Processing

I have been editing the footage from my trip to Ishinomaki City for a few days now. As I was working on the first short documentary that I posted on Sunday, I realized how much emotion that I hadn't allowed in while I was actually filming.

Now as I am about to finish editing the second piece about my time there and even as I am planning my next trip, I am still feeling that in many ways I am seeing the devastation for the first time.

The devastation is not the wrecked buildings or the crushed cars. It is the kind that is in people's eyes.

It was when I was seeing the images on the screen that I realized I no longer had the protection of my camera between me and what I was seeing, and I began to feel even heavier inside than when I was actually there.

All the events that have happened over the last few weeks have caused me to think about life in such a different way. It goes beyond thinking about this specific tragedy and has really caused me to examine my whole life.

I am not interested in the gory and grotesque, the sensational or the exploitative. It is not about the earthquake, the tsunami, the radiation. It is about the people who have had nearly everything taken away. What remains is not merely their 'will to survive'. What survives is their 'will to live'.

In the films I am making, I am searching for something. By the end of it all, I don't know that I will have the answer, but I believe I will at least know the question.