man Who Returned —The Distance to Happiness, from Tokyo to Fukushima
(Kaettekita otoko)
JAPAN / 2012 / Japanese / Color / Blu-ray / 74 min
Director: Takeuchi Masatoshi
Photography: Kasahara Susumu
Sound: Aizawa Kenkichi
Producers: Suehisa Eiji, Aoyama Kuranosuke
Source: AIVOT and Team TORII
This film follows a man who returns to Fukushima after evacuating to Tokyo. We meet the old friends he reunited with in Tokyo, and former students he once taught in cram school. Caught in the narrow space between preparations for a new life, and his words, “I will return to Fukushima soon,” where could this man with an ambiguous laugh be going?