LINDA OHAMA - award winning director & producer

Please VOTE for 'A New Moon Over Tohoku' 

• VIFF has a couple of contests running.  Beginning today, you can vote for films by BC filmmakers and the winner stands to win somewhere around $20,000 – this is the link – and, you can vote once per day everyday between now and September 29.       http://mustseebc.viff.org/project/show/id/83   (vote button is lower right side).

• In addition, on September 26, there is a #tweetfortickets promotion happening specific to New Moon.  If you tweet and use the hashtags  #mustseebc and #tweetfortickets, you could win free tickets for the showings.  Every day a different one of the #mustseebc films has a #tweetfortickets promotion, so, if you tweet each day, you could win tickets to VIFF.

• NEW WEBSITE FOR 'A New Moon Over Tohoku'. If you are interested in seeing the website (Japanese/English) , it is   www.newmoonovertohoku.com

Behind the scenes:

My response to the Tohoku disaster came naturally as a mother, grandmother, and a Canadian of Japanese ancestry who deeply loves Japan. I initially went to Tohoku as one of many volunteers, and not as a filmmaker.

The more time I spent along the devastated coastline of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima, and the more Tohoku people I met, my role in Tohoku gradually changed.

Many victims asked and sometimes even begged to help them tell their stories in film, but I resisted. 

My answer changed the first time I walked down the empty, deserted main street of the Fukushima ghost town of Odaka, located inside the 20 km ‘no-go’ zone affected by the nuclear power plant explosion. It brought me to tears to see this, beginning amore than two year dialogue with the Tohoku people in this documentary.

Perhaps being a foreigner (Canadian), a third generation Japanese Canadian, and a woman helped them and me in this process.  Maybe it allowed Japanese victims to trust me with their stories so openly and succinctly. Maybe it helped me understand some things that are unspoken in their words, their song and their dance. 

After our interviews, many people expressed how important it was to finally speaking aloud their pains, losses, joys, fears, anger, love…I realized that this process of storytelling was an important part of their healing journey.

They help us recognize what it is that makes us human. Living and dying and working with nature.

Award winning Canadian cinematographer, Kirk Tougas, came to join me for one month from Canada as my cameraman. He later wrote:

“Working with Ohama in Japan I couldn’t help but marvel at the depths with which she connected with people who have experienced the harshest tragedy. Reserved, quiet-spoken Japanese were willing to share with her their innermost thoughts and feelings, words that they might not even voice to their closest friends, and never in public…

The samurai we filmed is real, not a movie star, and the centuries old tradition of discipline and horsemanship continues. The dancers we filmed are young, yet the dances link back through the centuries, and these young women dance for a generation claiming a right to a future. The childhood song sung by many film participants resonated in the Japanese soul, a lament seeking to regain the marvel of home…..” (Kirk Tougas, cinematographer)

 Linda Ohama, Producer-Director