What does "home" mean to you? Is it a place, a feeling, or other people?
What does "home" mean to you? Is it a place, a feeling, or other people?
It's a question that must have troubled the hundreds of thousands who lost their houses, communities and loved ones in the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11.
It was also a question 20 international filmmakers wrestled with when they made short films for award-winning Japanese director Naomi Kawase's collaborative movie, "A Sense of Home," which is due to be shown at film festivals in tsunami-stricken Sendai and in Mito.
The subjects explored by the filmmakers, who are from 10 different countries, include a family celebrating Ramadan in Malaysia, Argentine children talking about family, and a Korean-American's two daughters playing at home in Berlin.
The shorts all last exactly 3 minutes 11 seconds, an echo of the date of the quake, and explore similar themes of intimacy, nostalgia and people's lasting emotional connections to places.
French filmmaker Catherine Cadou's contribution is a wistful exploration of her Parisian home and the city sights, reflecting upon the way the past sculpts the future. "We discover our lives ahead in the days gone by," she says.
Wisut Ponnimit, a Thai filmmaker, offers an animation looking at the conflict between enjoyment and responsibility. A boy is shown watering, eating and making compost out of plants in his garden, before he gets a job and sadly says goodbye to his withering garden every morning as he leaves for work in a suit.
Mexican director Pedro Gonzalez Rubio casts an adoring lens at his lover. "Magali," he tells her, "I felt such peace looking at you."
Meanwhile, Korean director Bong Joon Ho employs the dark humor characteristic of his country's horror oeuvre with a short showing a young woman who discovers a small schoolgirl's body lying on a beach. She tries to revive the girl, first by artificial resuscitation and then by slapping her. Finally, the woman bursts into tears, and the girl suddenly opens her eyes, as if emotion was the only thing that could wake her up.
Tsunami survivors might not find that short easy to watch, and it is possible that Takushi Nishinaka's film of a girl learning that the tsunami has hit her hometown from a distance will stir some difficult memories. However, Nishinaka provides an honest emotional portrait.
Victor Erice, a Spanish director known for his 1983 masterpiece "The South," also deals explicitly with the earthquake, showing an opera singer delivering a monologue on the tsunami and its consequences.
"Nature ignores our suffering and we are powerless to stop it," she says, "But they continue to build nuclear plants. The wealth we seek sits on a fountain of speculation. I think the dead are watching us."
Despite being critical of humanity's hubris, Erice was impressed at the resilience shown by the Japanese survivors of the tsunami.
"I'm usually scared of making big statements," he said at the premiere of the movie, held at Kinpu-senji temple in the mountainous area of Yoshino in Nara Prefecture.
"But I'm here to show solidarity with the Japanese people, so I'm going to make an exception and get over that fear. I want to say that after the tsunami, people in Tohoku taught the world a great lesson: how to suffer with dignity."
The premiere's location fitted with the theme of "home." Kawase was born in Nara Prefecture and sets the majority of her movies there. Although the region was unaffected by the March 11 quake, it suffered great damage and loss of life in Typhoon Talas, which struck only a week before the premiere.
The opening ceremony was led by monks at the temple, who made a solemn procession across the front of the Zao-do hall before chanting and praying before the audience.
"Things have been very difficult for Japanese people this year. First the quake, then Fukushima, and now the typhoon," said one monk. "But, like Kawase, many people have realized that what are important are their families and their hometowns."
The lease of the temple was not the only way that the local community contributed to the premiere. The "screen" was made up of squares of white cloth stitched together by children at a local school, emphasizing the collaborative nature of the movie.
Kawase thanked the directors and the audience.
"I'm moved to see so many people here together to share their feelings," she said. "I hope the films convey the power of dreams."
"A Sense of Home" will be shown at the Sendai Short Film Festival on Sept. 17-19, the Mito Short Film Festival on Sept. 23, and at the Tokyo International Film Festival on Oct. 22-30.