Director focus:

Hitomi Kamanaka

鎌仲ひとみ

Studied at the National Film Board of Canada, and then worked as a media activist at Paper Tiger in New York. After returning to Japan, she directed many documentaries for TV. Her fourth film, HIBAKUSHA—At the End of the World, has been released in the US. Especially after the Fukushima disaster, she has been a guest speaker at events throughout Japan, and presented her newest film, Ashes to Honey.

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Available from Zakka Films:

Little Voices from Fukushima

Total running time: Approx. 119 minutes. / color

Little Voices from Fukushima is a documentary film dedicated to Japanese mothers and children living in the post-meltdown world of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster. In the course of telling their stories, Director Hitomi Kamanka takes us to Belarus, where we learn from mothers who experienced the Chernobyl nuclear disaster twenty eight years ago.

Ashes to Honey—Toward a Sustainable Future

Ashes to Honey—Toward a Sustainable Future (Kamanaka) from Zakka Films Total running time: Approx. 116 minitues. / color

For 28 years, the people of Iwaishima Island,  living in the middle of the beautiful Inland Sea, have been opposing a plan to build a nuclear power plant. The island has a 1000-year history during which people have preserved their traditional festival. Takashi, the youngest on the island, is struggling to earn his living. He dreams of a life based on sustainable energy. Meanwhile, communities in Sweden are making an effort to implement such lives. The people living in the Arctic circle have taken action to overcome damage from the global economy. On Iwaishima, Mr. Ujimoto has begun sustainable agriculture by reclaiming abandoned farmlands. But a power company tries to fill in a bay to create man-made land. The people of the island set sail together to stop the construction of the nuclear power plant. A fight breaks out on the sea.

Rokkasho Rhapsody

Rokkasho Rhapsody (Hitomi Kamanaka) from Zakka Films Total running time: Approx. 102 minitues. / color

In 2004 the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant was completed in Rokkasho village as a facility for reprocessing spent fuel from Japan's nuclear reactors into plutonium. The film spotlights the people of the village, who hold diverse opinions regarding this huge, nearly operational national project.