48 years: Silent Dictator
Synopsis
Iwao Hakamada, a former professional boxer, was sentenced to death in 1968 for mass murder and held on death row for 48 years, the longest stint in history. In interviewing Mr. Hakamada, now 79 years old and still suffering from prison psychosis, this record attempts to capture the immeasurable solitude of nearly half a century. Walking alongside Hakamada through his labyrinth of delusions, amidst fading memories and the powerful will to victory, it glimpses into Hakamada’s complicated psychology, a web of opaque logic warped by his life’s predicament.
Schedule
Credits
Sunairi Hiroshi
Born in Hiroshima in 1972, Sunairi lives in NYC. In the last decade, Sunairi has been making film works, expanding and experimenting with contents and forms of documentary films. From personal issues to collective memory and the public sphere, Sunairi creates each film’s distinct approach and style; Making Mistakes, a soul-searching journey in Tibet; COSMIC MOVEMENTS, a traditional ethnography on a group of Mexican Americans and Chicanos – indigenous people with roots in Mexico practicing the tradition of Anahuac (Aztec); Where it flows out into the plains, a meditative and spiritual travelogue in India; air, about the nuclear disaster in Fukushima; 48 years – Silent Dictator / 48 years – 沈黙の独裁者, an interview documentary with Iwao Hakamada, known as the world’s longest-held death row inmate.
