Hibakusha (film)

Last updated
Hibakusha
Hibakusha Theatrical Poster.jpg
Directed byChoz Belen
Steve Nguyen
Written bySteve Nguyen
Ivan Tsang
Produced bySteve Nguyen
Dean Matsuda
Brian L. Tan
Starring Karin Anna Cheung
Connie Lim
Daisuke Suzuki
William Frederick Knight
Jane Lui
Production
company
Release date
  • September 28, 2012 (2012-09-28)
Running time
45 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Hibakusha is a 2012 American animated short film directed by Steve Nguyen and Choz Belen, and produced by Iconic Films, the Documentary Channel (USA), and Studio APA in Los Angeles, California, and New York City, New York.

Contents

The film centers around Kaz Suyeishi, a woman in her late fifties who begins to reminisce about her earlier years living in Hiroshima, Japan during the aftermath of the atomic bombing. Inspired by her story, [1] [2] the filmmakers reached out to Mrs. Suyeishi in order to produce her biopic using computer animation and hand-drawn techniques. [3]

The official trailer was released on July 30, 2012. [4]

Since October 2012, the film has been screened at the Japanese American National Museum, [5] Vietnamese International Film Festival, [6] Wing Luke Museum in Seattle, Dragon Con in Atlanta, [7] University of Michigan, [8] UCLA, UC Irvine, [9] UC San Diego, San Diego State University, UC Davis, UC Riverside, DisOrient Film Festival, University of Wisconsin–La Crosse, and California State University, Fullerton. Hibakusha received the Special Achievement Award and Best Animated Short in 2013 at the International Uranium Film Festival held in Rio de Janeiro. [10]

Plot

Kaz Suyeishi (Anna Cheung), a Japanese woman in her late fifties, finds herself reminiscing and reliving every minute of the events leading up to the bombing and decimation of her beloved hometown Hiroshima. Set in early August ‘85, exactly 40 years since the destruction, a local television station reaches out to Kaz while on a peace promotion tour in New York City to tell her inspirational childhood story. Once she accepts the invitation to speak on television, Kaz goes to the station the next evening and engages in a very tense conversation with the news anchor (played by Kato Cooks, who along with Timothy Tau also executive produced) and stern pilot, Paul Tibbets (played by William Frederick Knight) of the infamous Enola Gay. As Kaz begins to relive and play out the tragic events involving her family and friends, played by Daisuke Suzuki, Jane Lui, and Paul Dateh, her flashbacks guide us through an intense roller coaster of vivid imagery and uncanny reality.

Inspiration

Kaz Suyeishi speaks about Hiroshima. Kaz Suyeishi Speaks.jpg
Kaz Suyeishi speaks about Hiroshima.

The film was inspired by the true story of Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor and Nguyen's close friend, Kaz Suyeishi. [11] Through various tours and visits that Kaz made in the Southern California area, Nguyen took extensive notes during her lectures and wrote a screenplay loosely based on four different incidents that took place from 1945 to 1985 during Suyeishi's early life in Hiroshima and present day status. [12] Suyeishi died on June 12, 2017, at the age of 90. [13]

The characters were visually modeled after Nguyen's closest friends and family members. Through computer animation, Belen utilized specialized graphic design techniques and 3-D implementation to orchestrate the illustrations. Each drawing was replicated as a graphic cut out which was then edited to simulate dynamic movements. The film drew particular inspiration from the war reenactment scene in Richard E. Robbin's award winning documentary Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience as well as the Ari Folman Golden Globe Award winning animated documentary, Waltz with Bashir.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hiroshima</span> Designated city in Chūgoku, Japan

Hiroshima is the capital of the Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. As of June 1, 2019, the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui has been the city's mayor since April 2011. The Hiroshima metropolitan area is the second largest urban area in the Chugoku region of Japan, following the Okayama metropolitan area Hiroshima was founded in 1589 as a castle town on the Ōta River delta. Following the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Hiroshima rapidly transformed into a major urban center and industrial hub. In 1889, Hiroshima officially gained city status. The city was a center of military activities during the imperial era, playing significant roles such as in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, and the two world wars.

<i>Hibakusha</i> Victims of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Hibakusha is a word of Japanese origin generally designating the people affected by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karin Anna Cheung</span> American actress

Karin Anna Cheung is an American actress, singer, songwriter, and artist.

Hiroshima Witness, also released as Voice of Hibakusha, is a documentary film featuring 100 interviews of people who survived the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as hibakusha. Hiroshima Witness was produced in 1986 by the Hiroshima Peace Cultural Center and NHK, the public broadcasting company of Japan.

<i>Black Rain</i> (1989 Japanese film) 1989 Japanese film

Black Rain is a 1989 Japanese drama film by director Shōhei Imamura, based on the novel of the same name by Masuji Ibuse. The story centers on the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and its effect on a surviving family.

<i>White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki</i> 2007 American film

White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is an HBO documentary film directed and produced by Steven Okazaki. It was released on August 6, 2007, on HBO, marking the 62nd anniversary of the first atomic bombing. The film features interviews with fourteen Japanese survivors and four Americans involved in the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

<i>Children of Hiroshima</i> 1952 Japanese film

Children of Hiroshima is a 1952 Japanese drama film directed by Kaneto Shindō.

The Overseas Hibakusha Case, SCOJ 2005 No.1977, was a landmark case of the Supreme Court of Japan. The Court found that the government's refusal to provide health-care benefits to hibakusha living abroad was illegal. The plaintiffs were 40 South Koreans who were exposed to radiation in the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima. It was the first time the Court declared a government order illegal and upheld a ruling mandating the payment of damages.

This is a list of cultural products made about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It includes literature, film, music and other art forms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tsutomu Yamaguchi</span> Japanese atomic bombing survivor

Tsutomu Yamaguchi was a Japanese marine engineer and a survivor of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings during World War II. Although at least 70 people are known to have been affected by both bombings, he is the only person to have been officially recognized by the government of Japan as surviving both explosions.

No More Hiroshima is a 1984 National Film Board of Canada documentary about two survivors of the 1945 atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima, who are among a small group of Japanese who risk ostracism in their country by identifying themselves as hibakusha: survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The 26-minute documentary by Martin Duckworth follows the survivors on their mission to New York City as part of the Japanese peace movement at the second United Nations Special Session on Disarmament held in June, 1982. This 26 minute film received the Genie Award for Best Short Documentary at the 7th Genie Awards.

<i>Hiroshima: BBC History of World War II</i> British TV series or programme

Hiroshima is a BBC docudrama that premiered as a television special on 5 August 2005, marking the eve of the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The program was aired on the Discovery Channel and BBC America in the United States. The documentary features historical reenactments using firsthand eyewitness accounts and computer-generated imagery of the explosion. The film won an Emmy and three BAFTA awards in 2006.

Shuntaro Hida was a Japanese physician who was an eyewitness when the Little Boy atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima by the Enola Gay on 6 August 1945. He treated survivors as a medical doctor and wrote about the effects of radiation on the human body.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steve Nguyen</span> American film director, producer and writer

Steve Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American director, writer, artist and film producer. Nguyen and fellow director Choz Belen formed Studio APA, a multimedia collective that specializes in the production of animated films, children's books and music videos.

<i>Atomic Mom</i> 2010 American film

Atomic Mom is a 2010 documentary film written and directed by M.T. Silvia about the complex experiences of two women struggling with the emotional repercussions of their connections to the nuclear bombings on Hiroshima, Japan, at the end of World War II in August 1945.

<i>Als die Sonne vom Himmel fiel</i> 2015 Swiss film

Als die Sonne vom Himmel fiel is a 2015 Swiss documentary. Focusing on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima by the United States Army Air Force on 6 August 1945, it was filmed and produced at locations in the Hiroshima and in the Fukushima prefectures, Japan, and produced by the Japanese-Swiss film-maker Aya Domenig.

Sunao Tsuboi was a Japanese anti-nuclear, anti-war activist, and teacher. He was a hibakusha, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and was the co-chair of Nihon Hidankyo, a Japan-wide organisation of atomic and hydrogen bomb sufferers. He was awarded the Kiyoshi Tanimoto peace prize in 2011.

Tadashi "Tad" Nakamura is an American documentary filmmaker. He is noted for films about the Asian-American and Japanese-American communities in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Setsuko Thurlow</span>

Setsuko Thurlow, born Setsuko Nakamura, is a Japanese–Canadian nuclear disarmament campaigner and Hibakusha who survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. She is mostly known throughout the world for being a leading figure of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons (ICAN) and to have given the acceptance speech for its reception of the 2017 Nobel peace prize.

Han Ningen is a 1954 autobiographical novel in the Atomic bomb literature genre by Japanese writer Yōko Ōta. It follows a writer who, suffering from anxiety states due to her experiences as a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the possibility of a future nuclear war, undergoes mental treatment.

References

  1. Gold, Matea (10 August 1998). "Echoes of Hiroshima". Los Angeles Times.
  2. "HIBAKUSHA: Kaz Suyeishi Talks About Her Channel 4 Experience". YouTube .
  3. Eriksson, Scott. "Steve Nguyen Interview: Hibakusha". Archived from the original on 2 February 2011. Retrieved 8 January 2011.
  4. "hibakusha trailer". AngryAsianMan.com. Retrieved 30 July 2012.
  5. Fukuda, Keiko. "Presenting HIBAKUSHA To The World: Animated film conveys the hibakusha experience" . Retrieved 28 November 2012.
  6. "'NORWEGIAN WOOD,' 'HIBAKUSHA' AT VIETNAMESE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL". Rafu Shimpo. Retrieved 4 April 2013.
  7. "Dragon Con Independent Film Festival - Hibakusha". Archived from the original on 12 September 2013. Retrieved 30 August 2013.
  8. Nahata, Harsha. "Harsha Nahata: Activate the 'quiet' generation". The Michigan Daily. Retrieved 28 November 2012.
  9. Pham, Phuc (20 November 2012). "Kaz Suyeishi Presents "Hibakusha"". New University. Retrieved 20 November 2012.
  10. "Hibakusha". uraniumfilmfestival.org. Archived from the original on 7 February 2015. Retrieved 8 April 2013.
  11. Ohnishi, Ryoko (4 August 2010). "KOYASAN MARKS A-BOMB ANNIVERSARY". Rafu Shimpo.
  12. Ansari, Sadiya. "HIBAKUSHA: May Peace Prevail on Earth". Schema Magazine. Retrieved 16 October 2012.
  13. Yamamoto, Jk (19 June 2017). "KAZ SUYEISHI, ADVOCATE FOR HIBAKUSHA, DIES AT 90". Rafu Shimpo.