
Hi everyone. Haven't been here for ages. How are you all people?


Does anyone have any more information about this movie?
http://www.rarefilmfinder.com/showfilm.php?id=33680
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Another film to address the issue of half-American children of the war is the sensitive art film There was a War When I was a Child (Kodomo no koro senso ga atta, Shochiku Bunko, 1981). Though released a mite late, it was produced in honor of UNESCO's 1979 International Year of the Child.
It received a number of awards on the film festival circuit, including being grand prize winner at the Salerno International Film Festival & Manila International Film Festival. But then it pretty much vanished from film fan awareness.
I saw it at its 1982 Seattle premiere at the Toyo Cinema on a double-bill with a revival of Daisan no kagemusha (The Third Shadow, 1963), & though I've been able to see that samurai film again (available subtitled on the dvd "grey market"), I have not had the chance to update my viewing of the modern anti-war film. So I have only my old viewing-diary notes to remind me of it.
Reminiscent of Forbidden Games (Jeux Interdits, 1952), There was a War When I was a Child introduced one-name child-actress "Catherine" (or Kyasarin) in what seems to be her only film.
She plays the role of Emi, a half-Japanese girl whose father was an American. Emi's story is told from the point of view of a cousin, Taro (Yuichi Saito).
Toward the end of the WWII, Taro & his mother Kazue (Fumie Kashiyama) leave Tokyo, which the Americans have been fire-bombing. They retreat to safety in Northern Japan to stay with Taro's grandmother (Hiromi Nakahara) & two aunties (Meiko Kaji as Futae & Aiko Mimasu as Miyo) who run a bean-curd tofu company while men are off to war.
His grandmother tells him never to go in the barn, because it is haunted, so of course he checks it out & discovers Emi, Aunt Futae's hidden daughter. As her father was the enemy, Emi is at risk of being taken away by the authorities, so the women protect her & hide her existence, never having registered her birth so that she does not legally exist.
Taro deeply hates the enemy due to his susceptibility to the xenophobic tone of the era & having been taught that whoever does not hate Americans cannot love Japan, & who can blame anyone at a time when Tokyo was being burned down from one end to the other in an intentional policy of "kill as many civillians as possible!" But his friendship with Emi breaks down his prejudice, in an idyllic countryside beautifully photographed.
Sentimentality does mar the film, but taking the childrens' point of view, it has its terrifying moments as the children bond & play always at risk of the villagers spotting Emi & reporting her existence to the police. The film truly merits being dredged up from its present obscurity & given new life in the international marketplace on dvd.
benjaminblack wrote:
http://www.zshare.net/video/59464040ec0f8c11/
but this clip is all we have for now.Phuzzy4242 wrote:Hmm, that's a dead link. I don't have the clip - I don't usually download them and we don't usually post clips on FLM.
Pity but it's spam... Do not enter your phone number...alegun wrote:Found something about this movie,looks like a download link but is in Russian and ask for a code,some who speak Russian can confirm if works?
http://e-video.wereu4.appspot.com/j8/88.html