The National Museum of Art, Osaka will host the 29th Nakanoshima Screen "Wars and Images" on March 15, 2026. This special film screening event examines the role of museums as repositories of memory in the production, presentation, preservation, and critique of images directly linked to identity politics.
The event draws inspiration from the exhibition "Opening Documents, Weaving the Memories: A Special Exhibition Featuring Works from the Museum Collection" held at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (July 15 – October 26, 2025). That exhibition marked 80 years since the end of World War II and attempted to weave new memories of the war based on records accumulated in art, including War Record Paintings returned from the US to Japan in 1970.
The Significance of Images in War
Filmmaker Oshima Nagisa (1932-2013) once commented on the fact that Japan's surrender was announced by radio broadcast rather than television: "The crucial significance of 'that' was that it was given to us as sound without any images. Our history of images is not so much a history of what images existed, but of what images did not exist."
For the Japanese people, World War II ended without images. However, films that documented the war itself do exist.
Part 1: Kamei Fumio's War Documentaries
The first part of the program features a lecture and screening focusing on director Kamei Fumio (1908-1987), who produced a trilogy of films about the Sino-Japanese War.
Lecture: "The Poetics of War Documentary — Silent Resistance in Kamei Fumio's Work"
- Time: 11:00 AM – 11:35 AM
- Speaker: Otsuki Isao (Visiting Researcher, Ritsumeikan University Institute of Humanities)
- Author of "The Birth of War Films" (Jinbun Shoin, 2025)
Film Screening: "Fighting Soldiers" (1939)
- Time: 11:40 AM – 12:50 PM
- Duration: 66 minutes
- Format: 35mm film
- Collection: National Film Archive of Japan
This war documentary about the Battle of Wuhan (1938) was banned from screening until 1975 due to its war-weary pathos, which authorities deemed too strong.
Part 2: Contemporary Art and Mediated War
The second part presents works by contemporary artists that explore war through the lens of media and visual culture.
Harun Farocki – "Inextinguishable Fire" (1969)
- Duration: 25 minutes
- Context: Vietnam War
- Theme: Correlation between military and industrial technology, relationship between images, memories, and facts
Hito Steyerl – "November" (2004)
- Duration: 25 minutes
- Subject: Kurdish independence struggle in Turkey
- Focus: Disappearance and death of Andrea Wolf (1965-1998)
- Concept: Personal memory intersecting with global "traveling images"
- Japanese subtitles provided by ASAKUSA
Lawrence Abu Hamdan – "Rubber Coated Steel" (2016)
- Duration: 21 minutes 47 seconds
- Subject: 2014 shooting of two unarmed Palestinian teenagers by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank
- Format: Audio-based investigation
- Approach: Audiences experience the deaths of the voiceless through exchanges between witnesses, judges, and lawyers
- Member of: Forensic Architecture
- Japanese subtitles provided by Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival
Erkan Özgen – "Purple Muslin" (2018)
- Duration: 16 minutes 28 seconds
- Subject: Yazidi women who fled from ISIS to northern Iraq
- Approach: Collaboration with violence survivors
- Theme: The importance and weight of listening to victims
- Japanese subtitles provided by Han Nefkens Foundation
Event Details
Date: March 15, 2026 (Sunday)
Time:
- Part 1: 11:00 AM – 12:50 PM (doors open at 10:45 AM)
- Part 2: 2:00 PM – 3:35 PM (doors open at 1:45 PM)
- Two separate sessions with different programming
Venue: The National Museum of Art, Osaka, B1 Lecture Hall
- Address: 4-2-55 Nakanoshima, Kita-ku, Osaka City, 530-0005
Admission: Free (first-come, first-served, 100 seats per session)
- Admission tickets will be distributed at the B1 Information Desk from 10:00 AM
- One ticket per person for each session
Organizers: The National Museum of Art, Osaka; National Film Archive of Japan
Sponsor: The Daikin Foundation for Contemporary Art
Program Curator: Ma Jungyeon (Guest Researcher, The National Museum of Art, Osaka)
During the screening event, the museum will also be hosting the special exhibition "Nakanishi Natsuyuki: Devices to Stand Forever, to Gaze Gently" and "Collection 3".
For more information, visit the museum's official website or contact:
- Phone: 06-6447-4680
- Website: https://www.nmao.go.jp/
