Oakland Filmmaker Wins at Pan African Film Festival

It is tough times for new filmmakers, especially those who aren't producing the Lethal Weapons of films. Danny Glover stands behind The Harimaya Bridge precisely because it is, as he says, one of those dramas that "risk taking us out of our comfort zone", unlike the more popular genre of movies.

The Harimaya Bridge is about an African-American man who travels to rural Japan to claim personal items that belonged to his late estranged son. Anyone who has (literally) been in the shoes of a non-Asian visitor to a Japanese home will be moved by the scene where the father steps out of his size 12's and into the requisite comparatively tiny Japanese slippers. Director Aaron Woolfolk wrote the script drawing on his experience as an English teacher in the JET exchange program in Japan, and those with that background (over 50,000 mostly Americans) may be the very people who can best appreciate this film.

But others obviously enjoy being whisked to that uncomfortable zone as well. The Harimaya Bridge was awarded Best First Narrative Feature Director award at the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles this year. Aaron Woolfolk told me of that experience saying, "It was a nice feeling, especially since several years earlier I had a short film play at that same festival. So many people who make short films desperately want to make a feature film, but never get the opportunity to." He says he enjoys the feeling of being "still in the game."

Aaron says of his experience in the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (JET): "When I first went to rural Japan in the early 1990's, everywhere I went people would react to me like I was some celebrity. For most people I was the first real live flesh-and-blood black person they had ever seen in their lives. Today, when I go to rural Japan, people barely even notice me." That's good news for all the new college grads who will be grabbing up offers from the JET program, usually because they can't find a real first job in today's economy. Rural Japan, though a hell of a lot better than it was even 15 years ago, can still be quite a shock for the 21-year-old who expects a "Lost in Translation" Tokyo-style year when signing up for JET.

With the support of Danny Glover (Glover is Executive Producer of the movie and makes a cameo appearance), Woolfolk got a beautiful head start in feature filmland, but he admits that may not be the path of his future career. "I have a novel I really want to write. So I have a goal of developing the discipline to do it. My overall goal is to just be happy and content." Future happiness: a good goal for a young man who reveals great insight in The Harimaya Bridge.
Photo: copyrighted by The Harimaya Bridge LLP.