Documentary Film Screening "Japan's Peace Constitution"

Hiroshi Sunairi and John Junkerman at Einstein Auditorium at New York University Barney Building

Date: Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 6PM - 8PM
Place: Einstein Auditorium at New York University Barney Building
34 Stuyvesant Street (Cross of East 9th and 10th Street, between 2nd and 3rd Ave)

New York University Barney Building	Announcement of the Event
Shinya Watanabe Introduces Hiroshi Sunairi and John Junkerman	Hiroshi Sunairi Talks about His Project "Peace by Piece"
John Junkerman Talks about why he created this film	Discussion among Sunairi, Junkerman and Audiences

From Left: Shinya Watanabe (curator), FilmJohn Junkerman (film director), Hiroshi Sunairi (artist), Kunio Suzuki (political critique, founder of Issuikai),
Keiji Shono (Japan Foundation), Miho Hatori (Musician)

*Before the screening of the film, NHK Japan's Documentary on Hiroshi Sunairi's art project "Peace by Piece" will be played (10 minutes)

Directed by John Junkerman
Produced by Yamagami Tetsujiro
Camera by Otsu Koshiro
Music by Soul Flower Union
(Japanese, with English subtitles)
78 min, 2005

In 2005, sixty years after the end of World War II, the conservative Japanese government is pressing ahead with plans to revise the nation's constitution and jettison its famous no-war clause, Article 9. This timely, hard-hitting documentary places the ongoing debate over the constitution in an international context: What will revision mean to Japan's neighbors, Korea and China? How has the US-Japan military alliance warped the constitution and Japan's role in the world? How is the unprecedented involvement of Japan's Self-Defense Force in the occupation of Iraq perceived in the Middle East?

Through interviews conducted with leading thinkers around the world, the film explores the origins of the Constitution in the ashes of war and the significance of its peace clauses in the conflicted times of the early 21st century. Key interviews include:

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian John Dower
Paris-based social theorist Hidaka Rokuro
Beate Sirota Gordon, drafter of the equal-rights clause of the Constitution
Political philosopher and activist Douglas Lummis
Political scientist Chalmers Johnson
Kang Man-Gil, president of Sangji University, South Korea
Shin Heisoo, co-representative, Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan
Korean historian Han Hong Koo
Chinese filmmaker and writer Ban Zhongyi
Syrian writer Michel Kilo
Lebanese journalist Josef Samaha
Linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky

	Director John Junkerman is an American filmmaker, living in Tokyo. His first film, Hellfire: A Journey from Hiroshima, was coproduced with John Dower and nominated for an Academy Award. His 2002 film, Power and Terror:Noam Chomsky in Our Times, also produced by Siglo, received widespread theatrical distribution in Japan, the US, and Europe.

NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, MFA program, Nancy Barton, Tammy Brown, Curt Confer, John Torreano and Hiroshi Sunairi.

This film screening is organized by "Atomic Sunshine - Article 9 and Japan" Exhibition Committee (Chair: Shinya Watanabe)