Un Ga Nai - Bad Luck 1999 

Christoph Draeger and Martin Frei, Hi-8 and Super-8 to DVD, 42 min

Collection of Kunsthaus Zurich

A unconventional examination of recent disasters in Japan and their effects on the psychology of a society. In the wake of Hiroshima, the Kobe earthquake, the subway-poisoning Aum Shinrikyo cult and more, Draeger & Frei investigate a nation that has incorporated the anxiety of impending mass destruction into its very structure. Includes enigmatic footage of survivalist training camps, safety drill parades, earthquake simulation centres, cows being disintegrated and other disconcerting scenarios. Un Ga Nai seems to have taken permanent residence under my epidermis [ ]... It’s a dreamy, poetic portrait of fear and fearlessness.

Aaron Karch, Indie Wire, 1999

Includes enigmatic footage [ ]… A must-see for all those fascinated by the stranger elements of Japanese culture. 

Ed Halter, New York Underground Film Festival, 1999

The semi-documentary film entitled Un Ga Nai-Bad Luck (1995-98) is a collaboration with film and watchmaker Martin Frei. In this work, Draeger diagnoses the depth of our insecurity at the thought of catastrophe. Un Ga Nai is a journey through the Japan of 1995, the same year that an earthquake rocked the city of Kobe and that the Aum Shinrikyoreligious cult killed dozens in the Tokyo subway. The year also marked the fiftieth anniversary of the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The film looks at the manner in which Japanese culture deals with disaster-namely, by incorporating the psychology of catastrophe into the fundamental structure of society. Earthquakes are anticipated on a daily basis, their catastrophic potential simulated annually on September 2, The Day of Catastrophe, to commemorate the same date in 1923 when Japan was devastated by the worst earthquake ever recorded. By showing survivalist training camps, safety drill parades, earthquake-simulation centers, and other unsettling scenarios, the filmakers propose the simulative escapades as not necessarily good answers but certainly better answers than passively trying to understand chaos from the comfort of a couch in theWestern hemisphere. At the very least, the video shows us that it is possible for a society to acceptdisaster as apart of daily life and, hence, to create methods of coping. Jana Manuelpillai

Jad Fair and Gilles Rieder (Half-Japanese) provide the original track for the West Coast premiere of Christoph Draeger and Martin Frei's Un Ga Nai-Bad Luck, a 40-min. rumination on a nation agonized by the spectre of mass destruction-the subway-poisoning Aum Shinrikyo cult, earthquake simulations, Hiroshima, and other terrors.

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