SHORTS: VIEWS ON JAPAN
Two shorts transport us to Japan. Minka (16 min, Davina Pardo) reflects on the relationship between Associated Press correspondent John Roderick and his adopted son Yoshihiro Takishita. The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom (40 min, in Japanese; Lucy Walker) examines the country in the wake of the recent disaster during cherry blossom season, from the Oscar-nominated director of Wasteland.
Shorts section is co-presented by SnagFilms.
Minka is a short documentary about a remarkable Japanese farmhouse and the memories it contains. In 1967, an American journalist and a Japanese student rescued the ancient house from the snow country of Japan, and their lives were forever changed.
The film begins when Associated Press foreign correspondent John Roderick became the unlikely owner of an enormous rundown farmhouse. Working with a young university student named Yoshihiro Takishita, who would later become his adopted son, Roderick transported the massive timber house from the Japanese Alps to the Tokyo suburb of Kamakura. It defined both their lives: for Roderick, it was the backdrop for a remarkable career as the leading “China watcher” of the Mao era. For Takishita, it inspired a life spent collecting and rebuilding similar houses, work that continues today. But Minka is more meditation than history. Filmed just following Roderick’s death at ninety-three, it uses this one house as a vessel of memory to explore the power of place, memory, architecture, and the meanings of home.
Director: Davina Pardo; Producer: Andrew Blum & Davina Pardo; Cinematographer: Davina Pardo; Music: Max Avery Lichtenstein; Editor: Lila Place.
Website: www.minkafilm.com
Twitter: @davinapardo
The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom
The film is about the experience of the survivors of the recent tragic tsunami in Japan and how the subsequent cherry blossom season brought a little encouragement to the hardest hit areas.
Director: Lucy Walker; Producer: Kira Carstensen & Lucy Walker; Cinematographer: Aaron Phillips; Music: Moby, Editor: Aki Mizutani.