Ann Kaneko 'Louder Than Words'

Audrey Magazine - The Award-winning filmmaker Ann Kaneko isn’t afraid to tackle the controversial in her documentaries, making statements that resonate long after the screen goes black. 

When Alberto Fujimori took over as president in 1990, Peru was in a state of peril. The economy was suffering from hyperinflation while a bloody civil war between the army and a guerrilla movement, el Sendero Luminoso or the Shining Path, ravaged the country. Fujimori fixed the economy, but when Congress objected to his strict anti-terrorism legislation, Fujimori disbanded Congress, declaring he would need complete control to fix Peru’s problems. 

During his presidency, artists like Alfredo Márquez suddenly became terrorists simply because Márquez painted Chairman Mao. Sentenced to 20 years in prison, Márquez spent four long years in a tiny cell in solitary confinement. Artist Claudio Jiménez Quispe had to flee his countryside home in Ayacucho because of the Shining Path’s insurgency. Unable to show his work during the unrest, he secretly chronicled the violence in retablos (traditional wooden display boxes depicting Catholic scenes). When the state began clamping down on freedom of expression, artists were forced to censure themselves.
 
Miles away from Peru, Los Angeles-based filmmaker Ann Kaneko was thinking of a subject for her next documentary and found Fujimori fascinating. “He used the way he looked to garner support among the population, saying he was more like the Peruvian people than the white guy [Mario Vargas Llosa] was. He was a hard liner that was both loved and hated. I didn’t agree with his politics, but I felt like he was a very curious character,” she recalls. 

While raised in the predominantly black Crenshaw neighborhood of Los Angeles, Kaneko (who is fluent in Spanish and Japanese) had lived in Japan after graduating from Bennington College in Vermont and had always wanted to live in Latin America, particularly Peru, known for its high concentration of Japanese citizens, second only to Brazil.
 

Kaneko planned to use a Fulbright scholarship to film her own version of Michael Moore’s Roger & Me, which she jokingly referred to as “Fujimori & Me.” However when she arrived in Peru in March 2001, Fujimori had fled after a major corruption scandal involving his security chief Vladimiro Montesinos, who was accused of taking bribes, wire tapping and, worst of all, creating a death squad under Fujimori’s rule. When the Peruvian government collapsed in September 2000, Fujimori went into hiding in Japan and reportedly faxed in his resignation. Kaneko’s original idea had to be scrapped, but it didn’t take long for her to find a new subject, which she found in the most unlikely place — the streets. 

The streets of Peru are like blank canvasses themselves for citizens to express their anger, their frustrations and their desires. After the Fujimori upheaval, fed up Peruvians took to the streets with public “art actions,” like Lava Lavendera (wash the flag) and Muro de la Verguenza (wall of shame). “They were very symbolic for the country,” says Kaneko. “For Lava Lavendera, citizens and artists were literally hand-washing the Peruvian flag in buckets of water, cleaning away the corruption and hanging them all around the governmental plaza. … It’s like hanging the American flag around the White House.” After viewing both public actions, Kaneko decided “to focus on people who were really doing work that engaged with the social and political discourse that was going on in Peru.
 
“I wanted to share what I had learned from Peruvian artists about the role that artists can play as social critics,” Kaneko continues. “I was impressed with their perseverance, passion and commitment to fight for freedom of expression.” Thus began a six-year project that resulted in an hour-long documentary called Against the Grain: An Artist’s Survival Guide to Peru, winner of three filmmaking awards, including Best Documentary at the DC Asian Pacific American Film Festival in October 2008. Kaneko also chronicled her journey producing the film in a blog (www.AgainsttheGrain-Peru.blogspot.com), which includes additional information like screenings. 

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