Preserving memories of a Japanese internment camp, and the land where it stood

Flood of Memory builds a bridge between the town of Independence, California in 1942, when some 10,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated at the Manzanar internment camp, and 2023, when a tropical storm brought a damaging flash food to the region. In interviews, elderly women who were imprisoned at Manzanar as children describe their experience of the camp. While their recollections span from painful to neutral to, in the blissful ignorance of childhood, even enjoyable, there’s a shared sentiment that these memories have faded – either intentionally buried or simply corroded by time. Pairing their words with archival footage of the camp and modern imagery of Independence in the wake of the storm, the US director Maya Castronovo builds a poignant connection between the erosions of landscape and memory in this place.

Via Directors’ Library