Hiroshima Nagasaki Download + The Student Wrestler

A voyage of self-discovery like all of our favourite road movies, Hiroshima Nagasaki Download is a precious audiovisual document that knits together an array of private experiences from a public catastrophe. Two college friends embark on a trip down the west coast of North America on a mission to visit eighteen survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic-bomb tragedies who now reside in the United States. Each of the survivors shares their firsthand experience of the harrowing explosion and the physical and mental strain they have shouldered since. The weight and sincerity of these disturbing testimonies begin to unsettle the two, yet the touching support and gratitude of their subjects and their realisation that time is of the essence motivate them to proceed with their journey.

Born 1978 in Osaka, Shinpei Takeda is a Japanese filmmaker, visual artist, and musician based in Tijuana, Mexico. His works tackle a wide range of themes regarding memories and history in various media: documentary films, multi-media installations, video projection, public installations, community collaborative projects in various public and non-public contexts. He has been collecting over 50 oral stories of atomic bomb survivors living in North and South Americas since 2005. His recent films include El Mexico mas Cercano a Japon (2008) about a Japanese photographer in Tijuana in the 1920s.

The Student Wrestler is winner of the Audience Award of the Image Forum Festival 2010 by director Yumehito Imanari. This is a revealing documentary portrait of the homosocial world of a university wrestling club and its leading light Tominaga, a young man more interested in hanging out with his mates than graduating.