Olexa & Scalisi: Half Life in Fukushima
It makes me glad, when it goes well for former students from the Bolzano based Zelig Documentary School, where I was a teacher for many years. Therefore my curiosity made me ask Mark Olexa and Francesca Scalisi for a vimeo link, when I read that the film was selected for Visions du Réel, where it had two screenings followed by cinema screenings in their country Swizerland with upcoming 3 shows at the Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto. With Olexa and Scalisi as directors and Jakob Stark as cameraman a fine film has been made from a no-go zone in Fukushima, five years after the catastrophe, and 30 years after Chernobyl. The film is shot on super 16mm (!) by Stark, who is (sorry!) a very Strong and talented cameraman as he, also a graduate from Zelig, demonstrated with ”Guanape Sur” by János Richter and ”Dal Profondo” by Valentina Pedicini.
I write this as an excuse. I can see the quality of the images but of course the experience will be quite different, when I will have the chance to watch it on a big screen, and not on my MacBook.
Anyway, the film bears evidence of a clear personal aesthetic choice. Long and quiet sequences take us to an insight visit to the empty streets of the radiated zone with Naoto, who lives there with his father. He is the one the camera follows around to his cows and horses, to the packed contaminated garbage, to an ostrich who is happy to see him (!), to an absurd situation where he stops his car at a traffic crossroad waiting for the red light to become green (!) with noone else present, to another absurd situation where he plays golf in this middle of nowhere (!), to him being in brief conversation at home with his father. Otherwise the information and the emotion is primarily given through a voice-off of Naoto. It’s a pretty silent visualization of a post-catastrophical landscape and the filmmakers deserve a praise for bringing in the absurdity and humour – we have seen enough images from the nuclear disaster, we have them in our heads, when Naoto shows around to the consequences. A couple of times we hear desperate people’s sound bites (from 2011) following Naoto, I could have done without them, much more productive are the loudspeaker messages about how deal with the garbage and other safety messages (!). A no-message film, no archive, no disturbing music to make us ”feel”, with a fine editing rythm (Zelig teacher Marzia Mete has taken part in that process) that suites the superb images that keep a respectful distance to Naoto, whose point of view the film conveys.
Switzerland, France, 2016, 61 mins.
