Okinawan Dream Show

Abstract

This chapter deals with the oeuvre of Okinawan filmmaker Takamine Gō and video artist Yamashiro Chikako, with an emphasis on the former’s feature Queer Fish Lane (Hengyoro, 2016). Taking as a point of departure Gilles Deleuze’s framework of time-image, which underpins his explication of modern political cinema, this chapter examines how Takamine has experimented with textual strategies and forms of expression in configuring the ‘stratigraphic image’ apropos of Okinawa, wherein the boundaries between the actual and the virtual and between the real and the imagined are blurred. Meanwhile, I also turn to Yamashiro Chikako’s recent narrative-oriented video works that have been intricately connected to the legacies of the Battle of Okinawa and the current waves of protests against the US military bases on the islands.