No Man’s Zone: The Essay Film in the Aftermath of the Tsunami in Japan
- Submitting institution
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Nottingham Trent University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 13R - 1325073
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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10.3366/j.ctvnjbhnw
- Book title
- World Cinema and the Essay Film: Transnational Perspectives on a Global Practice
- Publisher
- Edinburgh University Press
- ISBN
- 9781474429245
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- June
- Year of publication
- 2019
- URL
-
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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B - Design Research Centre
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- Yes
- Additional information
- This chapter investigates Toshi Fujiwara’s essay film ‘No Man’s Zone’ made in the aftermath of the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima in Japan. The chapter is the first detailed and in-depth analysis of the film’s visual language, particularly in relation to world cinema as well as other essay films. The main argument of the chapter is that Fujiwara utilizes as well as subverts cinematic conventions in order to unpack the ecological, moral and ethical complexitities of the triple disaster that hit Japan in 2011. The film references Andrei Tarkovsky’s ‘The Zone’ as well as Chris Marker’s ‘San Soleil’. By providing a rigorous and sustained analysis of the film’s visual codes, the chapter provides a totally new perspective on the essay film outside of the Euro-American context.
The chapter is reproduced in the edited volume ‘World Cinema and the Essay Film: Transnational Perspectives on a Global Practice’. The collection emerged through the conference with the same title hosted by the Centre for Film Aesthetics and Cultures CFAC at the University of Reading in March/April 2015. Other contributors who wrote for this collection include Laura Rascaroli, one of the most eminent scholars on the essay film, as well as the internationally acclaimed artist and filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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