Connecting Japanese Cinema and Photography

Woman in the Dunes, Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964 Shoji Ueda, untitled, 1950 The history of Japanese cinema and photography is, as in most cultural contexts, deeply interconnected and related. In the post-war period a number of important films make direct or indirect reference to photographic movements. For instance, the existential meditation on sand and desire in…

Trauma in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Nobody Knows

Nobody Knows, directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2004 How to represent trauma? This appears to be the overriding question in the movie Nobody Knows, or Daremo Shiranai, by the Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda. Nobody Knows depicts the lives of four children who were left abandoned by their mother. The oldest child is the 12-year old boy…