Who are May and Fusako Shigenobu ? Fusako – leader of a small extreme left-wing
group, the Japanese Red Army, involved in a number of terrorist operations – has
been in hiding in Beirut for nigh on 30 years. May, his daughter, born in Lebanon,
only discovered Japan at the age of 27, after her mother was arrested in 2000. And
Masao Adachi? A screenwriter and radical, activist film-maker, committed to the
armed struggle and the Palestinians’ cause, was also holed away in Lebanon before
being sent back to his country. Amongst other things, he is also the instigator of a
‘theory of landscape’ – fukeiron: through filming landscapes Adachi seeks to reveal
the patterns of oppression which underpin and perpetuate them. Anabasis? This,
ever since Xenophon, has been the name given to difficult or even circuitous
homeward journeys.
It is this complex, dark story, always full of tension that Eric Baudelaire, an artist
renowned for employing photography to question real situations, has chosen
to evoke using the documentary format. Shot in Super 8, and in the manner of
fukeiron, contemporary views of Tokyo and Beirut are blended in with archive
footage, TV clips and excerpts from films to spread out the backdrop for May and
Adachi’s voices and memories. They speak of everyday life, of being a little girl in
hiding, of exile, politics and cinema and the fascinating relationships between them.
This is not so much an enquiry as a fragmented anamnesis. (JPR)