BMCC STUDENT’S FIRST FILM IS CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED
June 3 , 2004
Yasuaki Nakajima, a Borough of Manhattan Community College student and Queens resident, has written and produced an acclaimed feature length film, “After the Apocalypse.”
Set in the aftermath of the Third World War “After the Apocalypse” is a futuristic drama about five survivors trying to make sense of a life after a devastating catastrophe. The film points to the importance of communication for survival, and to the ways people in crisis with no common language find to engage one another.
“After the Apocalypse,” Mr. Nakajima’s first film, has already achieved critical acclaim. The movie has already been shown at the prestigious South by Southwest Festival in Texas, and the Los Angeles Film Festival. In the coming months it will also be shown at the Asian Film Festival of Dallas, and the Lake Placid Film Festival.
Born in Japan, after four years of cleaning high-rise windows in Tokyo, Nakajima quit his job and, in 1994, went to Australia to backpack around the continent for six months. Since he spoke no English, and knew nobody in Australia, he says that he began feeling that he “belonged nowhere and felt like a ghost in the desert–a person who just appeared out of nowhere with no past.”
To survive he learned to communicate with people non-verbally — through eye contact and body language. This experience, he says, inspired him to make “After the Apocalypse.”
Still a student, while making his film, Mr. Nakajima managed to stay in school and finish his classes at Borough of Manhattan Community College, where he is a Speech, Communications and Theater Arts major.
Borough of Manhattan Community College is located at 199 Chambers Street in Manhattan. To reach the college by subway, take the 1, 2, 3, A, C, E, J, or M trains to Chambers Street and walk west on Chambers Street. Alternately, take the 4, 5, or 6 to Brooklyn Bridge and walk west on Chambers Street, or take the N or R to City Hall and walk west on Chambers Street.
