Die Dorfschulkinder

In the organizer's words:

二十四の瞳 Nijûshi no hitomi

Director: ASAMA Yoshitaka
1987, 129 minutes, original language, 16 mm

This touching anti-war film is based on the 1952 novel of the same name by writer Tsuboi Sakae. The chronicle of a dedicated primary school teacher and her twelve pupils from 1928 to 1946 was also made famous by the film adaptation by director Kinoshita Keisuke in 1954.

The young teacher Ôishi Hisako starts work on the island of Shôdoshima in the Seto Inland Sea in 1928. Because she wears European clothes and comes to work on a bicycle, she is initially viewed with skepticism, but quickly wins the hearts of the children with her warm manner. Most of them have to look after younger siblings after school or help their parents at work. One day, Ôishi is transferred and during the painful years of war, it becomes uncertain whether they will ever see each other again.

Film series
The value of remembering
Japanese films against forgetting

In the current time of change, remembering and commemorating the past is more important than ever. In 2024, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Japanese anti-nuclear weapons organization "Nihon Hidankyo", a grassroots movement of survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The Norwegian Nobel Committee's citation states that the group, founded in 1956, was awarded the Peace Prize for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through testimony that nuclear weapons should never be used again.

Japanese film history also addresses the suffering and hardships that people had to contend with in connection with the war. The film series shows works by renowned directors that focus on the fate of individual people.

It begins with a family story based on the notes of a doctor(Kono ko o nokoshite). Music plays an important role in a Japanese soldier's fight for survival (Biruma no tategoto) and on an island, a teacher cares for her pupils(Nijûshi no hitomi). A docudrama depicts true events about a traveling theater group (Sakuratai chiru), followed by the story of a girl who folds cranes in the face of death(Senbazuru). A film about the skull of a kamikaze pilot(Fûon) and a production inspired by the historical figure Onoda Hirô(ONODA, Ichimanya o koete) conclude the program.

Price information:

Admission free