AINU NENO AN AINU

Ainu Neno An Ainu is a long-term project that photographer Laura Liverani and filmmaker Neo Sora have been working on in the Nibutani district in Biratori, Hokkaido, since 2015. The Ainu people are an ethnic group with a colonial kind of history during which the basis of their daily life has been greatly affected by the cultural assimilationism of the Meiji era. Many aspects of Ainu culture itself have been handed down orally, as the Ainu language has no general writing system. Not without feeling hesitant to film people with such cultural history, and create verbal/visual records, Liverani and Sora followed some present-day Ainu people through their daily routine, which is meticulously portrayed, like in a family album, in this installation that came out as a result of various trial-and-error. The work is an attempt to explore the possibilities of the documentary style.