Japan Cuts screens Life’s tsunami film

Regge Life, Visual and Media Arts faculty member, appears at the Japan Cuts film festival in New York City last month for the screening of his documentary, Live Your Dream, which chronicles the life of a 24-year-old American woman killed in the 2011 Japan tsunami. (Courtesy photo)

Distinguished Director-in-Residence Theodore “Regge” Life’s documentary about the first confirmed American fatality in the 2011 Japanese tsunami was featured last month at the Japan Cuts film festival, hosted by The Japan Society in New York.

The documentary, Live Your Dream, is about 24-year-old Taylor Anderson of Virginia, who worked as a teaching assistant in Japan and survived the initial earthquake, only to be killed by the tsunami as she rode her bicycle back to her apartment to call her parents in the United States.

Japan Cuts presents films that are “the roughest, sharpest, and smoothest of today’s cutting-edge Japanese film scene,” according to its website.

Life, of the Department of Visual and Media Arts, hosted a question-and-answer session at the July 12 screening of his 90-minute documentary, which had post-production help from Will Rogan, MFA ’13, and Michelle Tsaitas ’12.