VIFF 2016: Linda Ohama ponders Japan after the flood with A New Moon Over Tohoku

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      Half of the movies making up the Vancouver International Film Festival’s Ignite series—spotlighting B.C.–made features—are documentaries, all made by local veterans of the nonfiction form. Among the highlights are Nettie Wild’s KONELINE: Our Land Beautiful, an impressionistic look at life in northern B.C., and Vic Sarin’s Keepers of the Magic, which looks at the history of cinematography.

      Showing in between is Linda Ohama’s A New Moon Over Tohoku, her intensive study of the devastating human effects of Japan’s 2011 tsunami and the nuclear meltdown on the country’s northeast coast.

      Ohama’s breakthrough film, 2003’s Obaachan’s Garden, connected her to the Japanese roots she didn’t really know she had, by researching and retelling her grandmother’s story.

      “Basically,” says the Alberta-born B.C. stalwart and long-time visual-arts teacher, reaching the Straight from her part-time home in Japan’s Onomichi, a coastal town near Hiroshima, “I got drawn in after witnessing from Vancouver the horrific live footage of the tsunami striking Japan and feeling the need to help a neighbour. When my family lost our farm in the 1990s, neighbours passed the hat around and came up with hundreds of thousands to appease the bank—although without success. Tohoku is only geographically far away, but is like a neighbour in today’s world.”

      The distance was made shorter by a chance remark.

      “On the morning after the tsunami,” she continues, “my six-year-old granddaughter asked me how the children in Tohoku were doing. I told her, honestly, that they were probably not doing well and she said she wanted to help. Her simple words hit a chord in me as I was searching for a way to respond.”

      Ohama ended up spending more than two years interviewing survivors and exploring which strains of Japanese culture prove the strongest, or most vulnerable.

      “My first films, The Last Harvest and Neighbors, Wild Horses & Cowboys, drew on my Prairie farm background, with an innate touch of my Japanese background; I’m a third-generation, Sansei Canadian. Since visiting Japan for the first time 17 years ago, on a quest to find answers for my 100-year-old grandmother’s questions, my works since have used my Japanese sensibilities, with a little understanding of the traditions and culture that comes from direct exposure and my natural DNA. Now I can say, with Tohoku, that both my Prairie girl and Japanese-ness are working as one.”

      Filmmaking technology has changed considerably over the past two decades, but Ohama says it hasn’t really changed her attitudes toward the work.

      “There is a very important phrase the Japanese say before eating: ‘Itadakimasu.’ It is acknowledging the food’s source from the earth, the weather, the farmer, the fisherman, the seller, the person who prepared the meal, et cetera, for your body and soul. To me, a lot of doc-making today has become like our fast-food industry: make ’em tasty and cheap, eat ’em fast. But I’m more the plain-meat-and-potatoes type—I grew up on a potato farm! So projets like this take a lot of time to prepare, simmer, spice, and present on the table. In this instance, it took five years—just the same as Obaachan’s Garden.”

      Still, lightweight digital equipment has changed the nature of the work involved, and requires fewer people to operate.

      “New technology allowed me to work in the disaster area single-handedly, for the most part. This meant that I could afford the luxury of spending several years with the Tohoku survivors and carrying the equipment around in a backpack. Postproduction is also a lot easier these days. But easier isn’t always the best road to take. It all depends on the journey, and what’s in sight at the end.”

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