{"id":34315,"date":"2014-03-25T22:28:52","date_gmt":"2014-03-26T02:28:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=34315"},"modified":"2014-03-29T15:21:08","modified_gmt":"2014-03-29T19:21:08","slug":"wit-life-265-ny-peace-film-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2014\/03\/25\/wit-life-265-ny-peace-film-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"WIT Life #265: NY Peace Film Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

WIT Life <\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em>is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator <\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em>Stacy Smith<\/strong><\/a> <\/em>(Kumamo<\/a><\/strong><\/em>to-ken<\/a> CIR, 2000-<\/strong><\/em>03).\u00a0 <\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em>She starts<\/strong><\/em> her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she sha<\/strong><\/em>r<\/strong><\/em>es some of the interesting tidbits and <\/strong><\/em>t<\/strong><\/em>r<\/strong><\/em>ends along with h<\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em>er own observations.<\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend the NY Peace Film Festival<\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em> co-hosted by my lovely friend Yumi Tanaka.\u00a0 This year highlighted 11 films over the course of the weekend, many with Q&As with their directors following the screenings.\u00a0 I was lucky enough to be able to interpret for two of the Japanese filmmakers who were Skyped in from Japan for their Q&As (a first for me!).\u00a0 Saturday night featured the documentaries The Targeted Village<\/a> by Chie Mikami and X Years Later<\/a> by Hideki Itoh.\"takae\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The first film focuses on a small village in Okinawa called Takae, which happens to be situated between two American military bases.\u00a0 Residents are fighting against the construction of new helipads in Takae, being installed in preparation for the deployment of Osprey.\u00a0 Their story embodies U.S. military strategy dating back to the Vietnam War, the blocking of the gates to the Futenma base, and their town\u2019s rage against their state.<\/p>\n

Depicted here is one of the main characters profiled in the film, a local farmer and father of 4 who just wants to ensure that his children can continue to live their quiet lives.\u00a0 In one scene his young son asks how they will be able to study at school with all the noise from the Osprey flying overhead.\u00a0 The farmer takes part in protests again the helipad construction, and unbelievably the Japanese government brings a case of “traffic obstruction” against not only him and several other peaceful protesters but his 7-year old daughter who was nowhere near the scene.\u00a0 Both of their charges eventually get dropped, but another defendant is still awaiting a final verdict from the Supreme Court.\u00a0 Mikami commented that she was surprised that her film was widely screened domestically, and that most people had never heard of the struggles in Takae.<\/p>\n

The second film\"bikini\"<\/a> addresses the American government’s hydrogen bomb testing at the Bikini Atoll in 1954, and the bad luck of the Japanese fishing boat that happened to be in the area at that time.\u00a0 It follows a former social studies teacher who now devotes his life to finding out the true extent of the health impacts and helping victims to receive compensation.\u00a0 The majority of the crew members have long passed away from some form of cancer, and one widow’s eerie description of how brittle her husband’s bones were when they cremated him is haunting.\u00a0 The details of this are not very well known, and the project that Itoh is currently working on is looking at the effects on Okinawa at the time.<\/p>\n

Kudos to Yumi and colleagues for putting together such a fabulous festival!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WIT Life is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03).\u00a0 She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends along with her own observations. This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend the NY Peace Film Festival […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[53,263,18,36,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-film","category-translatinginterpreting","category-wit-life","category-writers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-8Vt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34315"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34397,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34315\/revisions\/34397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}