Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal (Oct 2018)

Memory and Distance: On Nobuhiro Suwa's A Letter from Hiroshima

  • Jessica Fernanda Conejo Muñoz

DOI
https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.12.2.1520
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 2
pp. 125 – 139

Abstract

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A Letter from Hiroshima is the second production directed by Nobuhiro Suwa on the Japanese city that was ravaged by the atomic bombings, by the United States, in 1945. The short film is a reflective game which approach to the past is based on distancing effects. The distance, understood in the sense of Brecht and counter cinema, is part of an experimental process that becomes a political technique of construction and decipherment of memory. Suwa’s work is opposed to the belief that history is something that can be narrated, since the approximation to the past is not carried out through a causal story, but by the principles of intransitivity, estrangement and narrative aperture.

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