(Scissors)

Digital, 22:28 min, 2023

short documentary film

Logline

Director’s Statement

Shot on location in Hasami, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan, I presented this experimental documentary short film as a culmination of my graduate MFA thesis work in Social Documentation at UCSC. The doc explores heavy topics like domestic abuse and the transfer of intergenerational trauma that is tended to emotionally, visually, and sonically with great care.

This short reflexive film navigates ideas of intergenerational trauma, healing, mother-daughter relationships and expectations, Japanese-American identity, & the impossibility of moving on after the death of a close loved one by the incorporation of performance--from both professional Butoh dancers and my mother.

My initial project centered the US military bases in Japan, and specifically, where I am from in southern Kyushu, Sasebo-city. My mother was always the central character as she had married my father, a US Marine, in 1989. As I spent time in my childhood home where my aunt, grandmother, and grandfather all died, I realized I needed to help my mother process her grief and to heal from her deeply rooted familial trauma. When my aunt passed away from cancer before any of her siblings, she pleaded to not be buried in the family grave to avoid being bound to her abusers in eternity. Her ashes sit in our home in Ureshino, the town that sits next to Hasami. She appears in my mother's sleep and haunts her nightmares by wandering around the house at night, seemingly restless.

Through playing with performance & realist documentary format, this film is an experiment, prayer, meditation on the ghosts in our memories and dreams.

Credits