Jimmy Murakami-Non Alien (film)

Irish documentary filmmaker Sé Merry Doyle's profile of expatriate Nisei animator, filmmaker, and artist Jimmy Murakami.

Starting at his home in Ireland, the film follows Murakami's journey to the 2009 Tule Lake Pilgrimage, while also outlining his career in film and exploring the disillusionment with the U.S. that led to his move to Europe. On the way to the pilgrimage , Murakami stops in Los Angeles visiting the Koyasan Temple in Little Tokyo where his father had been a member and touring the Japanese American National Museum , sites in Venice where his family settled after the war and where he went to high school, friends and colleagues at the UCLA film school, and his brother and sister. The film then shows scenes from the pilgrimage: the bus ride to Klamath Falls and to the Tule Lake site, the program, a visit to the camp jail and other sites, and mingling with other former inmates. The film ends with Murakami's reflections what incarceration had done to him, making him feel like "a man without a country." The film is largely narrated in Murakami's first-person voice.

Doyle first met Murakami in the 1980s in the course of his work as a film editor in Dublin and credits seeing new paintings that Murakami had made about his incarceration experience as inspiring the film. Doyle uses short animation sequences by Guido Orlandi based on these paintings throughout the film. Funding in part by a grant from the Irish Arts Council, the film premiered at the Dublin Film Festival.

Might also like The Cats of Mirikitani (2006); Shinkichi Tajiri: A Friendship Knot for Bruyeres (1995); Harsh Canvas: The Art and Life of Henry Sugimoto (2001)