Issue:
August 2024
Join the Film Committee
Join us on Wednesday, August 14 at 6 pm for a sneak preview of Hiroshi Sunairi’s captivating documentary From Okinawa with Love, an illuminating portrait of photographer Mao Ishikawa. Although she’s spent a lifetime capturing the lives of others, Sunairi shows us that Ishikawa’s own story is as thrilling as any she has preserved in her work. Born in Okinawa, Ishikawa moved to Tokyo when she was 19 to attend the Workshop School of Photography held by influential photographer Shomei Tomatsu. Upon returning to Okinawa, she began to document a society heavily impacted by the U.S. military presence. Throughout From Okinawa with Love, Sunairi allows Ishikawa the space to do what she does best: dominate the room with her gift of storytelling and a charisma that draws everyone into her memories, set against a background of history, politics, racism, love, and illness. The respect Sunairi has for his subject is abundantly clear, as he quietly accompanies Ishikawa while she reveals her innermost self. As she moves from being behind her own camera to being in front of Sunairi’s, her radiant beauty, fiery wit and searing honesty as captured in From Okinawa with Love is, simply put, documentary film at its best. The director will be present for a post-screening Q&A session. (From Okinawa with Love, USA/Japan 2023, 92 minutes, Japanese with English subtitles).
Thomas Ash is a FCCJ Film Committee member.
