The Filmmakers
Linda Hoaglund and Risa Morimoto
|
From filmmakers Linda Hoaglund and Risa Morimoto:
Although we want as many people as possible to watch [the film], we especially want high school- and college-age youth to see it. It is always young people who are drafted or asked to volunteer for military service. We want young people to hear directly from both Japanese and American veterans how traumatic their experiences were and how grateful they are to have lived instead of died in war.
For the general public, our hope is that people will question the stereotypes we all have about our enemies in war. Time and again we are told—in one way or another—that our enemies are not human. After war, we gradually discover that however terrible their acts, our enemies always turn out to have been human, just like us. As the former Kamikaze who walked through Hiroshima warns, our planet is now so fragile that we must all put our heads together and begin devising alternatives to warfare in resolving conflicts.
Their three favorite films:
Risa Morimoto:
Man on Wire
God Grew Tired of Us
The War Room
Linda Hoaglund:
The Battle of Algiers
Samurai Rebellion
Under the Flag of the Rising Sun
Their advice for aspiring filmmakers:
Risa Morimoto: Learn not to take anything personally. People will always have an opinion about your film—good and bad. It is a learned skill to know what opinions and advice to take and learn from, and those that will make your film worse.
Linda Hoaglund: Follow your heart. If you find a story that you care about deeply, go for it. But remember that you’re making an enormous commitment, spanning at least several years, from development to production, post-production, distribution and outreach. So make sure you really love your story or your subject because it’s going to be yours for a long, long time.
Their most inspirational foods for making independent film:
Linda Hoaglund: Watch good movies! Try to watch them in movie theaters! All directors study the films they love for inspiration. You’ll find all kinds of ideas and solutions in them. In other words, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel unless, of course, that’s what you want to do.
Risa Morimoto: Sushi. I would add to Linda’s comment of watching good movies—I think it’s even more important to watch bad ones. I have found that is the quickest way to learn what not to do when making a movie. But it’s important to be able to articulate why you think a movie doesn’t work, and not just simply say, “I didn’t like it.”
Filmmaker Bios
Risa Morimoto
Producer/Director
Risa Morimoto produced the feature film The LaMastas in 1998. Since then, she has produced, written and directed for film and television. Morimoto produced the award-winning program Cinema AZN, a half-hour show on Asian film for AZN Television Network. President of Edgewood Pictures, Inc., a motion picture production company, Morimoto graduated with a master’s degree in film and education from New York University in 1999, where she served as associate director of the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program and Institute. From 2002 to 2006, she served as executive director of Asian CineVision, a nonprofit media arts organization. A second-generation Japanese American, Morimoto studied at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan.
Linda Hoaglund
Producer/Writer
The daughter of American missionary parents, Linda Hoaglund was born and raised in Japan, where she attended Japanese public schools. A graduate of Yale University, she worked as a bilingual news producer for Japanese television and joined an independent American film production company as a producer. Since 1996, Hoaglund has subtitled 200 Japanese films. She represents Japanese directors and artists, and serves as an international liaison for producers. In 2004, she received a commendation from the Foreign Minister of Japan for her work promoting Japanese film abroad.
