Fukushima, Rokkasho and Message to the Future

Fukushima, Rokkasho and Message to the Future | 2013Kei Shimada — directorin Japanese with English subtitles, 105’

Screenings: 9/12/14 at 11am & 7 pm

Tickets here CRS, Learn From 3.11, Mar Creation, and Todos Somos Japon invite you to the NYC premiere of the documentary “Fukushima, Rokkasho and Message to the Future.” This film shows us how the shadowy alliance of the Japanese government and the nuclear power industry have managed to build nuclear installations all over rural Japan to benefit urban Japan and the US military, despite strong opposition from the people living in those communities, and it also shows us the many ways in which the everyday lives of the people in these communities have suffered, sometimes tragically, as a result and how they persevere. They tell their own stories, in their own words, in such a way that their humanity and our complicity in their suffering cannot be marginalized. Following each screening, we will have a conversation via Skype with the director, Kei Shimada and light refreshments will be served. Tickets are $10 in advance and $12 at the door.

The film includes two songs, “Are You Safe Now?” (composed six days after the earthquake) and “Nuchiyui,” sung by the famous Japanese singer and environmentalist, Tokiko Kato, who has served in the past as an ambassador for the World Wildlife Fund and the United Nations Environment Program. See her TEDxTokyo talk about what it means to live with radiation. Director Kei Shimada, 53, is an award-winning photographer who started covering nuclear issues when the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine happened. In her fascination, perhaps, she found herself settling in remote Rokkasho village (pop. 11,000) in the northern Aomori Prefecture, where a large nuclear fuel cycle complex stands, the first in Japan that can produce large amounts of weapons-grade plutonium annually, enough to construct up to 2,000 bombs. In 2011, she was getting ready to shoot her first movie featuring Rokkasho, its residents, and how their lives are being affected by the nuclear plant. But, as the Great East Japan Earthquake hit, causing the tsunami that resulted in the nuclear meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, she was convinced that she needed to add Fukushima in her documentary, now entitled “Fukushima, Rokkasho and Message to the Future.”

Shimada says of her film, “I hope I can show that we can’t coexist with nuclear power and it is the duty of each of us to make a choice about energy in the future.”

- See more at:

http://www.crsny.org/blog/3055