Omoiyari: A Song Film by Kishi Bashi (film)

Feature length musical documentary film that follows singer/songwriter Kishi Bashi as he writes and performs songs from a project inspired by the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans.

Born and raised in Norfolk, Virginia, by Japanese immigrant parents, Kaoru Ishibashi built a following as a singer and songwriter under the name "Kishi Bashi" in the 2010s. Though he has no familial connection to the incarceration, he found himself drawn to the story, especially after the events of 2016 that had him "feeling afraid" in seeing parallels to the racism and xenophobia of that time. The film follows Ishibashi as he visits—and performs at—the Heart Mountain and Jerome concentration camp sites and meets Japanese Americans who had been incarcerated in them. He also visits Chicago to meet with Japanese Americans who had resettled there out of camp and Bainbridge Island, Washington . He visits his father's relatives in Japan and performs there. The exploration of race and history forces Ishibashi to confront his own identity as a Japanese American artist and what he wants to pass down to his young daughter. The film climaxes with his participation in a protest at the Northwest ICE center near Seattle and with the performance of the new songs inspired by this project with a live orchestra in Miami. The title translates as "empathy" or "caring for others."

The project began when the Nu Deco Ensemble commissioned Ishibashi to compose a multimedia piece based on Executive Order 9066. Having met filmmaker Justin Taylor Smith through an earlier collaboration on snowboarding film, the pair embarked on a project to have Ishibashi improvise music at incarceration related sites, "trying to channel what it may have felt like to be in a camp back then, or just channeling the feelings of that space," as Smith told Misa Shikuma. The project continued over a five-year period, as the filmmaking team traveled to shoot scenes in Ishibashi's hometown of Norfolk, Virginia; his home in Athens, Georgia; and visits to Chicago; Bainbridge Island, Washington, and his parents' hometowns in Japan and Okinawa. Ishibashi released an album of songs inspired by the project in 2019 along with an extended soundtrack album in 2023. The film premiered at 2022 SXSW Festival. ^[1]

Might also like For Joy (2019); A Song for Ourselves (2009); Searchlight Serenade (2012)