Filmmaker Andrew Levitas on ‘Minamata,’ Johnny Depp and Communal Moviemaking
Eugene Smith was already a renowned photojournalist for his photo essays like “Country Doctor” and his coverage of World War II. But one of his most memorable essays came near the end of his career, in the 1970s, when he and his wife Aileen M. Smith profiled the residents of the Japanese fishing village Minamata, showing the effects of mercury poisoning on residents. Perhaps the most famous work, “Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath,” portrays both the horrors of the disease, as a woman bathes her deformed daughter, but also an act of pure love.