Thursday
April 14, 6:30pm at
Bartos Theatre, MIT (Cambridge)
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War and Peace
(160min./India/2002)
After the
nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in May 1998, they began
to film not only the euphoria and jingoism that followed but
also the beginnings of an anti-nuclear movement. Their trail
has taken us across India from the test site to the site of
uranium mining. They have also filmed in Pakistan as well
as Japan and the USA in an effort to understand the psyche
that has allowed weapons of mass destruction to exist and
expands.
[Awards]
Grand Prize, Earth Vision Global Environment Festival, Tokyo,
2002
International Critics' Award (FIPRESCI), Sydney Film Festival,
2002
Best Film/Video, Mumbai International Film Festival, 2002
International Jury Prize, Mumbai International Film Festival,
2002
Gold Award, Indian Documentary Producers' Association, 2002
Best Documentary, International Video Festival, Kerala, 2003
Best Documentary, Karachi International Film Festival, 2003
Silver Dhow, Zanzibar International Film Festival, 2003
Best Non-Fiction, National Film Awards, India, 2004
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The Atomic Cafe
(92min./USA/1982)
TOMIC CAFE
is ultimately a post-modern masterpiece that is different
from any documentary that came before it or has been released
since. One of the reasons the film is such an artistic success
is because the filmmakers were daring enough to eschew narration
and rely solely on their source footage. This footage - edited
for maximum irony and backed by a phenomenal soundtrack -
evolved into a completely fresh and original work. And with
the Reagan administration's re-energized arms race in full
swing (with complimentary plans for "continuity of government"),
the film achieved currency with its wicked satire of Truman/Eisenhower
era designs for winning World War III.
[Awards]
The Best Documentary, Boston Society of Film Critics Awards,
1983
British Academy of Film and Television
Arts Awards (Nominated)- 1983 |
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Nadya's Village
(114min./Japan/1997)
The camera
primarily focuses on eight-year-old Nadya. She plays in the
lush, green fields and abandoned buildings in the spring,
helps her family harvest wheat in the summer, attends school
in a nearby village in the fall, and plays in the snow with
her siblings in the winter. Meanwhile, her family and neighbors
continue their rural and cultural traditions, making a living
without the sometimes disastrous aid of technology.
Nadya's Village is a true affirmation of life, and Motohashi
effectively captures the families embracing it with vigor
and optimism in a pastoral, picturesque environment.
(Sidney Louie )
[Awards]
An official entry for Young Forum at the 48th Berlin International
Film Festival, 1998
Grand Prix, Oekomedia(Germany),
1998
Golden Maile Prize (the Grand Prix),the 18th Hawaii International
Film Festival Documentary section
NETPAC Prize, Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival
Turckey International Film Festival Critique awards
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Alexei and the Spring
(104min./Japan/2001)
Characterized
by a curious blend of nuclear dread and pastoral simplicity
(Variety), Alexei and the Spring is a charming documentary
that chronicles life in Budische, a small village in the Republic
of Belarus contaminated by radioactive fall-out from the nuclear
accident at Chernobyl. A stalwart fifty-six residents remain
in Budische, mostly elderly people with one exception: 34-year-old
Alexei, who recounts the rhythms of the community before and
after the accident. Crucial to the town s survival is a 100-year-old
spring, miraculously untainted by nuclear radiation, which
becomes a real and symbolic destination for the villagers.
In Japanese or Belarusian with English subtitles.
[Awards]
The 52th Berlin International Film Festival, 2002
Grand Prix, The 12th St. Petersburg International Film Festival,
2002
Golden
Lynx Award, OKOMEDIA 2002The
19th International Environmental Film Festival (Germany),
2002
AQCC Critics Award, The 31th
Montreal International Festival, 2002
Readers' Prize of the Berliner Zeitung
and "International Cine Club Prize,2002
Special Prize, 5th International Festival of Environmental
Film and Video in Goias, Brazil |
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The Dead Sea
(70min./Japan/2004)
50 Years
After Bikini atoll H-bomb test. There were almost 900 fisher-boat
there at that time, although it is not well-known fact. This
is the valuable documentary about survivors of the test.
[Awards]
The 24th Chihonojidai Film Festival Grand Prix (Japan), 2004
The 7th Waseda University Journalism Grand Prize, 2004
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Thursday
April 21, 6:00pm at
Bartos Theatre, MIT (Cambridge)
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The Face of Jizo
(100min./Japan/2004)
In "The
Face of Jizo," Mitsue, the young daughter, is constantly
struggling with herself. She has tried to forget what happened
in her city in August 1945. Her father, Takezo, who died in
the blast, has come back to life to tell his daughter that
she must go on living. She feels responsible for his death.
"I am the daughter whose father fell into a sea of flames
worse than hell and I ran away from it," she says to
her father toward the end of the play and film. "A human
being like that has no right to be happy."
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No More Hiroshima
(26min./Canada/1983)
Like ghosts
from the past they have come forth to testify to their suffering
and to warn humanity. They are the "hibakusha" of
Hiroshima, the survivors of the first nuclear attack.The film
takes us to Japan where two Hibakusha, Mrs. Tominaga and Mr.
Murata, are introduced as they prepare to leave for a mass
peace demonstration to be held in New York coincidentally
with the United Nations' Second Special Session on Disarmament.
Unlike other films on the survivors, NO MORE HIROSHIMA contains
few images of those killed or maimed. Rather, this documentary
reveals the mental anguish of the hibakusha, and their deep
rooted fear that world leaders will ignore their warnings
and subject future generations to the horrors of nuclear war.
[Awards]
Special Jury Prize, 27th Competition
for Films on Japan
Special Jury Prize, Cracow Short Film Festival, 1985
Genie Award, Best Canadian Documentary, 1985
Finalist, American Film Festival, 1984
Silver Dove, Leipzig Film Festival, 1983
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Hibakusha At the End of the World
(91min./Japan/2003)
In November
1998, the director visited Iraq for the first time and met
children fighting leukemia and cancer suspected to be caused
by depleted uranium ammunition fired during the Gulf War.
One of them, a fourteen-year-old girl named Rasha, died leaving
the message, "Do not forget me" written on a small
piece of paper. Iraq, America, Japan -- the quest to hear
the voices of "Hibakusha", atomic-bomb victims and
radiation exposed victims in the modern day -- begins.
A boy suffering from leukemia named Mustafa and his family
are in Iraq. Doctor Hida Shuntaro, who himself was exposed
to radiation from the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, continues
to call attention to the danger of low-level radiation exposure.
Tom Bailey, who lives near the Hanford nuclear facility where
plutonium for the atomic bomb used in Nagasaki was manufactured,
is currently suing the U.S. government for damage caused by
radioactive contamination. Can we stop this contamination
that spans all over the world?
[Awards]
EARTH VISION Grand Prize
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Ground Zero: Sacred Ground
(9min./USA/1997)
Animation
Film. In south-central New Mexico, an ancient Native American
rock art site lies 35 miles from the detonation site of the
world's first atomic bomb. The juxtaposition of these sites
points to the striking contrast between the two worlds which
created them: one which reveres and lives in harmony with
the natural world, and one which, in striving to control the
forces of nature, has created a means for its destruction.
[Awards]
Ann Arbor Film Festival, 1998: Telepost Excellence in Film
Editing Award Humboldt International Film Festival, CA, 1998:
1st Prize, Animation Marin County National Festival of Short
Films, CA, 1998: 1st Prize, Animation Green Extreme Film Festival,
Canada, 1999: Best Environmental Film ASIFA-East Animation
Awards, NYC, 1999: Excellence in Design, and Charles Samu
Awards Prix Leonardo, Italy, 1999: Gold Certificate Rhode
Island International Film Festival, 1999: Best Director Utah
Short Film & Video Festival, 1998: Best Animation Big Muddy
Film Festival, IL, 1998: Jury Prize Black Maria Film & Video
Festival, 1998: Directorfs Choice Award New England Film
& Video Festival, 1998: Honorable Mention Smoky Mountain/Nantahala
Media Festival, North Carolina, 1999: Animation Award
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