Falling

Yellow canaries.
Yellow canaries floating down.
Down down.
Singing as they twirl. Down down.

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InReview : VIFF

Director Ryosuke Hashiguchi’s long-awaited return is an absolute triumph, expertly veering between emotional extremes. All Around Us follows the tumultuous early years of marriage between the tightly wound Shoko (Tae Kimura) and the emotionally adolescent Kanao (Lily Franky). The loss of a baby reveals the underlying frailties of their relationship, and Hashiguchi’s patient portrayal creates characters that the audience comes to truly care for.

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Killing time with married men

In general, there is a tendency among both male and female youth to avoid developing deep relations with others. In the film, [Makoto] doesn’t want a proper “boyfriend-girlfriend” or “husband-wife” relationship and chooses to be with a married man who cannot become her “boyfriend.” It is therefore a relationship of convenience for Makoto.

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Group-to-Group vs Individual-to-Individual

To feel as though all of these different categories of people making up the Nikkei/ijusha community are somehow “all connected” is, I’ve realized, a rather Japanese sentiment. Among the oft-cited differences between the East and West, the one about the former being group-based societies and the latter individual-based societies is hard to refute, even if it’s very generalized.

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Keeping History Alive

To help recognize the historic significance of Cumberland’s other Japanese community of No. 5 Road, there are plans to erect a storyboard in the vicinity of former No. 5 Japanese Townsite that will display photographic images and brief stories by former No. 5 residents of life in the community prior to their forced evacuation during World War II. Funds are available for construction of the storyboard. Such storyboards have been erected elsewhere in the Village of Cumberland to inform visitors of life in the former No. 1 Japanese Townsite and the once thriving Chinatown.

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Re(a)ddressed

Titled Re(a)ddressed: I am (Japanese) Canadian, the aim of this workshop was to open a dialogue between Japanese Canadian youth surrounding the present and possible futures of identity and ethnicity in Canada. Very suited to these topics was the collaboration of award-winning Canadian independent animation filmmaker, writer and artist, Jeff Chiba Stearns.

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