Risa Morimoto

Risa Morimoto

N/A

Most Known for...

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Wings of Defeat 2007

Wings of Defeat is a feature-length documentary exploring the human experience of surviving kamikaze pilots. When director, Risa Morimoto, learned that her beloved uncle had trained as a kamikaze pilot in his youth but carried that secret to his grave, she decided to retrace his footsteps and ask surviving pilots about their provocative experiences. Sixty years later, survivors in their eighties tell us about their training, their mindsets, their experiences in a kamikaze cockpit and what it meant to survive when thousands of their fellow pilots crashed to their deaths. Their stories insist we set aside our preconceptions to relive their all too human experiences with them. Ultimately, they help us question what responsibilities a government at war has to its soldiers and to its people.
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Broken Harmony: China's Dissidents 2019

Once a mild-mannered TV director, Hua Ze discovered that an old friend reporting on alleged corruption after the Sichuan earthquake had disappeared, along with any mention of him online. Following a trail of leads over the great internet firewall of China, she discovers a jaw-dropping array of human rights abuses across the country. Her awakening takes her into a new world of dissidents, citizen journalism, human rights lawyers. police harassment and kidnappings. In her own reporting, Hua cannot turn a blind eye to the problems, and is made to pay the price. The film documents Hua’s courage, and her willingness to lose everything in her fight for justice.
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Memory/Loss 2013

MEMORY/LOSS: PARTS I and II is a reflection on the legacy of the Khmer Rouge, told from two viewpoints. Khatharya Um, a professor at UC Berkeley, returns to her homeland and the killing fields to talk with locals about the legacy of the Khmer Rouge, evoking painful personal memories in the process. Born in a refugee camp, Pete Pin is a photographer living in Brooklyn. Though he has never been to Cambodia, he too has seen the long-lasting pain inflicted by the Khmer Rouge. Pete takes photos as a way to help young Cambodian Americans bridge the generational gap between themselves and the Cambodian elders they both revere and fear.