OBAACHAN'S GARDEN

2001, 94 minutes, color, super‐16mm with 35 mm blow‐up, the National Film Board of Canada.
Writer/Director/Editor/Producer: Linda Ohama.

Starring: Natsuko Ohama, Nelson Mashita, Donna Yamamoto, July Ono, Hiro Kanegawa, and Warren Takeuchi.

DOP: Kirk Tougas 

Editor and Story Supervisor: Manfred Becker

Music Composer and Sound Design: Dennis Burke.

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Synposis

In 1923, Asayo Murakami left Hiroshima Japan as a picture bride and settled in the small fishing village of Steveston BC, carrying her precious violin and three small photographs.

Her Canadian family remembers a happy woman who sang, danced and nurtured a colorful flower garden all her life, but underneath this cheerful façade a memory left behind in Japan haunted her.

Poignant interviews with Asayo at 100 years old, recalls life in Japan, her arrival in Canada, the bombing of Hiroshima and the forced relocation of her family during World War II that buried a dark secret.