Ayako IMAMURA 今村彩子
Start Line
Nippon Visions ½
3,824 kilometers in 57 days: in the summer of 2015, filmmaker Ayako IMAMURA, who was born deaf, started a bicycle journey through Japan. For her this was a physical challenge and an experiment in communication. Having felt frustrated when communicating with hearing people, she decided to confront the problem head on, exploring not only her country, but also herself in this documentary road movie.
Winner of the Nippon Visions Audience Award
2017
About Ayako IMAMURA
今村彩子
Born in Nagoya, Ayako IMAMURA studied sign language at Aichi University as well as film and deaf culture at California State University. Since 2001, she has been shooting documentary films about the everyday life of deaf people. Raising awareness about the discrimination of deaf people in Japan through lectures and film screenings, she also teaches sign language at Japanese universities. At Nippon Connection, her other documentary films THE CONNECTING BRIDGE (2013 / NC’14) and START LINE (2016 / NC ‘17) were also screened.