Hellfire: a journey from Hiroshima

This documentary portrait explores the lives and work of Japanese muralists Iri and Toshi Maruki, artists of the atomic bomb. Having witnessed the horrors of Hiroshima in 1945, the couple vowed to paint the effects of the atomic bomb and have created murals depicting its devastation. Iri's traditional Japanese ink painting and Toshi's western-style oils are joined to present artistic protests against war. The artists' other epic works denounce the atrocities at Auschwitz and the Japanese pillaging of Nanking, China in 1937. The camera follows the Marukis as they collaborate on a painting of hell, a mural that summarizes their vision of humanity. The narration is drawn from the Marukis' autobiographies and interviews from the book by Junkerman and Dower, The Hiroshima murals: the art of Iri Maruki and Toshi Maruki.