Director Lucy Walker, right, speaks on stage at a screening of her documentary film “The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom” in Los Angeles. (Mainichi)
LOS ANGELES — A documentary film about Japan’s March 11 tsunami disaster titled “The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom,” by British director Lucy Walker, has been nominated along with four other films for the 84th Academy Awards’ Documentary Short Subject category.
Since before the disaster, Walker had been planning a documentary about the spirit of the Japanese people that would use cherry-blossoms as a motif, but just before she went to Japan the Great East Japan Earthquake struck. She gave up on the film for a period of time, but, wanting to help the disaster victims, decided to continue it in the form of a report on the tsunami-hit areas.
While harboring doubts about whether those hit by the disaster would open up to her, she flew to Japan at the end of March and began filming in tsunami-devastated Minamisanriku and Kesennuma in Miyagi Prefecture. There, tearful disaster victims spoke to her about their situation, and Walker says she was surprised at how candid they were.
The time that Walker was in Japan was right about when cherry blossoms bloom. During the approximately three weeks that she filmed, Walker says she saw cherry blossoms determinedly blooming even in the aftermath of the tsunami. She says she feels that she unintentionally captured on film how the Japanese people were encou
raged by the blooming cherry blossoms.
Cooperating with a non-profit organization, Walker is planning showings at high schools and at the Washington D.C. cherry blossom festival. After the Academy Awards are announced on Feb. 26, she says she also wants to have showings on March 11, the anniversary of the disaster.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/arts/news/20120125p2a00m0et004000c.html
http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20120125-00000033-mai-int
