"Genbaku Shi (Killed by the Atomic Bomb)," which won the 1994 Student Academy Award as best documentary, will be screened by the Utah Film & Video Center on Friday, Nov. 11.
The hourlong film, which writer-director Casey Williams dubs "One man's personal experience with the atomic bomb," is very personal indeed. He followed his father, DuWayne Wiliams, with a camera as the elder Williams went on an odyssey of sorts, an attempt to purge ghosts that have haunted him for more than 40 years, ever since he was part of the Navy crew sent to Nagasaki to rescue allied POWs after the second atomic bomb was dropped.The film follows DuWayne as he explores one of the original Tinian B-29 bombers that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki at the end of World War II as he locates and interviews the pilot and some crew members who undertook that devastating mission and even has him tracking down a Japanese survivor who now lives in Utah - just 50 miles from DuWayne's home.
Using archival stock footage of the war, photographs and interviews, the younger Williams narrates the film himself, in a flat, emotionless monotone, which acts as a counterpoint to the horrifying, vividly descriptive narrative. DuWayne frequently comments on various aspects of his experience in Nagasaki and the film is filled with anecdotes.
Though the staging is a bit awkward in places, as when DuWayne interviews the pilot and his crew, shot against the backdrop of a hangar in Wendover where they trained for the mission, there is such inherent power in the material that it hardly matters.
And there is little question that the film's most powerful element is Tokiko Stuckey, the Japanese survivor, who talks quite openly about what she saw when the bomb fell, her feelings in retrospect, the devastation she witnessed and her recurring physical injuries. When they are through talking, Du-Wayne and Tokiko tentatively embrace and then just stare ahead as their eyes fill with tears. It's an emotional moment that sums up beautifully what the film is trying to say about the often-forgotten human element in war.
Technically, the film is rather crude in places, almost like a home movie. But that just heightens its intimacy. In all, the film is so heartfelt that it's easy to see why voters at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences felt compelled to give Casey Williams the Oscar for best student documentary.
"Genbaku Shi" is scheduled to be shown in the Salt Lake Art Center auditorium, 20 S. West Temple, at 8 p.m. Admission is $5. For further information, phone 534-1158.