{"id":1846,"date":"2014-05-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-28T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crsny.org\/wp\/index.php\/2014\/05\/28\/water-children-film-screening-913-920\/"},"modified":"2014-05-28T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-05-28T00:00:00","slug":"water-children-film-screening-913-920","status":"publish","type":"tribe_events","link":"https:\/\/jp.crsny.org\/index.php\/event\/water-children-film-screening-913-920\/","title":{"rendered":"Water Children film screening \u2014\u00a09\/13 & 9\/20"},"content":{"rendered":"

WATER CHILDREN\u00a0(documentary), 2011
\nA film by\u00a0Aliona van der Horst
\nNetherlands, 2011, 75 minutes, Color
\nJapanese\/English (English Subtitles)
\nShowtimes: Sat, 9\/13 at 7 pm and Sat, 9\/20 at 2 pm\u00a0
\nCRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing)\u00a0invites you to the NYC premiere of WATER CHILDREN.\u00a0In this acclaimed, hauntingly beautiful film, director Aliona van der Horst follows the unconventional Japanese-Dutch pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama as she explores the miracle of fertility and the cycle of life\u2014sometimes joyful, sometimes tragic.
\nTickets are $10 in advance and $12 at the door.
\nWhen Mukaiyama recognized that her childbearing years were ending, she created a multimedia art project on the subject in a village in Japan, constructing what she calls a cathedral, out of 12,000 white silk dresses. While Mukaiyama\u2019s own mesmerizing music provides a haunting backdrop to the film, her installation elicits confessions from its normally reticent Japanese visitors, many of whom have never seen art before\u2014and in moving scenes they open up about previously taboo subjects.
\nMukaiyama\u2019s courageous approach to a subject that remains unspoken in many cultures is explored with an elegance and sophistication that deepens our understanding of the relationship between body and mind.\u00a0We\u00a0hear from women who talk about their experiences with menstruation, miscarriages, children and the failure to conceive,\u00a0fertility and sexuality.\u00a0
\nThe miracle of fertility has always remained a miracle. In Mukaiyama’s unique installation,\u00a0visitors, as in a ritual, roamed\u00a0around and fell silent, and sometimes went on to describe intimate details about sexuality and choices made,\u00a0children who were or were not born.\u00a0
\nThis led the filmmaker to the ritual of the \u2018water children.\u2019\u00a0In Japan, premature babies, stillborns, babies that were never born\u00a0are commemorated in a mythological ritual and known as water children. Because they never had an opportunity to carry out good deeds, they are unable to cross the underworld river and are trapped in stone figurines on a riverbank.
\nIn the film, the sound of Bach\u2019s Goldberg Variations, magically and sensually interpreted by Tomoko Mukaiyama, subtly lifts the individual stories to the universal.\u00a0The pianist and the filmmaker kept silent for a long time about their own deeper motivations to want to make the film and the artwork.\u00a0Gradually, while making the artwork and the film, it becomes clear what drives them both, each from her own fate.
\nWatch the trailer:
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