Carey McKenzie is a filmmaker from South Africa. She is on a fellowship in Berlin at the moment (June 2008), living out of a suitcase.
‘Original Child Bomb’ is a film about the effects of nuclear weapons on humanity. McKenzie crafts the film with poetry, historical facts, film and video archive, current footage and animation. One thing that stood out for me was how at the start of the film McKenzie sets up life in Japan as ordinary, as if it could be life anywhere else in the world. With piano music and archive footage and without any narration for the first ten minutes of the film, she shows ordinary Japanese life with people in the city and in the countryside going to work, going to school, exercising, working in the fields, preparing meals. It’s a successful example of the filmmakers’ maxim “show, don’t tell”. And I could watch that opening scene again, it’s poetic and moving. It’s also ominous because the viewer sees the enemy plane approaching as the Japanese go about their ordinary life, oblivious to the destruction that is about to befall them. The opening alone says so much to me. It works for me, I hope it works for you.
HOW DID YOU GET THE IDEA TO MAKE ‘ORIGINAL CHILD BOMB’?
The film was commissioned by a peace activist who felt that it was important for young people to know about the effects of nuclear weapons.
THE PEACE ACTIVIST HAD THE IDEA AND YOU FLESHED IT OUT FOR HER?
Mary Becker commissioned the film. It was her idea to use real photographic evidence of the effect of the bomb to raise people’s awareness. She also introduced me to the Merton poem. We – the three producers, the editor and I – spent a day discussing ideas and I continued from there.
“In the year 1945
an original child was born.
The name original child
was given to it by the Japanese
people who recognised that it was the first of its kind.” – excerpt from the Thomas Merton poem ‘Original Child’ that McKenzie uses to take the viewer through the history of the atomic bomb
WHY DID YOU WANT TO MAKE THIS FILM?
It’s an important political issue – one that most people don’t engage with (and I include myself) because the implications are so enormous. Now that we all have to grapple with global warming perhaps people will think about it more. We now have two issues which must be addressed globally if we are to avert disaster.
And as a filmmaker it was a great opportunity to make a film with financing in place. I’ve spent the best part of the last ten years developing other projects and trying to get them financed. It’s time consuming and there is no guarantee that it will work out. Indeed often it doesn’t. I also had an unusual amount of creative freedom because I wasn’t working for a TV channel.
HOW CLOSE TO YOUR ORIGINAL IDEA IS THE FILM?
I was tasked with finding and making use of photographic evidence of the effects of nuclear bombs. The film evolved out of this material with Thomas Merton’s poem ‘Original Child Bomb’ as inspiration. The three word title became a structural conceit – so we worked initially with three chapters: Original, Child and Bomb. These became somewhat blurred in the course of the edit but the shadow of the framework is still there. How close? About five hundred metres.
HOW LONG DID YOU SPEND RESEARCHING THE FILM?
I first went to the Washington Archive on the second of January 2003. We started cutting while I was still researching the Cold War material and shot in Japan in July having cut the first ten minutes. I used this to show to the school kids in New York and to Kohei in Japan. The stills research went on for weeks and weeks – with a researcher in Japan and another in New York City (NYC). It takes a long time, especially when you need to get material for free or almost free. We stayed away from the big archive houses, until the very end.
So I guess about six months of research all the while prepping to shoot and shooting and editing alongside. I did most of the research and line produced the film so it was busy.
HOW LONG DID IT TAKE TO MAKE THE FILM?
Our shooting period was a week of July in Hiroshima and then a week in NYC. I remember trying to do re-shoots during the NYC blackout of August 2003. It was not so much load shedding as total blow out. The City was dark for five days. I was trying to shoot some daylight material, which should have been fine except I couldn’t charge the camera batteries. Oh and all the crew had cell phones which were running out of juice and dying. This was before text messaging. And most US landlines are electrically powered. Disaster! We locked picture in late November and I went back for the sound mix in January. Really it took a year to make the film because the research (which started in January 2003) was integral.
YOU TELL THE STORY OF THE EFFECTS OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS ON PEOPLE USING A NUMBER OF ELEMENTS: ARCHIVE, CURRENT FOOTAGE, AND ANIMATION. WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO USE THESE ELEMENTS TO TELL YOUR STORY?
From the outset we decided to use multiple formats. We wanted to use the archive – real 16mm in colour and black and white – and we also wanted the film to have a more contemporary feel. So animation was a good solution.
WHAT DID YOU HOPE THESE COMBINATION FORMATS WOULD BRING TO THE FILM?
Visual energy. The film is a meditation – it repeats itself in different styles – slowly working into people’s minds I hope.
WHY ARE THE LITTLE ANIMATED GIRL AND THE HORSE PART OF THE STORY?
Emilie Hubley did those animations. Her mother Faith Hubley made animated peace films in the 60s so it was the continuation of a family tradition. I told Emily about my idea of using a child’s perspective and showed her some pictures of the aftermath of the bombing in Nagasaki. One of those images is of a dead horse under a cart. It really captured her imagination. So we decided to do something with ‘the spirit of the horse’. A horse has such strength and vigor. The spirit of the horse becomes the messenger between the past and the present, awakening the Japanese boy Kohei to the ghosts of the city beneath modern Hiroshima.
Emily and I also worked on the paradox of the invention of the bomb: an incredible scientific achievement, which gave us the power to destroy our own planet. So we see the little animated girl holding the mushroom cloud in the palm of her hand – something wondrous and beautiful, which then tosses her into the air and leaves her screaming in mute horror.
WERE YOU HAPPY WITH THE WAY YOUR USE OF DIFFERENT TEXTURES TURNED OUT – DID YOU EXPECT THE VISUAL RICHNESS WHILE YOU WERE WORKING ON THE FILM?
I like the contrasts. And yes it’s one of the things in the film that turned out a lot like I hoped. I should add though for filmmakers new to the process that we spent many hours doing colour correction. We secured an enormous discount from an online house – helped along by our peace theme – and I think this was crucial to making the film visually cohesive.
WHAT FORMAT DID YOU FILM YOUR PRESENT DAY FOOTAGE WITH?
We shot portraits of the teenagers on a bolex (they show up in the final portrait sequence) and in the classroom in NYC we shot DVcam. HDcam wasn’t the standard at that time.
AT ONE STAGE THERE APPEARS TO BE MODERN FOOTAGE OF AN AEROPLANE IN THE SKY THAT IS SUPPOSED TO DEPICT AN AEROPLANE IN THE SKY IN THE PAST. IS THIS CORRECT? IF SO, WHY IS THERE NO ATTEMPT TO DISGUISE THE MODERN FOOTAGE?
There are a few planes and none of them are modern. The very tiny one is animated. And then there is black and white footage of 1940s warplanes.
WHY DO YOU REUSE SOME OF THE FOOTAGE, E.G. THE ARCHIVE OF THE JAPANESE CHILDREN DOING TAI-CHI: WE SEE THIS IN COLOUR FIRST, THEN IN BLACK AND WHITE?
I wanted the film to be a meditation. There are numerous repetitions. I hope that the images develop new meanings as the film develops. (I think it’s just physical jerks not tai-chi by the way – it was not a good time for Chinese culture in Japan.)
WHY ARE THE JAPANESE CHARACTERS WHO EXPERIENCED THE ATOMIC BOMBS KEPT ANONYMOUS / HIDDEN FROM US?
All nuclear survivors are known in Japan as hibakusha. It’s interesting that you felt they were being kept hidden. No one in the film is named except for the live girl and boy – Amelia and Kohei and the Irish American airman photographer who took a vow of silence. We chose very specifically to focus on ordinary people. There are no experts or generals or scientists.
Initially I vowed to have no talking heads in the film. It was like my personal Dogme rule. This is why you get just a glimpse of those Japanese hibakusha, which is then overlaid with other images while their testimony continues in voice over. Also the video footage of them was not great to look at. It came from the Hiroshima Peace Museum who shot in a purely functional way, making a record of their testimony. Some of those people had already died by the time we made the film.
There is enormous stigma in being hibakusha – rather like being HIV positive was before anti-retrovirals – so these people were very brave to come forward and record their experiences. They were mostly motivated by a strong wish that atomic weapons should never be used again. We had to find every one of them, or their closest living relative and get their permission – quite a task. Even for the artwork created by survivors. Many many permissions. This meant it was essential that I worked with a Japanese editor (from Hiroshima) Mako Kamitsuna and one Japanese producer, Ayana Osada. Without their help I could never have selected this material or negotiated its use.
Back to your question! Later in the film there are two interviews with American veterans. Talking heads – the horror. By the time we shot that we had no money left – shooting only video – with no sound person (hence atrocious sound for one interview). I would have preferred to find a more purely visual way to tell the American hibakusha story but I simply ran out of options. So I’m sorry if it feels unbalanced – it was simply an effect of economics.
IT DOESN’T FEEL UNBALANCED THAT THE SURVIVORS ARE ALL FACELESS (MAYBE THIS IS A BETTER WORD THAN HIDDEN), WHILE WE GET TO SEE THE AMERICAN SCHOOL CHILDREN AND KNOW WHO IS TALKING, AS WITH THE AMERICAN VETERANS. I THOUGHT IT WAS DONE FOR A SPECIFIC REASON – LIKE THE STIGMA, OR MAYBE STARK DISFIGUREMENT, OR MAYBE AMERICANS STILL SEE JAPANESE AS THE FACELESS ENEMY – BECAUSE THEY ARE THE ONLY ONES WHOSE FACES WE DO NOT SEE.
I must say I don’t agree that the Japanese are faceless in the film. They aren’t featured as talking heads and the Americans are – perhaps that’s what you mean. My plan was to have no talking heads, but I had the US material (intending to use only the voices) and it found its way into the cut. I didn’t have equivalent material from Japan.
In the end it is an American produced film aimed at raising awareness in America first. The Japanese don’t need to be woken up to nuclear. They know. So getting Americans to identify was important.
I was also trying to break down notions of difference that are essential to the creation of an enemy. That’s why we had a hip-hop kid in Hiroshima. He dresses like an American kid. And also why I used the footage of Japanese boys playing baseball in 1945. In the film it seems like they are playing on the day of the bombing. In fact that was historically inaccurate because baseball was banned in Japan during the war. The footage was filmed by American soldiers early in the occupation, perhaps in October 1945. We had a long debate about it and I argued for taking this liberty with history because to me the most important thing was to break down the American sense of the Japanese as ‘other’.
DID YOU INTERVIEW THE SURVIVORS, OR WAS THIS ALSO ARCHIVE FOOTAGE?
The survivor interviews were shot by the Peace Museum in Hiroshima. Many of those people are dead now. Also we didn’t have the resources to spend a long time shooting in Japan. We did find two hibakusha – a man and a woman – who came and had their portraits filmed – they’re among the faces in the credit sequence. They were children at the time of the bombing.
I’VE ONLY WATCHED THE FILM TWICE + BITS AND EACH TIME IT’S HARD FOR ME NOT TO AVERT MY EYES FROM THE BURNS AND HANGING FLESH. HOW DID YOU AND YOUR TEAM COPE WITH HOURS OF FOOTAGE OF DISFIGURED SURVIVORS?
It was rough the first week or so that I was at the archive in Washington by myself. It was the pit of January, I was staying in a cheap motel and going in everyday to watch hours and hours of footage. But I think the way I used that footage is in some measure a result of that experience. It was extremely alienating to see human beings filmed as if they were lab animals. To some extent one gets used to the wounds – especially seeing the same images over and over – but it’s horrible and it should be horrible.
Also we were making the film in New York after 9/11 so we had a vivid sense of death on a large scale. 3 000 people died in New York, while in Hiroshima it was
150 000 people dead in one day. The scale is hard to fathom but that was our way in. In other ways the comparison is problematic and complicated because in 1945 Japan was at war, while in 2001 the US was not at war and the bombing in 1945 was military action vs terrorist action at 9/11 – it’s all extremely volatile politically especially in the US.
WHY DOES A CHILD DELIVER THE HISTORY OF THE ATOMIC BOMB?
There is so much misinformation about nuclear weapons as a result of years and years of Cold War propaganda. For instance the official American version of Hiroshima, which goes something like this:
The USA dropped the bomb to end the war and save American lives.
In fact the Japanese were trying to surrender. The use of the bomb was a demonstration of American nuclear power and the opening shot of the Cold War. At that time Truman was having a hard time with Stalin in Potsdam. The war in Japan was a final opportunity to show Stalin who had the biggest stick in the yard. Perhaps an argument can be made for bombing Hiroshima, but Nagasaki is a war crime. In fact after 9/11 a very over educated New Yorker said to me: That’s what we get for Nagasaki.
Back to your question: inspired by the ‘child’ in Original Child Bomb I thought the naive curiosity of an eight year old would be a good way to cut through the bullshit.
THROUGH MY RESEARCH ON THE INTERNET I CAME ACROSS A BLOG [http://laughingbone.blogspot.com/2005/08/original-child-bomb-points-for.html] THAT CONDEMNED THE TITLE, ‘THE ORIGINAL CHILD BOMB’ AS AN EXAMPLE OF ASIAN EXOTICISM THAT WESTERNERS ARE USUALLY GUILTY OF. THE BLOGGER DESCRIBED IN DETAIL HOW THE DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE WORD (ATOMIC BOMB IN ENGLISH) ACTUALLY DO MEAN ATOM BOMB IN CHINESE, AND THAT THOSE SAME WORDS IN A DIFFERENT CONTEXT WOULD INDIVIDUALLY MEAN ORIGINAL, CHILD AND BOMB. WHAT WAS YOUR THINKING AROUND USING THE TITLE OF THOMAS MERTON’S POEM AS THE TITLE OF THE FILM?
That’s cool that someone is giving us hell online! In fact this very issue was the cause of some debate within our team. I collaborated with two American producers and a Japanese producer and a Japanese editor and the political debates continued all the way into the sound edit.
Merton used this mistranslation knowingly for poetic effect and we chose to pay homage by following suit. There is a tension created by the juxtaposition of Child and Bomb. The full text of the poem is a subversively ironic retelling of the creation of the bomb and the bombing of Hiroshima. We quote only a very abridged version but include mention of how the first bomb was named “Little Boy”. It sounds innocent but wrought destruction on a level never before imagined.
IS THERE ANYTHING YOU WOULD CHANGE ABOUT THE FILM TODAY?
That’s a terrible question! Of course there are loads of things I’d like to change. How much money do I have in this fantasy? How much time? Working within parameters is an essential part of the filmmaking process. Someone said films are not finished, they are abandoned. So it is. OCB is on it’s own.
FINALLY WHAT DO YOU THINK MAKES A GOOD DOCUMENTARY FILM?
A fascinating subject combined with an organic and creative approach to filmmaking. Documentary filmmaking seems to be subject to trends, perhaps because many films are funded by television strands. For a while ‘personal’ stories were the thing, and then it was all ‘character driven’. Characters are a basic element of story telling so that will probably never go away.
I regard my own interest (or lack of it) as a guide to what to explore whether I’m writing fiction or thinking about docs. A story can go in a million directions, so I keep asking myself, what’s interesting here? The chances are your audience will be curious about similar things.
Interviewed by Tina-Louise Smith
