Swedish visual artist Jennifer Rainsford has made an at times mesmerising film that follows the aftermath of Japan’s disastrous 2011 earthquake
In March 2011, a six-minute earthquake triggered a tsunami in Japan that killed 18,000 people. It was a devastating natural disaster, but strangely, the tsunami has inspired this calming, tranquil documentary – really more of an art piece – from Swedish visual artist Jennifer Rainsford. It’s a dreamy reverie of a film that drifts along, carried into obscure corner by her curiosity.
We meet three tsunami survivors including a man who has looked everywhere on land for his missing wife, then took up diving to hunt the ocean for her. It sounds like a story from mythology: an impossible, doomed feat of love, a man spending his life searching for his lost soulmate.
In March 2011, a six-minute earthquake triggered a tsunami in Japan that killed 18,000 people. It was a devastating natural disaster, but strangely, the tsunami has inspired this calming, tranquil documentary – really more of an art piece – from Swedish visual artist Jennifer Rainsford. It’s a dreamy reverie of a film that drifts along, carried into obscure corner by her curiosity.
We meet three tsunami survivors including a man who has looked everywhere on land for his missing wife, then took up diving to hunt the ocean for her. It sounds like a story from mythology: an impossible, doomed feat of love, a man spending his life searching for his lost soulmate.
- 12/18/2023
- by Cath Clarke
- The Guardian - Film News
Since the 11th of March, 2011, each day on Earth has been 1.8 microseconds shorter than those which went before. The reason? The great Tōhoku earthquake was so violent that it shifted the planet’s orbit. It also triggered a devastating tsunami estimated to have killed around 19,300 people. Today, far across the Pacific, the residents of Kaho’olawe, a small island in the Hawaiian archipelago, are still finding Japanese debris on their beaches, assorted reminders of the lives of the lost.
Wildly ambitious and expertly crafted, Jennifer Rainsford’s documentary, which screened as part of Docs Ireland 2023, explores the experiences of tsunami survivors and Kaho’olawe beachcombers in an exploration of grief which also takes in neuropsychology, ocean life and astrophysics, tracing everything back to the humble iron atom which all of us received from the same primordial stars. It’s a film underscored with audio which blends the rhythms of human bodies.
Wildly ambitious and expertly crafted, Jennifer Rainsford’s documentary, which screened as part of Docs Ireland 2023, explores the experiences of tsunami survivors and Kaho’olawe beachcombers in an exploration of grief which also takes in neuropsychology, ocean life and astrophysics, tracing everything back to the humble iron atom which all of us received from the same primordial stars. It’s a film underscored with audio which blends the rhythms of human bodies.
- 6/22/2023
- by Jennie Kermode
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
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