John Harford Williams was born in the UK, but has lived in Japan since 1988, where he is regarded as a Japanese filmmaker. He made several short films and a documentary about human rights abuses in Sri Lanka (Voices from Sri Lanka, 1994), before making his first Japanese language feature film, Firefly Dreams (Ichiban Utsukushi Natsu), which won several awards at international film festivals, including two Best Feature Awards. His most recent feature film is Another Time (Tabi), which blends traditional Japanese puppetry with live action and was all filmed in the village of Kitaushima.
2024 Docs Ireland
North Cormorant Island was filmed over ten years in the remote fishing village of Kitaushima (which means North Cormorant Island), on Sado Island, Japan. Until the 1960’s the village was only accessible by road, but it was prosperous, and a couple of hundred people lived there, rice-farming, fishing and raising cattle. But…