Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani

Sayonara Hashima

HD, colour, stereo, 17 min., 2009

From 1974 the island was abandoned because the resources were exploited. Today the island is uninhabited and the concrete-architecture is left to natural erosion. In the year 2000 it became the film location of a science fiction blockbuster „Battle Royale“, and came back into the japanese consciousness, with a different connotation. The younger generation started to know the place mostly from movies, mangas and video games, as an abandoned ghost island.
In our film, we combine the memories of a former inhabitant of the island - the son of a coal miner, who lived on Gunkanjima until 1974, and who is leading an organisation today, with the aim of preserving Gunkanjima as a world heritage site - with the narration of two high school students who recall fragments of the movie “Battle Royale”. Thereby, the island appears almost as their fantasy, an imaginary playground for their games, where various images and layers of reality and fiction already got in a state on mingling.

Movie
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Sayonara Hashima
HD, colour, stereo, 17 min., 2009
(excerpt 1.55 min.)