Filmmaker Solrun Hoaas passed away last Friday, 11th of December, aged 66. The writer, director and producer was responsible for the feature film Aya (1990), the post-war story of a young Japanese woman who marries an Australian soldier serving with the Occupational forces then struggles to adapt to her new life in Melbourne in the 1950s. The film starred Eri Ishida, Nicholas Eadie and Chris Haywood, and was nominated for six AFI Awards, including Best Film, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor (Haywood) and Best Cinematography (Geoff Burton). Aya was also invited to screen at over 30 international festivals, later receiving distribution in Japan on VHS.
Hoaas spent many of her earlier years in China and Japan, where she studied as a graduate student at Kyoto University in the ’70s. This time influenced her immensely and she later completed an MA in Asian Studies at the Australian National University, Canberra. She started her career with the short film Effacement (1980), a study on the connection between a Japanese maskmaker and her mask, a pastime she herself studied. Hoaas made several other Japanese-inspired films, such as Waiting for Water (1981), There’s Nothing that Doesn’t Take Time (1981), and The Priestess / The Storekeeper (1983). All of the films were set on the tiny island of Hatoma, Okinawa, population 47. With the documentary Sacred Vandals (1983), Hoaas recorded the life of two women living on the island, and won the Special Jury Award at the Uni-Japan Competition, Tokyo 1984, and was Highly Commended at the 1984 ATOM Awards.
A year before Aya, Hoaas made the documentary Green Tea and Cherry Ripe (1989), about the experiences of six Japanese 'war-brides’ during the Second World War and their relocation to Australia. Hoaas later turned her attention to Korea with the documentaries Pyongyang Diaries (1997), about the changing political climate in North Korea in the ’90s, and Rushing to Sunshine: Seoul Diaries (2001) about the possibilities of rapprochement between North and South Korea.
In recent years, Hoaas developed numerous feature film scripts and created handmade prints, depicting images from film, theatre and Japanese Noh masks. In 2007, both of her films on Korea were selected for the inaugural Chungmuro International Film Festival, held in Seoul, and in 2008, the Japan Ethnological Film Society screened a retrospective of all four films she made about Hatoma Island.
The memorial service for Solrun Hoaas will take place at Williamstown Chapel this Friday at 3pm.
