Atomic Bomb Home

Atomic Bomb Home
Original title “Natsu no Inori”
A Katsumi SAKAGUCHI Film
PROJECT INFORMATION
Format: Color, 16:9 Running Time: 65min Delivery… June 2012
Genre: Documentary Language: Japanese (with English subtitles for viewing)
Production Company
SUPERSAURUS
（Address）1-6-6 Irifune,Chuou-ku,Tokyo 104-0042 Japan
（Phone）+81 3 3551 55 30 （Fax）+81 3 6893 6516
www.supersaurus.jp [email protected]
http://www.facebook.com/natsunoinori
Outline
The centre of atomic-bombed in Nagasaki City was a Catholic church crowded area, because the City is
historically opened to abroad and many Christians live there. Even though the Christianity was once
banned by the country’ s rulers, adherents had been observed their faith for nearly 300 years. After this,
they faced a tragic experience of Atomic-bomb but have overcome with prayers. Many bomb-victims are
still suffering from aftereffect and dying day by day, but generation by generation the Christians come to the
church to worship the face-only (other parts were burnt out) Ave Maria...
The documentary observes people living in Genbaku Home(Atomic Bomb Home), which is a nursing home
for aged Atomic-bomb victims. They put on re-enactment stages of the day of August 9, 1945 in Nagasaki,
to hand on their memories and prayers to peace not to be forgotten.
This film might give an answer to us who are facing the present nuclear crisis...
Filmmaker Katsumi Sakaguchi alone was allowed to film for an extended
period in the sanctuary for elderly atomic bomb victims.
The primary setting for the film, “Mercy Hill Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Home” is Japan’ s largest special care
convalescent home for atomic bomb victims. Several times a year, the residents perform a play of the
atomic bombing for elementary, middle, and high school students who visit the home.
Until now, prolonged filming within the home has been prohibited. However, as over 60 years have passed
since the bombing, the residents are advancing in age, and the people who will hand down the experience
of the atomic bombing are passing away every year. This provided the context for granting permission to
film this time. “While there is time, we want to preserve the genuine appearance, voice, and memory of
atomic bomb victims,” has become the residents’ solemn desire, or in another word, prayer.
From the outset, the film reveals the abundantly prayerful visage of these elderly atomic bomb sufferers.
The atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki at 11:02, on the morning of August 9, 1945. It made victims of many,
leveled Urakami Cathedral and the Junshin Women’ s Campus among others. The terror and irrationality of
the nuclear weapons created by human beings dwell within the memories and day-to-day life of those
making the most of the present. The suffering and sorrow of these victims come to light amid the tranquil
imagery of the film.
Immediately after filming of this documentary concluded, the Fukushima No.1 Nuclear Power Plant accident
occurred as a result of the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011. As if foretelling the current
accident, this film deals with the fear of external and internal exposure to radiation as well as the possibility
of incurring a lifelong cancer caused by genetic damage through radiation or radioactive material spread by
a nuclear explosion. Despite the difference between bombing by atomic weapons and exposure to
radioactivity, the realities this film is already warning of are disturbing.
Currently, the resolution to the Fukushima Power Plant disaster remains obscured in fog. Within the span of
a half century, there are people still directly confronting the hurts and sorrows of radiation and the atomic
bomb with nobility, even under the severest of conditions.
A visual elegy that vividly imparts their prayers and their still unhealed sorrows.
Katsumi Sakaguchi is a prodigy filmmaker who has directed more than 200 television documentaries in the
span of 20 years. His fictional films, Blue Tower (2000), Catharsis (2003), and Sleep (2011) define the
outline of people living in the dark corners of society through a unique perspective and visual style.
The motive to shoot A Summer Prayer, his first documentary feature film, is his grand-aunt who herself
suffers from the atomic bombing, having lost her 17-year-old daughter at the time to the Hiroshima Atomic
Bomb.
Music is provided by 15-year-old pianist, Aimi Kobayashi who has garnered the attention and praise of
world-class musical figures, Seiji Ozawa and Yutaka Sado; as well as 16-year-old flutist Riria Nimura, a
rising star who is rewriting the youngest performer records at numerous competitions in Japan and abroad.
This is the first collaboration between these two gifted, young girls who are bound for promising careers,
illuminating the hopes for a new future.
Director, cinematographer, editor: Katsumi Sakaguchi
Born in Kagoshima. He has made more than 100 documentaries dealt
with the problems of young people and families in difficult circumstances
as TV director and producer. He has written and directed three feature
films so far. BLUE TOWER (2000, 146 min) portrays a young man
suffering from self-inflicted isolation and CATHARSIS (2002, 113min)
portrays a boy who committed a crime. Both are independent films, made
on very low budgets but both films were very well received at festivals and
had theatrical releases in Japan and Germany. His latest feature film
SLEEP (2011, 96 min) was world premiered at the 40th International Film
Festival Rotterdam in 2011 and received a rave review on Screen
International. A chief critic Mark Adams said, “SLEEP is an impressively
subversive and grim tale, but also well made and disturbingly watchable” .
His next project ETERNAL FOREST (Feature film: In development / DOP: Vadim Yusov (Ivan's Childhood,
Andrei Rubley, Solaris) was officially selected for the Berlin International Film Festival's “Co-Production
Market 2008” . THE ANGELUS (Documentary Film: In production) was officially selected for the Tokyo
International Film Festival's co-production market “Tokyo Project Gathering 2009” .
(Production Company: SUPERSAURUS)
SUPERSAURUS was established in 1999 by TV director and producer Katsumi Sakaguchi, and Atsuko Ochiai, as a
total visual production company. It produces a wide variety of visual materials, which include feature films, television
programs, and books. They have made three feature films to date: BLUE TOWER (2000 /Silver Award at the 2001
Houston International Film Festival) and CATHARSIS (2002). Both of them are released in 2003 in Japan and Munich.
SLEEP (2011, 96 min) was world premiered at the 40th International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2011 and released in
Japan in autumn 2011.