Far East of Eden will have its New York Premiere with Emiko Omori’s Rabbit in the Moon in Doc Fortnight 2017: MoMA’s annual celebration of innovation in nonfiction film returns with an international lineup of more than 20 features and 10 shorts. The 2017 series highlights themes of justice and advocacy, reexamining how we interact with history and the landscapes we encounter, through vérité camerawork, animation, archival footage, interviews, avant-garde performance, and more. The screening will be Wednesday, February 22, 2017 at 7pm.
Far East of Eden. 2016. USA. Directed by Bruce Yonemoto, in collaboration with Karen Finley. 24 min.
This experimental video, created by Karen Finley and Bruce Yonemoto while artists-in-residence at California’s Montalvo Arts Center, touches on the racism of the Center’s founder, James D. Phelan, and brings the story up to the present. Finley’s performance channels Phelan, one of the biggest proponents of anti-Japanese-immigration laws at the turn of the last century, before mutating into a more recent political figure—presenting a jarring juxtaposition between Phelan and Donald Trump.
Rabbit in the Moon. 1999. USA. Directed by Emiko Omori. 85 min.
This year Doc Fortnight honors the work of Bay Area filmmaker Emiko Omori with a selection of her films. Omori’s work has been featured in many festivals and broadcast on public television, but is less known here on the East Coast. In 2016, she was among a select group of documentary filmmakers invited to join the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.