BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

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Published April 21, 2005

Film festival tackles nuclear power's tarnished legacy

by Julie Schindall
Daily Staff Writer

To commemorate the 60th anniversary of the use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Tufts University and MIT are offering Boston its first comprehensive look at the impact of nuclear power. The Global Hibakusha Film Festival, which began last Thursday and concludes on Sunday, appears in conjunction with the "Hiroshima/Nagasaki 2005: Memories and Vision Symposium on Nuclear Issues."

The symposium, held this weekend at the Fletcher School, encompasses films from Japanese, American, Indian and Canadian directors and looks at nuclear issues as seen on film from the 1945 Japan bombings to the Gulf War.

With the symposium providing a forum for the academic community, the Hibakusha Film Festival - hibakusha is the Japanese word for survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings - attempts to foster understanding about nuclear power outside of the context of academia.

"Sometimes the academic symposium tends to be too technical. [These films] are much easier to connect to, to access nuclear issues," said Sato Asaoka, a Tufts research associate who first conceived of the film festival. Films are, according to Asaoka, "one of the best measures for general people to reach, or access, or commit to social problems."

The festival's nine films are largely aimed at "people from local communities, and younger people like teenagers. That kind of audience is our ideal audience," she said.

With this diverse audience in mind, Asaoka selected films with varying subject matters and styles.

"I didn't want to show [films] just about the past," she said. She looked for films about current nuclear issues, including the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident and the suspected use of depleted uranium ammunition during the Gulf War.

Ultimately, Asaoka ended up with a group of films whose topics range from the nuclear threat between India and Pakistan ("War and Peace" by Anand Patwardhan), to a satire of the Eisenhower administration's plans for winning the enigmatic World War III ("Atomic Cafe" by Jayne Loader.)

Many of the films depict nuclear issues as an ongoing factor in peoples' lives. As Asaoka said, "[Nuclear power] is not just today's problem or the past's problem."

In the eyes of many of the films' directors, the impact of nuclear power can be seen most powerfully in the stories of individuals. At last Saturday's screening of Seiichi Motohashi's "Nadya's Village," about the life of the residents in a small village in Belarus affected by the Chernobyl accident, the director, speaking through an interpreter, explained that "The horror of nuclear [power] is real, but I wanted people to see those people who preserve their real lives even after the nuclear [event.]"

Also present at Saturday's screening were four elderly hibakusha, who flew in from Japan to attend the film festival and symposium. The hibakusha extended their thanks to Mr. Motohashi for his uplifting film, and also cautioned the audience about the dangers of nuclear weapons.

"We have to seriously understand the implications of having such weapons in the world," said Takahiko Murata, a survivor from Hiroshima, speaking through an interpreter. His voice strengthened with passion as he added that "human beings and nuclear weapons are not made to live in unison."

That is precisely the message the film festival hopes to transmit. According to Tufts senior Kei Okamura, the public relations director of the film festival and symposium, "In order to avoid making past mistakes and to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons, we must confront the ugly past, and apply what we have learned to our present situation."

Okamura noted that many of the films screened at the festival are not films well-known in the United States. He added, "We have also invited the filmmakers and hibakusha to attend our screenings for Q&A. Because the hibakusha are aging and dying each year, this may be one of the last times people will be able to hear first-hand accounts of what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

"We are not expecting the audience to become nuclear specialists. However, if they can come out of the theater and reconsider the threat of nuclear weapons, that would be a great reward for us," Okamura said.

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