Aftermath of Destruction

Abstract

Berlinale International Forum of New Cinema Berlin February 9-19, 2012 The International Forum of New Cinema section was introduced twenty years after Berlinale's founding and celebrated its forty-second year in 2012. The forum combines experimental and documentary films from around world. With no format or genre restrictions, films include avant-garde and experimental works, political reportage, essays, longterm observations, not-yet-categorized cinematic worlds, and hybrid combinations of. t he above. Documentaries and feature films are given equal consideration, with particular emphasis on works by younger filmmakers. The competitive element is eliminated, as festival doesn't award films in Forum (although independent juries can still present awards). Forum director Christoph Terhechte wrote in Berlinale program notes that the clashes between different ways of life, generational conflict, and ambivalence of so-called progress are at center of numerous contributions to 2012 The documentary films in this years's Forum followed usual thread of depicting contradistinctions to stereotypical media representations of developing world, particularly in Asia. Last year's tragic tsunami and subsequent meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in small town of Okuma in Japan consequently produced compelling documentary material in three films screened at Forum. Iwai Shunji's two-hour documentary from 2011, Friends. after 3.11 (the tsunami occurred March 11, 2011), shows how strangers came together in disaster's aftermath. The director also appears in his film talking to his subjects: shell-shocked people from isolated close-knit communities, families. friends, and scientific experts. Some of these subjects are well-known in Asian cinema, like actress Matsuda Miyuki and Malaysian director Tan Chui Mui, with whom Shunji talks via Skype. Discussions range from resulting economic and social crises, to concerns about future science, atomic energy, and climate change--exposing many interesting viewpoints. No Man's Zone (Mujin chitai, 2012) is Fujiwara Toshi's venture into exclusion zone of Fukushima nuclear reactors in order to portray post-meltdown eeriness of an omnipresent apocalypse. The director illustrates how humans are curiously drawn to representations of disasters, in particular way we look for uncensored image of destruction. The tsunami utterly devastated cities in Japan, so images representing scale of disaster are missing. Cameras were not present to document full impact of horror as it unfolded, save for a few seconds recorded by observers from sate vantage points on mobile phones or digital cameras. All we see otherwise is aftermath of devastation--a wasteland, an invisible void, with seemingly unaffected and serene rural areas that now face contamination for decades. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Nuclear Nation (2012, directed by Funahashi Atsushi) is arguably most compelling documentary of three as it attempts to uncover wider Japanese attitudes toward tragedy. …