In this issue of News and Reviews, we bring you moving personal stories about family relations and the devastations of war.  He defied the Tide of Time tells the story of Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, who, while stationed in Kaunas, Lithuania, defied the orders of his superiors and endorsed transit visas for several thousand Jews trying to flee the Nazis during World War II.  Memory of Forgotten War delves into the personal struggles of families torn apart by the Korean War as the country was rent in two.  Planet of Snail explores the deep connections forged in a marriage in which husband and wife bring both the challenges and the unique perspectives of living with disabilities to the relationship.  Although disparate in theme, these three works all explore the strength and beauty of the human spirit in the hardest of circumstances.

AEMS is excited to present AAS Film Expo 2015 at the upcoming Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference in Chicago, IL on March 26-28, 2015. All screenings are free of charge, and we would like to invite educators and the public to join us for this year's expo, entitled "Fleeting Past, Present Asia." Please look to the AEMS website later this month for film descriptions and a full schedule.

Elizabeth Oyler and Yimin Wang, co-editors

During the opening credits of He defied the Tide of Time, an unidentified voice explains, "I didn't care if I was fired. Anyone in that situation would have done the same." Although the words are simple, they represent an extreme situation that was anything but representative of how most individuals did act at the time. The words are those of Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat stationed in Lithuania during WWII, who saved over 6,000 Jews from the Holocaust by issuing much needed Japanese transit visas. While the number of Jewish refugees that Sugihara saved from certain death was considerable, his story is still not well known. He defied the Tide of Time attempts to change this oversight by shedding light on Sugihara's incredible story. 

Skilled at learning languages, Chiune Sugihara worked for the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs at various international posts. Sugihara was also trained in espionage, which led him to the extreme situation alluded to in the film's opening scene. In 1939, Sugihara was responsible for opening a Japanese Consulate in the Lithuanian town of Kaunas. Opened under the auspices of assisting Japanese tourists and businessmen in the region, the consulate provided a means for Sugihara to gather intelligence about the Soviet Union and Germany on the eve of WWII. The clandestine information gathered by Sugihara allowed him to warn individuals-especially Jews-of the coming Nazi occupation in Lithuania. 
 

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Planet of Snail

Hearing that this documentary is about a South Korean couple - a deaf-blind husband and his wife who has a spinal deformity - it would be easy to presume that this film is dark in tone. This would be very plausible given that the concept of disability has been portrayed very negatively, particularly in the South Korean context, where disabled people have mainly been conceptualized as recipients of benevolent assistance. Planet of Snail disrupts this presupposition; it is a strikingly bright and peacefully beautiful love story. In several occasions in the film, Young-chan, the husband, narrates his poems. "The darkness and silence [which] were with God... came to me." But Young-chan's darkness and silence can be shattered by his bridge to the world - Soon-ho, his wife.

This film shows the language that the couple uses to communicate with one another and the world, and how this language builds the kind of marriage that ordinary people, and in particular those who do not have physical disabilities, long to achieve. Young-chan and Soon-ho communicate with each other by touching hands. Soon-ho's fingers touch the back of Young-chan's hands, as if typing braille. If Soon-ho does not speak while she touches his hands, the viewer cannot understand what she says. Fingers and hands, or rather the sense of touch constructs a language all of its own. Young-chan feels the spring by quietly hugging and touching the tree. Obviously, this world moves slowly. Young-chan says, "Feeling heavy in my heart, I am dying to run." But he cannot, he can do so "only in my [his] imagination." This is why he lives in the planet of snail.

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