Shohei Imamura’s Black Rain Trauma In Survivors Of War
Humanities
For your directed response paper on Imamura’s Black Rain (note: don’t confuse this Japanese film with the Michael Douglas movie with the same title that ironically was released in America in the same year–1989!), please do the trauma/PTSD studies theory reading (focusing on the importance to recovery of victim/survivors transforming their traumatic memories into articualte narrative memory & the psychosocial dynamics of trauma, dissociation and triggered behavioral re-enactment), watch the entire movie, and then write about Imamura’s cinematic constitution of Yasuko, Shigematsu and Shigeko’s lived experience of the immediate aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima between time stamps 07:50-12:10 in terms of form/cinematic technique (i.e., mise-en-scene, composition, framing, camera/audience POV, reaction shots of characters, diegetic sound and extra-diegetic theme music, etc.) and content/theme introduction & development, protagonist characterization, etc.).
