Zawawa – the sound of sugar cane in the wind (dir. Rupert Cox, Angus Carlyle)

Zawawa - the sound of sugar cane in the wind

During the US naval bombardment of Okinawa in 1945, Okinawans sought shelter from the battle in natural features of the environment such as caves and within sugar cane fields, creating memories that reside in the sounds of these places today. This film, the result of a ten-year collaboration between a landscape artist, an acoustic scientist and an anthropologist listens in on and makes sense of these sounds through the stories of individuals and the recordings of these sounds. Their words convey the experience of many Okinawan lives, suspended between the American wars of the past, present and future.