So Long Asleep

Tue, 9 Oct 2018 15:11:00 GMT

Thanks to books and films such as Unbroken and Bridge Over the River Kwai many Americans know that Imperial Japan forced Allied military prisoners to perform heavy labor during the Asia-Pacific War. Few also know that hordes of Asian civilian men suffered the same treatment.For seven decades the governments of Japan and Korea have sparred over who is responsible for the dead souls of Empire's children.

A chance encounter between a Japanese Buddhist priest and a Korean graduate student sparked a bi-national people-power project that for 20 years has been locating and retrieving the remains of Korean laborers who died in Hokkaido, Japan's large northern island. On the 70th anniversary of the end of the war, project volunteers carried 115 sets of remains on a controversial pilgrimage through Japan's major cities en route to a contested reburial in Seoul's Municipal Cemetery.

So Long Asleep takes us to visit the excavation sites, and then we travel with the volunteers on their pilgrimage.Project co-leader Yoshihiko Tonohira, chief priest of a rural temple in western Hokkaido, was born after the war; he learned only years later that there were Korean laborers buried in his region. He began to locate them, cremate them, and provide memorial services for them.

Co-leader Byung-Ho Chung was in Japan doing fieldwork for his doctoral dissertation when he happened to visit Tonohira's temple and learned of the excavations. He promised to return with a crew of Korean students and anthropologists trained to excavate while preserving evidence of causes of death.Together they launched a series of workshops that stand on a hurtful past to build a hopeful future. Volunteers, most of them students, come to Hokkaido for a fortnight: Japanese, Koreans, zainichi offspring of Korean migrants in Japan, plus others from elsewhere.

During the day, supervised by forensic anthropologists, they clear away foliage and dig for remains. At night they meet to build a community of mutual respect that can stay the new waves of ethnic and nationalist rancor washing across East Asia. Participants speak of the life-changing power of witnessing with others the evidence of historic hatred.

So Long Asleep is an uplifting report on what engaged citizens can accomplish when their governments drift away from attending to duty.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Award of Merit, Impact Docs, 2018

Bronze Award, Spotlight Documentary Film Awards, 2017

Margaret Mead Film Festival, 2017

Cinema Soup Film Festival, 2018

Ogeechee International History Film Festival, 2018

MayDay Film Festival, 2018

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Wedding Through Camera Eyes

Fri, 24 Aug 2018 12:26:00 GMT

Wedding Through Camera Eyes
Buy Now: $320.00

"Honeymoon tour means nothing without photography."

After viewing Wedding Through Camera Eyes, one has the sense that Korean weddings are held in order for the couples involved to create and preserve a fantasy of their relationship in video and carefully constructed photo albums.

Korean visual anthropologist Kijung Lee talks with three different couples and their professional wedding photographers, using the visual documentation of the event as a vehicle to facilitate the discussion. With the help of a photographer, couples may stage a story-book relationship with all the romance of a television soap opera. The photographer is eager to share his knowledge and how he manipulates the photos and his subjects in order to get the desired effects, acting as a stage director at the wedding ceremony.

In the case of the wedding we see in the film, there are 2 ceremonies; first is a traditional Korean style event, and then the westernized version with the bride in a flowing white gown. After the spectacle of the wedding itself, on their honeymoons couples pile into tour buses and for 2 days they are photographed at predetermined sites known for their popularity as backdrops for honeymoon photos. Through these interviews, it is made clear how important the creation of visual records is to the couples involved and their families. With the collaboration of a photographer, ordinary people in Korea can become the heroes and heroines they imagine themselves to be.

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Documentary Educational Resources - Geography / Asia / Korea / All Films

So Long Asleep

Wedding Through Camera Eyes