The film follows the last 4 years life of Grandma Hashima, the last existent from colonial Taiwan, who knows the secrets of "Green Jail," the notorious coal mine before World War II on Iriomote Island, Okinawa, Japan.
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Song of Arirang - Voices from Okinawa (1991)
In the final hours of the Pacific War, Okinawa was the destination for Korean men conscripted as “military laborers” and Korean women taken as “comfort women.” Little is known about the number of casualties or their experiences. In 1989, Park Soonam started to track down the survivors of the Battle of Okinawa to record their testimonies. In 1990, Park visits Korea in search of former “military laborers” who had survived Okinawa and repatriated to Korea. The survivors vividly recount their experiences of their compatriots’ murder and about the “comfort women” to the Zainichi Korean female director. The film zeroes in on the murder of Korean “military laborers” and the presence of “comfort women” in Okinawa via testimonies of former Japanese soldiers.
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Little is known about the figure of Isabel Santaló, an old artist, today fallen into oblivion. But occasionally some visitors come to her flat. Through them and the voice of Antonio López (Dream of Light, Víctor Erice), the only painter who remembers her, we shape a multifaceted film. This is a cinematic portrait, which well into the film takes a surprising turn. A film that reflects on memory and oblivion, art and the creative process; posing the question of what it means to be an artist and a woman.
Coal's Deadly Dust (2019)
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