Japanese

Perspectives Japan Films

• October 6–10   [Venue] F5 Forum 5

This program introduces films that capture Japan from a unique perspective. Men with Movie Cameras—Shooting the Great Kanto Earthquake reexamines the ethics of documenting disasters and the power of images. What Should We Have Done?, an incisive record of a family’s struggles over 20 years, asks through the camera lens what responsibility should be, and what their relationships are. Nihonbara Diary tells the story of a family that has appealed for peace for half a century and lives a dream of herding cows at a Self-Defense Force training ground, with a mixture of surprise and humor. With Each Passing Breath celebrates the traditions and inheritances of people living in the art of rokyoku, where the performers express their emotions of joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure with surging voices and the accompaniment of the shamisen. Oasis is an attempt to capture the culture and physical sensibilities that quietly exist in the midst of the metropolis as nimbly as a sketch, but at the same time as carefully as possible. These five films pose the question, in an actual and sincere manner, of what it is to live/be compelled to live in a certain place within a particular period of time, without being bound by convention.