Pole Pole Times

There is a small island where agriculture arrived 1,000 years ago when the inhabitants rescued people from a wrecked ship. The island became prosperous and the culture of the island has been handed down from generation to generation. Iwai Island, Kaminoseki City, Yamaguchi Prefecture. The 500 inhabitants of this island in the Seto Inland Sea help each other to survive the harsh natural environment. Water is limited on this rocky island, which often experiences typhoons. The people, however, have flourished by using the sea's resources and cultivating the rocky mountains. You can see clearly in this island that human activities are part of nature’s cycles. In 1982, a nuclear power plant construction project in Tanoura, on the opposite shore about 3.5km from Iwai Island, was proposed. The people here have been opposing to the project.

180 kilometers down wind of Chernobyl, the village of Budische was evacuated except for 55 older residents who refused to leave and one young man, Alexei who wanted to stay with his parents. This is a simple story of life in Budische 14 years later, as told in voiceover by Alexei. The Belarus village is built around a common spring from which everyone draws water, toting it back to their homes, and to which the women walk to do their laundry outside.

A documentary by Nobuo Ōnishi, who follows the people living in the area where Tokuyama Dam is planned to be built. In 1957, talk arose that Japan's largest dam would be built in Tokuyama Village, Gifu Prefecture. While the residents moved to new locations, some elderly families returned to Tokuyama Village, wanting to continue living there for as long as possible. Ōnishi, who grew up in the Ibi District, was fascinated by the lives of those elderly people and continued to photograph them for 15 years until the village sank to the bottom of the dam.

A documentary film taking up the long-living giant Baobab trees as its theme. It is shot by photographer Motohashi Seiichi, known as the director of Alexei and the Spring (Alexei to Izumi) and others. Set in Senegal in West Africa, where modernization in urban areas is advancing and the Baobab trees, which used to be worshipped, are now being logged, the work closely depicts life in the humble village of Touba Toul, where people continue to lead a traditional lifestyle. It is a brilliant film subtly featuring the coexistence of mankind and nature through the modest life of Modou, a 12-year old boy who is the second son of a big family.

This documentary was filmed at Maki, a small commune at the foot of Japan’s Northern Alps in Nagano Prefecture. Maki is deep in the mountains, inaccessible to vehicles. The residents have to walk a narrow mountain path for 90 minutes to get in or out. Various kinds of people with varying mental and physical problems live alongside their healthy fellows in a grand two storied thatched house. They eke out a living by growing their own food and bartering for essential items.

Before the Chernobyl disaster, Nadja's village was home to 300 peasant families. After evacuation, only 6 households remain and access to the village is shut off. The remaining villagers continue to raise livestock, cultivate crops, and continue with their lives regardless of contamination.

The Kitades run a butcher shop in Kaizuka City outside Osaka, raising and slaughtering cattle to sell the meat in their store. The seventh generation of their family's business, they are descendants of the buraku people, a social minority held over from the caste system abolished in the 19th century that is still subject to discrimination. As the Kitades are forced to make the difficult decision to shut down their slaughterhouse, the question posed by the film is whether doing this will also result in the deconstruction of the prejudices imposed on them. Though primarily documenting the process of their work with meticulous detail, Aya Hanabusa also touches on the Kitades' participation in the buraku liberation movement. Hanabusa's heartfelt portrait expands from the story of an old-fashioned family business competing with corporate supermarkets, toward a subtle and sophisticated critique of social exclusion and the persistence of ancient prejudices.