TARGET
2021 · 100m · Documentary
In 1991, the issue of “comfort women” was raised for the first time through the testimony of the late Kim Hak-sun. One of the first reporters in Japan to write an article about her testimony was Uemura Takashi of The Asahi Shimbun. Since the publication of his article, Uemura has been subjected to blatant attacks from the far-right, including threats on his family’s life, and the issue is still ongoing in 2021. Based on Uemura's defamation lawsuit that began in 2015, TARGET details why he had to be someone's “target.”
More Like This
Senso Daughters
1990
Senso Daughters focuses on the legacy of the Japanese occupation of Papua New Guinea during the Second World War. It is a legacy that arises from rape, starvation and terror. Sekiguchi's documentary lets the residents of Papua New Guinea, especially the women, tell the story of their three years under Japanese Army rule.
More info →
The Murmuring
1995 · ★ 5.8
Every Wednesday at noon, women who were kidnapped for sexual purpose by the Japanese army during its imperialism and their supporters demonstrate against Japanese government to request official apology and indemnity for their crimes. This documentary portrays sexually abused old women's suppressed story of overcoming of their shame and forced silence.
More info →
Twenty Two
2017 · ★ 7.7
Follow the lives of the elderly survivors who were forced into sex slavery as “Comfort Women” by the Japanese during World War II. At the time of filming, only 22 of these women were still alive to tell their story. Through their own personal histories and perspectives, they tell a tale that should never be forgotten to generations unaware of the brutalization that occurred.
More info →
Comfort
2022
KIM Soonak is a survivor of sex slavery by the Japanese military. The war may have ended, but her life was still at a war. She lived in the prostitute quarters to survive, did sex business in the US military camp town, and peddled goods from the US military. She raised two kids on her own as she worked as a maid. We’ll listen to her story in her absence. The film reconstructs the life story of the deceased KIM Soonak with interviews with activists, archive videos, animation, and read-aloud testimony.
More info →
Habitual Sadness
1997 · ★ 5
The story of the women at the "House of Sharing" continues. Old women who share a common bond lead a peaceful life in the countryside, raising vegetables, chickens and painting pictures. They are no different from the elderly women we see every day. But they are all scarred by pain and sorrow from their collective history of being comfort women during World War 2. They became subject to prejudice in their own homeland after their return to Korea. It is painful for them to watch other peoples' children and grandchildren, and they feel rage when the Japanese government tries to cover up the unspeakable crimes they committed against them. The film asks us to remember what these women sacrificed and the shame and misery they faced even as these individuals pass away often forgotten by their own people.
More info →
Calling the Ghosts
1996 · ★ 10
Movie about tortured and humiliated women in concentration camps in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
More info →
A Secret Buried for 50 Years: The Story of Taiwanese "Comfort Women"
1998 · ★ 10
This is Taiwan's first documentary about comfort women. The audience gets a glimpse of history as 13 "grandmothers" speak of their unspeakable past, unknown even to their family, in front of the camera.
More info →
The Silence
2017 · ★ 10
The Silence narrates the struggle of fifteen "comfort women"—former sex slaves by the Imperial Japanese Army during WWII—for recognition and reparation. The "comfort women" issue has previously been treated almost exclusively within the framework of Korean nationalism. The Silence will provide insight into the ways in which nationalism and the emergence of post-war Asian nation-states have hindered the understanding of "comfort women" narratives through Zainichi Korean documentary filmmaker Soo-nam Park's point of view.
More info →
Red Maria 2
2015
Korean sex worker Yonhee goes to Japan to build solidarity with her counterparts there. YAMASITA Youngae heads for Kyoto to give a lecture on how former prostitute-turned-comfort women were left out of the movement to achieve justice for comfort women. Korean professor PARK Yu-ha is sued by former comfort women because of her book Comfort Women of the Empire. Reportage writer KAWADA Fumiko Tells the story of BAE Bonki, a Korean who worked as a comfort woman in Okinawa. Shuttling between the issue of sex workers who refuse to be pictured as victims and the issue of comfort women who couldn’t even be acknowledged as victims, the film reveals stories that had disappeared from official memory.
More info →
Song of Arirang - Voices from Okinawa
1991
In the final hours of the Pacific War, Okinawa was the destination for Korean men conscripted as “military laborers” and Korean women taken as “comfort women.” Little is known about the number of casualties or their experiences. In 1989, Park Soonam started to track down the survivors of the Battle of Okinawa to record their testimonies. In 1990, Park visits Korea in search of former “military laborers” who had survived Okinawa and repatriated to Korea. The survivors vividly recount their experiences of their compatriots’ murder and about the “comfort women” to the Zainichi Korean female director. The film zeroes in on the murder of Korean “military laborers” and the presence of “comfort women” in Okinawa via testimonies of former Japanese soldiers.
More info →
The Women Outside
1996 · ★ 1
They're called bar women, hostesses, or sex workers and "western princesses." They come from poor families, struggling to earn a decent wage, only to be forced into the world's oldest profession. They're the women who work in the camptowns that surround U.S. military bases in South Korea. In 40 years, over a million women have worked in Korea's military sex industry, but their existence has never been officially acknowledged by either government. In The Women Outside, a film by J.T. Orinne Takagi and Hye Jung Park, some of these women bravely speak out about their lives for the first time. The film raises provocative questions about military policy, economic survival, and the role of women in global geopolitics
More info →
The Apology
2016 · ★ 4.1
"The Apology" explores the lives of former "comfort women," the more than 200,000 girls forced into sexual slavery during World War II. Today, they fight for reconciliation and justice as they struggle to make peace with the past.
More info →