Underground

A ghostly 'shadow' drifts across Okinawa, Sapporo and beyond, encountering fragmented war memories that transcend time and place. Guided by glimpses of images in a theatre, she moves through caves and underground passages, touches remnants left behind, listens to buried voices, and traces what once happened there.

Oda Kaori: 'In my latest film Underground, I have deepened my exploration of memory [….]. Humans will inevitably go extinct one day, and, as long as we are human, you and I will surely die. Yet I want to affirm that each and every one of us has lived here. I now believe that this is why I seek to leave film as a living trace.

In this film, we refer to something whose role is to journey through the living traces of the ancient past, the present and the distant future as the "shadow". I aimed to use the shadow to connect the underground and the aboveground, the lost and the remaining, the living and the dead, thereby creating an image of "us". Death, loss, and the things left behind... In the underground, where these signs can be felt, the device of film has, for a moment, made frozen time move again. Spaces that have been hidden, covered or concealed are brought to light by the eyes of the living. The living in this film are not only we, the filmmakers involved in the film, but also the audience gazing at the screen.

The living traces, gazed at through film and exposed to light, become a collective memory. The strange phenomenon of "us" is renewed as this collective memory acquires a new layer. Hopefully, my film will renew "us".’