JAPAN FILM SERIES

February 14, Thursday
Devotion.
Directed by Barbara Hammer. 85 min. 2000.

A film about Ogawa Productions, an important Japanese post-war documentary collective that made films of social struggle and village life--most famously about the protests against the building of Narita Airport in Japan. This investigative documentary situates the revolutionary lifestyle and films of Ogawa Productions within the framework of the global student movement of the New Left in the mid 60s and the emerging documentary movement in Japan. In-depth stories from the collective members who contributed to this unique film making process are examined from a variety of perspectives and understandings. Film directors OSHIMA Nagisa, HARA Kazuo and HANEDA Sumiko also present their personal recollections of this unique group. Memory, history, national culture, gender, and identity all figure in the stories as the evolution, development, and finally, disintegration of this seminal film collective unfold.

February 28, Thursday
Ripples of Change.
Directed by KURIHARA Nanako. 57 min. 1993.

Political analysis is combined with a passionate personal story in this documentary about the Japanese women's liberation movement in the 1970s and its influence on contemporary Japanese society. Director Kurihara left her homeland in the 1980s, frustrated by the lack of interesting roles for women in Japan. In New York, she met a Japanese woman who had been involved in the women's liberation movement in Japan. Kurihara returned to Japan, bringing together interviews with veterans of the movement, archival footage, and her personal impressions to produce a film which explores the meaning of the liberation movement, the factors that motivated it, and the effect it has had on people's attitudes.

March 7, Thursday
Tapestry II.
By the Organization of Asian Women. 55 min. 1991.

Through archival photographs, oral histories and folk songs by MIYAMOTO Nobuko, this video weaves the history of 200 years of Asian women's experiences. It begins with the early Asian immigration to the United States from China, Japan, Korea and the Philippines and moves up to the 1950s.

March 25, Monday
Senso Daughters.
Directed by SEKIGUCHI Noriko. 54 min. 1989.
Director Sekiguchi will introduce the film in person

During World War II, well over 100,000 Japanese troops may have died in Papua New Guinea. Only 11,000 returned to Japan. Considered the "Forgotten War," neither the New Guinean battlefront nor its veterans received public recognition in Japan. But Senso Daughters (senso means war) investigates another unacknowledged tragedy of that Southeast Asian campaign: the army's mistreatment of New Guinean women and the so-called "comfort girls" on the island -- women taken from Asia, particularly Korea, to serve Japanese soldiers sexually. Except for nurses, women had no official military status and tens of thousands of "comfort girls" were shipped to battle sites as "military commodities," without names or identities and without records to be traced by. Through moving testimony by Papua New Guinean women, startling denials by soldiers who were there, dismissive comments by Japanese nurses assigned to the island, and stark evidence by a gynecologist sent to the region, the film makes a powerful statement on a topic that was just beginning to draw attention in the late 1980s.

March 27, Wednesday
When Mrs. Hegarty Comes to Japan.
Directed by SEKIGUCHI Noriko. 58 min. 1992.
A question and answer discussion with director Sekiguchi will follow the film

In 1981, the director went to Australia to study International Relations. Speaking little English at the time, she nonetheless quickly befriended her hosts Joyce and Jack Hegarty, who became her "second parents." Although gradually becoming close with Jack, Noriko sensed a buried resentment towards her, perhaps due to his experience fighting troops in Southeast Asia during World War II. He died in 1988 and three years later, when his wife expressed a desire to visit Japan, Noriko saw an opportunity to address with Joyce what had been unresolved with Jack. In appreciation of Mrs. Hegarty's hospitality to their daughter in Australia, Noriko's parents agreed to host Joyce in their Yokohama home for three weeks. Filled with quirky juxtapositions, generational gaps, and diverse outlooks on life - often hilarious, sometimes sobering - the film relates Mrs. Hegarty's immersion in an unfamiliar culture as well as the Sekiguchi family's interaction with someone from a country equally unfamiliar for them.

While very different in tone and composition, this film and Senso Daughters together provide a thoughtful reflection on enduring, if submerged, legacies of war. Flowing through the two films is the director's deep engagement in two countries that were once combatants. Her narrative presence in the films implicitly comments on how the expanding and personal international experiences of post-World War II generations affect the way war is remembered and memorialized.

For more information about the Council on East Asian Studies' Japan Film Series, please contact 203-432-3426.