Michaël Ferrier, Kenichi Watanabe & [RE]presentations of the Fukushima Disaster

Abstract

In 2021, Kenichi Watanabe & Michaël Ferrier published the screenplays for their three nuclear documentaries with Gallimard as Notre ami l'atome (2021). Ferrier said these screenplays were not simple publications but expansions of the material they had collected in their three films, which includes expanded interviews and photographs of the disasters. In this article, I use adaptation theory to examine Watanabe & Ferrier’s film Le monde après Fukushima (2013) along with the screenplay that appeared in the 2021 publication to understand the limits and possibilities each medium affords. For instance, these documentaries were partially funded by state institutions with a vested interest in the film, its reception, and its depiction of the events, whereas literature is arguably freer to express opinions because it is not tied to certain forms of state funding. This article thus uses Jan-Noël Thon’s concept of transmedial adaptation to demonstrate how both media (film and text) are complementary. Rather than simply publish the screenplay, Watanabe & Ferrier use the publication as an opportunity to share expanded commentary and photography. When the film and text are read together, they become an even more explicit critique of the nations that perpetuate the use of nuclear energy despite their demonstrated dangers.

Keywords:

• Transmedial
• Film adaptation
• Screenplay
• Nuclear documentaries
• Nuclear energy critique

Notes

Notes

1 “They are rather a completely reworked version and much more complete than the film commentaries, enhanced with a number of unedited passages.” Translation my own.

2 “a catastrophe that does not end.” Translation my own.

3 “It is sort of hard to speak quickly about my work with Kenichi, because it varies—in intensity and breadth—depending on the film. To speak quickly, and generally, Kenichi films and I put my words on those images. But, if it’s possible, I intervene in editing (which is the most important moment for a film). This was the case notably for Le Monde Après Fukushima, where we worked out the film together—for many long hours!—to give it is definitive shape (along with Christine Watanabe, his wife and producer, Paul Saadoun, the other producer, and of course, the film’s editor).” Translation my own.

4 Michaël Ferrier, email message to author, October 31, 2022: “I knew it from the start, these are the inherent restrictions of the genre.” Translation my own.

5 “So, when I went back to the three texts for the films to collect them in the volume Notre ami l’atome with Gallimard, I really saw that they didn’t work on the page: it wasn’t enough to just use the three texts and bring them together to make a book, a real book, they needed to be completely rewritten!” Translation my own.

6 Michaël Ferrier, email message to author, October 31, 2022: “descriptions, ambiance, and of course context, as the book doesn’t have the images to support it (outside the few instances at the beginning of each chapter). But also, to take advantage of this moment to go further, further and in a differently from what images can offer in terms of analysis and understanding.” Translation my own.

7 “One day, they brought Mickey here to show the rest of Japan that, yes, Fukushima was doing alright, that we were getting back on our feet. They were doing a media campaign for the region. And, upon arriving, I measured the radioactivity. Right where the children were supposed to sit, it was measured at 10.6 micro sieverts.” Translation my own.

8 “The Japanese are among the largest consumers of fish on the planet, and the five prefectures affected by the earthquake and the tsunami represent about one fifth of the total production of marine fishing and aquaculture in Japan. The people from here are multigenerational fishers, they live off fish in one way or another: for them, the sea is a source of life.” Translation my own.

9 “Authorities from every country are very powerless with regards to the persistence of the radioactive pollution. After the disaster, no less than 44 countries banned agricultural imports from Japan or required that imported products be subject to further regulation, even if they had been considered safe by their country of origin.” Translation my own.

10 “All over the region, ruins of houses, wrecked cars, lonely trees paint a lonely picture of a devastated country: but in Fukushima what you cannot see is more worrisome than what you can see.” Translation my own.

11 “They nevertheless seem very fragile in the face of the enormous financial stakes, the indifference or unawareness of public opinion in other major nuclear countries such as the United States or France, to the inertia or to the corruption of the elites’ policies.” Translation my own.

12 “A very strong coalition between the electric companies, the nuclear industry, the businesspeople, the politicians, the scientists, and parts of the media, which all form a tight network of institutional actors who, under the appearance of being impartial or objective, in reality make up an integral part of the system of promotion of nuclear energy along the Archipelago.” Translation my own.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Timothy Lomeli

Timothy Lomeli is a doctoral candidate at Florida State University. He is interested in Transatlantic studies, Caribbean studies, representations of race, class, gender, and sexualities, as well as film analysis. He recently published “Rise of a Nation: An Exploration of Vieyra’s Vision for Senegal through Une nation est née” in the international film journal Black Camera (2022). He also is working with Tiffane Levick on an English translation of Gisèle Pineau’s Ady, soleil noir (2022) to be published with Liverpool University Press in 2025.