Berkeley Screening Of "Fukushima Speaks" By Journalist and Videographer Toshikuni Doi‘

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Date:

Sunday, February 16, 2020

Time:

1:30 PM - 4:30 PM

Event Type:

Screening

Organizer/Author:

No Nukes Action

Location Details:

Berkeley Main Library
2090 Kittredge St, Berkeley, CA 94704

2/16 Berkeley Screening Of "Fukushima Speaks" By Journalist and Videographer Toshikuni Doi‘

FUKUSHIMA SPEAKS’ EXPLORES LIVES OF SURVIVORS

2/16 Berkeley Screening Of "Fukushima Speaks" By Journalist and Videographer Toshikuni Doi

Sunday, February 16th, 2020 1:30 PM
Berkeley Main Library
2090 Kittredge St, Berkeley, CA 94704

On Sunday, February 16, No Nukes Action will host the Bay Area premiere of “Fukushima Speaks,” a compelling feature-length documentary by award-winning director and independent journalist Toshikuni Doi.

“It is not enough for a journalist to report facts and news of what is happening, but rather it is the journalist’s duty to expose the ‘human’ underneath it all,” Doi stated. “If we fail to shed light on [universal themes]and just succeed in reporting on facts and news, to the audience, it will come across as just a matter that is happening somewhere far away, unrelated to them.”

Four years in the making, Doi has created a heart-wrenching look into the lives of Japanese residents whose lives were devastated by the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Haunting images and video footage of the aftermath are reinforced by 14 personal stories of despair, guilt, and outrage.

“I lost the cornerstone of my life,” Yoko Watanabe, a self-evacuee, said in her interview. “I was determined to bury myself in Katsurao village. That was taken away from me. The reason to live, volunteering, everything was taken away from me in a flash. Now I don’t know anymore what I live for. I wonder if I am really needed in this life, and I don’t know anymore.”

The suffering of Fukushima survivors continues to this day. While the mourning of lost life is obvious, the film also explores the dire realities that are often overlooked: the loss of livelihoods due to the contamination of land and ocean, the life-threatening risks caused by radiation exposure, the emotional turmoil of families being torn apart by the decision to stay or evacuate, and the discrimination that residents now face because they are from Fukushima.

Another self-evacuee, Hikaru Hoshi, expressed indignation: “They want to blame it on us and say it was our responsibility. Whether to leave or stay…. I do not allow them to shift the burden of the accident of enormous scale to individual choices/individual responsibilities…. We lived in an area that needed to be evacuated right away. That fact was concealed from us, and some of us left on our own, or like me, some did not have time to think it through but left anyway. I felt outraged that this country was putting us against each other. The root of the matter lies somewhere else.”

Doi pointed out the urgency of releasing this documentary in 2018: “Eight years since the accident, ‘Fukushima’ is being made into the thing of the past,” he said. “As more people focus on the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the victims are silenced and their suffering is hidden away behind the news of ‘revitalization.’ However, the wounds of the victims whose lives have been destroyed by the accident are still raw.”

English subtitles for the documentary were translated and edited by event organizer Tsukuru Lauritzen with the help of fellow activists in Los Angeles.

“I contacted the director and heard that the English subtitles won’t be ready ’til 2020,” Lauritzen recalled. “I asked him if there is any way that I could take over the translation. Looking back on it, it was an insane idea, but I was compelled to take it on, because these 14 voices begged to be heard.”

About the Filmmaker

Toshikuni Doi, born in 1953, is a Japanese independent journalist. He has published numerous articles in many first-class journals and has made scores of documentary films for news programs. He also has many books published in Japan.

Since 1985, he has visited the occupied territories many times and almost lived there for months, extensively reporting from Palestinian villages and refugee camps. He also has covered Asia, notably atomic bomb victims in Korea who were in Hiroshima or Nagasaki in 1945, Korean women who were forced to become sex workers/slaves by the Japanese army, and street children in Thailand and Vietnam.

Since April 2003, he has visited Iraq under occupation four times, focusing on civilian victims of war, women’s rights and prisoners’ mistreatment, or torture.

This event is free but donations for the filmmaker are accepted

Sponsored by No Nukes Action
http://nonukesaction.wordpress.com/

For more information: http://nonukesaction.wordpress.com/

Added to the calendar on Tue, Feb 11, 2020 1:38AM

§Correction-2/16 Berkeley Screening Of "From Palestine to Fukushima”

by Toshikuni Doi

Tue, Feb 11, 2020 10:30AM

2/16 Berkeley Screening Of
"From Palestine to Fukushima”

By Journalist and Videographer Toshikuni Doi. He will be present at the screening

Sunday, February 16th, 2020 1:30 PM
Berkeley Main Library
2090 Kittredge St, Berkeley, CA 94704

On Sunday, February 16, No Nukes Action will host the Bay Area premiere of “From Palestine to Fukushima”

What does a Palestinian who was forced into exile by the establishment of the State of Israel and experienced the loss of home and family by bombing see in Fukushima, an area where residents have been exiled from their homeland by the nuclear power plant accident?
The recipient of the “Alternative Nobel Peace Prize”, a Palestinian Human Rights Attorney, examines the commonalities of “Palestine” and “Fukushima” through a trip to Iitate Village and conversations with former residents of the village.
Contents:
　Raji Sourani is a human rights attorney from the Palestinian district of Gaza committed to the liberation movement. He was imprisoned and tortured for five years under the Israeli occupation. Since then, he has continued to be a leader in human rights advocacy. His work has been recognized throughout the world through many international peace awards, including the recent “Right Livelihood Award.”
　Raji Sourani visited Iitate Village in Fukushima during a trip to Japan in October 2014. He encountered the reality of Fukushima during this visit through conversations with villagers, one of whom lost his home and a stone factory and another his milk cows and livelihood due to radioactive contamination.
What he found in common between Palestine and Fukushima was the absurd reality that in both cases “who is responsible” for the suffering has been obscured and all responsible parties remain unpunished.
　What Sourani conveyed to the disaster victims in Iitate was that what has sustained the humanity of Palestinians through decades of invasion, occupation, and destruction has been “dignity” and the “unrelenting fight for justice.”

This event is free but donations for the filmmaker are accepted

Sponsored by No Nukes Action
http://nonukesaction.wordpress.com/
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/frompalestinetofukushima

2/14-15 UCB Imagining Post 3.11 Futures and Living with Anthropogenic Change

UCB Imagining Post 3.11 Futures and Living with Anthropogenic Change
http://events.berkeley.edu/index.php/calendar/sn/ieas.html?event_ID=130740&date=2020-02-14&filter=Secondary%20Event%20Type&filtersel=

Conference/Symposium: Center for Japanese Studies | February 14 – 15, 2020 every day | 9 a.m.-6:30 p.m. | Sutardja Dai Hall, Banatao Auditorium (#310)

Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies (IEAS), Center for Japanese Studies (CJS), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science

The symposium brings together artists, activists and scholars for a series of conversations on the 3.11 disasters and the effects of anthropogenic change. The conversations will explore how people in northeastern Japan are living with the consequences of the 3.11 disasters and how different communities with varying livelihoods and vulnerabilities have responded to and invented tactics to survive them. While the works we discuss will provide attention to details that help contextualize the disasters and their aftermath within Japan, they will also reveal new contours for knowledge production and call forth forms of community existing in the commons of matter, survival and invention.

Screening of Fukushima Speaks on Feb 14th
3:00-6:00 | Film Screening: Fukushima wa kataru (2018), Conversation with Toshikuni Doi (director), Mimi Long and Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano

SCHEDULE
Day 1 - Friday, February 14 | 9:00am-6:00pm
9:00-9:15am | Coffee and Pastries
9:15-9:30 | Opening Remarks
9:30-11:00 | Panel 1: Ethnographies of Everyday Life
* Paper #1 (9:30-10) Dylan Hallingstad O’Brien
* Paper #2 (10-10:30) Man-Kei Tam
* Moderator (10:30-11) Jon Pitt
11:00-12:20pm | Break
12:30-2:30 | Roundtable #1: A Conversation on “Gender, Knowledge Production and Food Politics” with Mayumi Fukunaga and Junko Habu, and Aya Kimura
* Moderators (2-2:30) Tomoe Otsuki and Roddey Reid
2:30-2:50 | Break
3:00-6:00 | Film Screening: Fukushima wa kataru (2018), Conversation with Toshikuni Doi (director), Mimi Long and Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano

Day 2 - Saturday, February 15 | 9:00am-7:30pm
9:00-9:20am | Coffee and Pastries
9:30-10:30 | Film Compilation Screening
10:30-11:30 | Keynote Address: Livia Monnet, “Asian Women Artists Imagine Nuclear and Post-Extinction Futures”
11:30-12:50pm | Break
1:00-3:00 | Panel #2: Nuclear Futures: Documentary Cinema and Speculative Fiction
* Paper #1 (1-1:30) Mimi Long
* Paper #2 (1:30-2) Hideaki Fujiki
* Paper #3 (2-2:30) Toshiya Ueno
* Moderators (2:30-3) Saeko Kimura and Shelby Oxenford
3:00-3:10 | Break
3:10-5:50 | Film Screening: A2-B-C (2013), Conversation with Ian Thomas Ash (director) and Hideaki Fujiki
6:00-7:30 | Roundtable #2: Extending the Conversation on Anthropogenic Climate Worlds: Lisa Bloom, Rebecca Hogue and Greg Levine with Anne-Lise Francois (moderator)

For more information, please go to our website: https://ieas.berkeley.edu/imagining-futures-post-311-japan

Event Contact: cjs [at] berkeley.edu

Banatao Auditorium (310 Sutardja Dai Hall)(link is external)

Banatao Auditorium
Nearest address: 2594 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94720 at the intersection of Hearst Avenue and LeRoy Avenue.

The Banatao Auditorium at 310 Sutardja Dai Hall is located on the main level/third floor just past the building entrance on Hearst Avenue. The Kvamme Atrium is adjacent to the Banatao Auditorium.

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/frompalestineto...

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