Nobuhiro Suwa, H Story Japan / France 2001, 112 min
56 years after WWII, filmmaker Nobuhiro Suwa has gathered together a cast and crew in his native city Hiroshima in an attempt a remake of the classic post-war film Hiroshima mon amour 1959. In Alain Resnais’ original film an affair between a French actress and a Japanese architect in rebuilt Hiroshima is fractured and personal and public histories are mixed. In Nobuhiro Suwa’s self-reflective remake, he explores if and how the trauma of conflict and its aftermath can be represented in cinema. Drawing on the rich original screen play by novelist Marguerite Duras, Suwa’s film collapses the past and present, fiction and documentary. Working together with actress Béatrice Dalle, cinematographer Caroline Champetier and Japanese writer Kou Machida, Nobuhiro Suwa's H Story is a striking reflection on cinema's ability recall and remake the past.
H Story will be shown together with Kirk Palmer’s film Hiroshima.
Kirk Palmer, Hiroshima 2007, Super 16mm transferred to HD Digital Intermediate (DI), colour, sound, 18 min
Made 61 years after the atomic destruction of Hiroshima, artist Kirk Palmer’s Hiroshima was filmed in August 2006 and is a contemplative study of the thriving present day city seemingly at odds with its past. This film is part of a trilogy preceded by Murmur 2006 and followed by War’s End: An Island Of Remembrance 2012. Collectively known as the August Shadows trilogy, the films explore the legacy of the Second World War in Japan focusing respectively on Nagasaki, Hiroshima and the island of Yakushima.
This screening is part of a series related to the exhibition Conflict, Time, Photography that features key films that question how memory and conflict are explored in cinema curated by George Clark.