SAKURA - (cherry blossom) tribute TO JAPAN
Italy/2011/HD/color/5’
format 16:9
Japanese language with subtitles in English and Italian
Concept and words: GIÒ FRONTI
director: DAMLIA ALESSANDRA PESCETTA
choreographer and performer: MONIQUE ARNAUD
cinematography: NICOLA CATTANI
costume disigner CARLOS TIEPPO
set designer: ELISABETTA GAMBARIN
original music: ALBERTO N.A. TURRA
voice: ERIKO ISO
editor: GIOVANNA FERRARA
cinematography: NICOLA CATTANI
costume disigner CARLOS TIEPPO
set designer: ELISABETTA GAMBARIN
original music: ALBERTO N.A. TURRA
voice: ERIKO ISO
editor: GIOVANNA FERRARA
special fx:AONEMABAND/ FABRIZIO TRIGARI
colorist: PAOLA CODELUPPI
On set digital Manager: SILVIO BONOMI
esecutive producer: GIOVANNI CALCAGNO
promoter DURGA SERENA PERINI
producted by LA CASA DEI SANTI
in collaboration with La Repubblica XL
under the patronage of: Trentino Sviluppo
http://sakuratributetojapan.blogspot.com/
March 11, 2011: sudden and lethal, the big shadow fell upon the eastern coast
of Japan. Earthquake, tsunami, nuclear disaster at the Fukushima power plant
and then, the deadly radioactive fallout. Biting into the earth, the ocean, the air,
and filtering into the bodies. We all know what happened - we all know what happened again.
We astonishingly beheld the conflicting moods - and for months.
Admiration, emotion, misunderstanding, criticism, fear of the unavoidable global
consequences and a strong desire to reverse the course of a non-sustainable and too
costly development. Too many lives and too little future where we can feel at home on
planet Earth. Parties of workers, engineers and technicians volunteered to enter the
exploding burning jaws of the agonizing dragon, laying on the beach from which its
radioactive blood was trickling into the sea. We were regarding them as the last noble
living heroes – we almost felt embarrassed in facing their sacrifice, going through
this modern saga of which nobody knows the true finale. Because we are all living in it.
This video is a little poem turned into an image, a tribute to support Japan, making Art “the
appropriate medium” to soothe some of the wounds festering on the soul of those who has
suffered so much in these last few months – those who have smiled facing the cameras and
joining their hands as a sign of peace, many of them being old and having lost everything to
the big shadow. A tribute also to all those disoriented and traumatized children holding each
others hands, singing out loud in their shelters fitted out by volunteers.
The title of this work is Sakura (the cherry tree). Its aim and value lies in the sole purpose
of being useful, just like a rose petal can be. We thought this a necessary act in the age where
divinity and guardian spirits seem to leave our disappointing mankind behind, seeing we are so
devoted to the temples of financial cult - to the point of forgetting our natural connections – those
links that put us all on a par as wardens of a living heart deep inside of us that finds its fertile
soil in nature.
The beauty embodied in the moves of master Monique Arnaud sacred dance is immortal.
Even through the most difficult circumstances, and the apparently merciless abandon – when it
really looks like the sky is falling on the earth smashing her up – there is even more room for hope
and an act of beauty. A beauty that is savage, perhaps, but a beauty that is allowed to ascend
from the bottom of the emotional ocean. Even if the breath of life, blowing contrary to our plans,
would lift all the petals of the best opportunities separating us from them; and even if the gods
would turn their backs and make their way to their celestial homes on the tracks of those pink
petals, one of those, at least, would refuse to do so. One single sakura responding to such an
invocation could guide us to proceed on the road winding through the ruins and onto the
right way into the heart.
Beauty is infectious! To dance in a balance among the concrete bones of the agonizing dragon
can avoid to severe the primordial code of the dialogue we have with nature. To honour the
form of this dialogue, is Art; to transform with care and respect such a form, it is the gift that
this pink flower can still offer – avoiding to abandon us here.
BACKSTAGE
