Sophia Magazine vol.8 / WINTER 2018

11/36

and falls deeper and deeper into an inescapable rabbit hole of absurd encounters, rules, and characters. Kafka’s original novel, written over a hundred years ago, makes no mention of a specific location, but present-day Tokyo seems an un-cannily natural setting for the story.“I read ‘The Trial’ when I was 14, and it was deeply troubling to me. It made me feel that everything I had previously thought was questionable,” re-members Williams. He explains that the meaning of the novel always remained just beyond his grasp even when he thought he had almost understood it, which was probably what Kafka intended to do to his readers. “This encounter with ambiguity stayed with me, and kept bothering me for a long time.”Something about the novel lingered in the back of Wil-liams’ mind, and returned to his consciousness shortly after the triple disaster of March 11, 2011.In fear of the ongoing radiation leaks at Fukushima’s earthquake- and tsunami-hit nuclear power plant, the whole country was in a state of quiet confusion. Controlled, insuffi-cient, and misleading information circulated, and it seemed as though everyone was trying not to say or do anything wrong, as if they were being watched or judged.To Williams, the sight of people who seemed to be “sleep-walking through a controlled society accepting everything” echoed what Kafka had depicted in “The Trial,” and he wrote a script based on the original novel in the spring of that year, without even rereading the book.The script was first adapted into a theatrical play, and then he completely jettisoned the first script, reread the novel and wrote a completely new screenplay, which became the basis for the film. “I wanted to create something political without overtly referring to the events and issues the story alludes to, something that suggests people should wake up and notice that they have alternative choices,” says Williams. This is pre-cisely what Kafka himself did to his readers.Even in these times when people in Japan and many other countries are troubled by uncertainty, false information, and invisible powers that control their lives, Williams says that Sophia University offers freedom to experiment in the class-room. “It is also becoming more and more international,” he enthuses. Last year, alongside Japanese enrollees, his film-making class welcomed students from eight different coun-tries including Norway, Austria, France, South Korea, and China.He wants his students to be “visually literate.” “The world is controlled more by the language of images than the writ-ten word,” he states. “All kinds of political and social mes-sages are sent to us via TV, advertisements, posters, cinema, and other visual media. By making something themselves, I want my students to think about how images are created and who creates them,” he explains. “Unlike language that most people use on a daily basis, people tend to think of images as something made by other people, but in fact everybody can make images and everyone can learn how to read them criti-cally.”Williams encourages his students to tell stories and make Teaching in a Free and International Environment©100 Meter Films100meterlms.com© Carl VanasscheAbove: “The Trial” movie posterRight: Scenes from the set11Research