Issue:
August 2023
Join the Film Committee…
Join us on Monday, August 21 at 5:30 pm for a sneak preview of Tatsuya Mori’s narrative debut, September 1923. The acclaimed documentarian (i: Documentary of the Journalist) doesn’t stray far from his social-activist roots with the provocative film, which focuses on a massacre of innocents that has been buried in the darkness of history for the past century. It took place just days after the Great Kanto Earthquake, when medicine peddlers who had been selling their wares alongside the Tone River near Fukuda Village (now Noda City, Chiba Prefecture) were set upon by over 100 villagers and vigilantes, simply because they were speaking in the unfamiliar Sanuki dialect. Within days of the quake, evacuees had flooded into the countryside and martial law had been extended all the way to Chiba, creating an unprecedented level of fear and anxiety. When rumors began that ethnic Koreans were poisoning wells and planning other acts of terrorism, the slaughter began. Estimates of the death toll vary between 6,000 and 10,000, with victims also encompassing Chinese people and socialists. What is more shocking, however, is that these massacres have been allowed to fade into distant memory. With September 1923, Mori is determined to change that. He will be joined by actress Mai Kiryu for a Q&A session after the screening. (Japan, 2023, 137 minutes, in Japanese with English subtitles).
Karen Severns is chair of the FCCJ film committee
