Antinuclear

Children of the Tsunami to screen on ABC television on 11 March

Children tell their story of Fukushima New Scientist  29 February 2012 Film Tiffany O’Callaghan, CultureLab editor  “….of the many voices to weigh in on the legacy of the disasters in coming weeks, it is unlikely many will belong to children.

Award-winning film-maker Dan Reed isn’t content with that. Eager to tell the story of the tsunami and subsequent nuclear fallout from a fresh perspective, he decided to lower his camera a little. His new documentary, Children of the Tsunami, lets the little ones whose lives were forever altered by last year’s events tell their own stories. Gesturing with a downturned palm, Reed explains, “I hope you feel it’s a film that’s down here with the kids, rather than up here with the adults.”….  The film also looks at the fear of radiation exposure among former residents of what is now the exclusion zone – a 20-kilometre-radius zone around the Fukushima Daiichi plant. We meet 10-year-old Ayaka, whose gap-toothed grin belies last year’s troubles. Her grandfather was lost in the tsunami, and now she attends a school on the periphery of the exclusion zone, donning a hat and protective mask to go outside. At home, her dad uses a handheld Geiger counter to measure radiation levels, telling his daughter levels are too high wherever there is grass and limiting her play to a square of asphalt by their temporary home. No one knows when, or if, people from the exclusion zone will be allowed to go back to their homes……

March 2, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News