37 Stories About Leaving Home
Video, 52 min.
Shelly Silver ©1996
"When I was little I had a recurring dream. My family was
standing in a line and an airplane was flying straight towards
us, shooting missiles at us. None of the missiles hit me, but my
family was wiped out.
"I guess I had this dream because I didnąt want to be separated
from my family but at the same time I wanted to get away from
them as soon as possible, even when I was a child.˛ Emi Aoki, 37
Stories About Leaving Home
A young woman trying desperately to escape from an evil spell
leaves home. She finds herself in a foreign place, where she is
convinced, with the logic of all fairy tales, that by collecting
a precise number of stories and arranging them in just the right
way, she can be released from bewitchment. This voyage, from New
York to Tokyo, begins Shelly Silver's intimate documentary 37
Stories About Leaving Home.
What follows is a complex weaving of stories told by a group of
Japanese grandmothers, mothers and daughters, ranging in age from
15 to 83. The stories recount each woman's personal journey from
child to adulthood - their own experiences of leaving home. Some
funny, others tragic, the stories bear witness to the strength of
these women, the difficulty of their choices, and the strong and
complicated bonds linking generation to generation, linking
grandmothers to mothers to daughters. The images illustrating
their stories range from everyday scenes to more evocative images
which capture the haunting quality of childhood. Framing the
stories is a traditional Japanese folktale which is recounted
throughout the film. Called 'The Oni Laughs,' it is an unusual
and somewhat shocking narrative of a mother's search for her
abducted daughter, kidnapped by a monster on the eve of her
wedding. 37 Stories About Leaving Home provides a rare and
personal view into the lives of these Japanese women. It points
to the enormous societal changes that have occurred in Japan over
the last few generations, showing how these women are both
influencing and coping with these changes in their own different,
individual and creative ways.
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