“Shima,” the title of this film, means island in Japanese. With this title, I gesture toward the resonance of meaning between Hiro“shima,” the first place the atomic bomb was dropped in Japan and the first site in the world where a nuclear weapon was used; and Fuku“shima,” where one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters occurred in 2011. Moreover, I attempt to investigate the present reality of Japan, “Shima”-Guni, from the perspective of the ideas involving nuclear energy.
With this theme in mind, I have used video footage which includes reproduced images of atomic bombs from movies, animation, and documentaries. Most of them have been selected from YouTube, but I have also found victim’s pictures of atomic bombs and nuclear power from news media on the web. I have deliberately used low quality images to consider how information is remembered on the web and what its meaning is. Through this work I want to ask about the process of connection between the real world and memories, combined and reproduced on the web which has been more of a storehouse of memory than an information warehouse.

The Japanese films, manga and animation I see include quite a lot of images that recall atomic bombs. This is likely related to the traumatic memory of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This short film originated out of my personal impressions related to such things.
Japan is ranked third in the world for its sheer number of nuclear power plants and second for their density. Having already experienced the tragedy of atomic bombs in the past, this is Japan’s present situation. I am very curious how this Shima-Guni, this island country, where the trauma of atomic bombs still lingers, has become one of the most powerful countries in terms of their possession of nuclear power, why they still operate nuclear power plants, and why they plan to build even newer nuclear power plants from now on. Through this film I attempt to situate both the images of the nuclear power and the atomic bombs in a historical context related to the Asia-Pacific War.

2013 제10회 서울국제실험영화페스티벌 중운상