Spend three weeks in Japan as part of a Colgate extended study course that provides you with access and interactions that no tourist could begin to imagine.
Check.
Fly home to Utah, spend one jet-lagged day asleep, and then drive to Colgate, passing through the flooded cities of Iowa on the way.
Check.
Take part in a prestigious film seminar on campus and listen in as more than 100 filmmakers and cinema scholars dissect dozens of films.
Check.
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| Adam Hughes ’10 stands in front of an exhibition by Amanda Katz ’10, that was just outside Golden Auditorium during the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar. |
That, in super-condensed form, was the past month for Adam Hughes ’10, a political science major and film and media studies minor.
Hughes traveled to Japan with professors George Hudson and Karen Harpp and 28 other students who had taken the Core Cultures Japan course and CORE Scientific Perspectives: The Advent of the Atomic Bomb course.
The group visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only two cities ever attacked with atomic weapons, and Kyoto, the cultural heart of Japan.
Hughes was one of three students asked to speak May 29 at the Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall during a special forum, which generated widespread TV and newspaper coverage in Nagasaki.
Hudson said Hughes, Carolina van der Mensbrugghe ’10, and Jill Wakumoto ’11 were so eloquent that the Colgate group was surrounded by excited attendees at the event’s conclusion.
Hughes spoke, through a translator, about how important it was for students to walk the streets of Japan and meet with survivors who shared powerful and sometimes graphic accounts about the World War II bombings.
“To personally hear about those experiences is very different than reading about them or seeing drawings by survivors. You’re there and you interact with the history in a way that is ultimately more meaningful,” said Hughes.
Hughes has a keen interest in post-war Japanese history, which is why he decided to take the extended study course. He also is very interested in documentary film making, and a chance to work as an intern at the Flaherty Film Seminar was too good to pass up.
That’s why he hit the road and drove to campus in time to attend the prestigious seminar.
Hughes, who is an assistant projectionist for the university’s Friday Night Film Series, worked as theater manager during the “intense” weeklong seminar, learning from the projectionist and conducting technical checks.
He saw many films and took part in the follow-up discussions that involved lively and sometimes heated discussions between the directors and attendees.
His favorite film: The Exiles, a 1961 documentary focused on the lives of Native Americans living in Los Angeles.
“It was,” he said in describing not just the film but his experiences in the past month, “really amazing.”