The Japan Foundation Paris organizes a retrospective of films about Hiroshima

by Chris MaGee

I often think back to the week that I spent in Hiroshima a few years back. It's a very pleasant if undistinguished looking city, but the mind boggles when you think of the unthinkable tragedy that transpired there almost 64 years ago. If you get a chance to visit Hiroshima in person then by all means go. If you don't see yourself making the trip and you live in Paris, France then you'll soon be getting the chance to learn about the city, it's people and its obliteration by the first nuclear attack on August 6th, 1945.

To help honour the 50th anniversary of French new wave director Alain Resnais’ 1959 film "Hiroshima Mon Amour" the Japan Foundation Paris will be running a mini-retrospective of Japanese films that deal with Hiroshima and its bombing between April 14th and 18th which of course will culminate with a screening of Resnais' classic film starring Emmanuelle Riva and Eiji Okada. The Japanese films programmed are: Kaneto Shindo's "Children of Hiroshima" (above) and "The Tragedy of Lucky Dragon No.5", Hideo Sekigawa's "Hiroshima", Akira Kurosawa's "I Live in Fear", and Fumio Kamei's "It's Good to Live".

I'm a little puzzled why the folks at the Japan Foundation wouldn't have programmed Shohei Imamura's sublime 1989 film "Black Rain" or Kazuo Kuroki's 2004 screen adaptation of Hisashi Inoue's stage play "The Face of Jizo", but I guess you can only cram so many films into five days.

You can check out all the details on the retrospective y heading to Wildgrounds here.