Film Screening: Clings & Burns – FREE

Clings and Burns explores the role of Robert Fleming, the artist’s father, in the firebombing by U.S. forces of 68 Japanese cities during World War II, including residential areas. The impetus for the film was the artist’s discovery of a small photograph showing a bomb site over the city of Nagoya with a date stamp of 3:12:45 among his father’s shoe box of photos and mementos from the war. This triggered questions and research as to what that photo represented and how to make sense of it from both a personal and societal perspective.

The film has two channels. It is centered around a fictional legal deposition of Mr Fleming and archival footage (U.S. and Japanese), as well as family photos and military personnel records. David Mitchell is the film editor and, together with Joe Stocker, provided sound editing.