Through a Nuclear Lens - France, Japan, and Cinema From Hiroshima to Fukushima

The Franco-Japanese coproduction Hiroshima mon amour (1959) is one of the most important films for global art cinema and for the French New Wave. In Through a Nuclear Lens, Hannah Holtzman examines this film and the transnational cycle it has inspired, as well as its legacy after the 2011 nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi. In a study that includes formal and theoretical analysis, archival research, and interviews, Holtzman shows the emergence of a new kind of nuclear film, one that attends to the everyday effects of nuclear disaster and its impact on our experience of space and time. The focus on Franco-Japanese exchange in cinema since the postwar period reveals a reorientation of the primarily aesthetic preoccupations in the tradition of Japonisme to center around technological and environmental concerns. The book demonstrates how French filmmakers, ever since Hiroshima mon amour, have looked to Japan in part to better understand nuclear uncertainty in France.

About the author

Hannah Holtzman is Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies in the Faculty of Liberal Arts at Sophia University in Tokyo.

Product details

• Authors: Hannah Holtzman
• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 02.11.2024
• EAN: 9781438497839
• ISBN: 978-1-4384-9783-9
• No. of pages: 288
• Series: SUNY series, Horizons of Cinema
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Photography, film, video, TV; Japan, France, European History, Nature / Environmental Conservation & Protection, HISTORY / Europe / France, LITERARY CRITICISM / European / French, HISTORY / Asia / Japan, Political activism, Social discrimination & inequality, Literature: history & criticism, Conservation of the environment, PERFORMING ARTS / Film / History & Criticism, Asian History, Literature: history and criticism, Film Theory & Criticism, Film history, theory or criticism, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Activism & Social Justice, Political activism / Political engagement, Social discrimination and social justice