The Shiranui Sea Video Introduction

In 1965, with the production of the television documentary The Children of Minamata Live On, Tsuchimoto Noriaki initiated what would become a sustained practice of chronicling the socio-political, ecological, legal and medical dimensions of mercury poisoning in and around Minamata Bay. Across some seventeen films, Tsuchimoto charted how methylmercury in the wastewater of a chemical factory owned by the Chisso Corporation decimated marine life and caused severe neurological problems and fatalities in those who ate the contaminated seafood. Made after Chisso was found guilty of corporate negligence in 1973, The Shiranui Sea explores how daily life went on in the area in the wake of this slow violence, attending to the vulnerability and resilience of the community and their environment.

Ricardo Matos Cabo is an independent film programmer and researcher. Since 1999 he has programmed and organised screenings at various festivals and institutions. In Portugal he collaborated with Culturgest, DocLisboa, the Cinemateca Portuguesa – Museu do Cinema and the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art. From 2001 until 2007 he curated the film programme of the Lisbon Biennale – experimentadesign and for four years he co-programmed Doc’s Kingdom – International Seminar on Documentary Cinema. He has curated screenings at the Goethe-Institut London; Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image / Essay Film Festival; Institute for Contemporary Arts, London and Tate Modern, London. Recently he collaborated with the Courtisane Film Festival in Ghent, Belgium and the Cinéma du réel / Galerie du Jeu de Paume, Paris. Among others he has organised retrospectives of the work of Peter Nestler, Raymonde Carasco and Régis Hébraud, Ogawa Shinsuke and Pedro Costa.