Screening of No Man's Zone

The documentary screening will be followed by a Q and A with director, Toshi Fujiwara.

Toshi Fujiwara was one of the first filmmakers to go into the 20km exclusion zone declared around the Fukushima nuclear power station after it was stricken by the tsunami on 11 March 2011.

No Man’s Zone (Japan/France 2012), however, is much more than a report from the scene of disaster. Raw sequences of destruction are juxtaposed with strikingly beautiful images of flowers and cherry blossoms in bloom. The film encounters the people in the surrounding area not as witnesses only: it excavates rich histories of people and places.

Echoing Tarkovsky’s Stalker, it evokes the post-nuclear uncanny as atmosphere: invisible, eerily familiar. Fujiwara’s film is acutely self-aware of our addiction to apocalyptic images, of the dangers of trivialising and exploiting survivor experiences. Amidst the wealth of visual responses to the Fukushima  tragedy, No Man’s Zone remains the one most deeply engaged with the poetics and politics of documentary filmmaking. 

After the screening of No Man’s Zone, the director – Toshi Fujiwara will give a talk and there will be time for questions.

Watch the trailer

Everybody welcome. Free entry.

Contact: Dr Irena Hayter for further information