The standard procedure for making a documentary about a living person is to interview those who know the subject as a friend, enemy or somewhere in between to get a multifaceted and objective portrait. And if the film is critical rather than adulatory, the subject may never sit down for a Q&A.
United States-based filmmaker Hiroshi Sunairi tosses this formula in “From Okinawa with Love,” his revealing documentary about the early career and present-day life of Okinawan photographer Mao Ishikawa.
Taking a fly-on-the-wall approach, he follows Ishikawa as she walks around rundown neighborhoods searching for places where she worked as a bar girl in the mid-1970s, all of which catered to African American servicemen. Later, we see her as she showers and talks about her bouts with cancer and their lingering effects, a very visible colostomy bag among them.