CMC film screening August 6 with director in attendance
by Joe Courter
8:15 Hiroshima/from Father to Daughter is a new film airing on PBS in August. Locally it will air on WUFT TV at 5pm on Saturday, Aug. 5. On Sunday, Aug. 6, the Civic Media Center will host a special screening of the film with its director, J. R. Heffelfinger, who recently moved to Gainesville. Doors open at 5pm, and the film will start at about 5:30 with a discussion and reception afterward. The Civic Media Center is at 433 S. Main St., with parking across the street or along East 5th Avenue.
The 50-minute film was produced by Nini Le Huynh (House of Cards) and Akiko Mikamo, the daughter of a hibakusha (nuclear bomb survivor), to illustrate her father’s remarkable true story, message for peace, and vision for a world without nuclear weapons. It was recently screened in Hiroshima as part of the G7 Summit of Nations.
Narrated in English with Japanese subtitles, this hybrid doc-narrative film weaves never-before-seen video and audio recordings of hibakusha Shinji Mikamo, evocative re-enactments (in Japanese with English subtitles), and archival images—“bringing the past into the present” (Modern Times review).
“My mission as an artist is to unveil hidden truths about the human condition, give voice to the voiceless and to make the invisible, visible,” said director Heffelfinger.
“My father told me, ‘I don’t want anybody else to ever have to go through the agony of another nuclear war,’ and asked me to spread his message to younger generations throughout the world,” said Dr. Akiko Mikamo, executive producer of the film and author of 8:15—A True Story of Survival and Forgiveness from Hiroshima. For more, see 815hiroshima.com.