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On 6 July 2008, Sarah Brown, wife of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, met with the “Believe” crew, the pioneering team of nine Special Olympics Japan athlete-filmmakers. The meeting took place at the British Embassy in Tokyo, Japan, where the Prime Minister and Mrs. Brown are attending the G8 Summit.
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Sarah Brown, wife of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, met the Special Olympics athlete-filmmakers at the British Embassy in Tokyo. Left-right: Hiroki Kawaguchi, Kenichi Shimoike , Yuto Wada, Brown, Koji Hirayama, Gen Watanabe, Nobuaki Masumitsu, Ryota Miyazaki and Erica Maehara. Photos by Nagaya Yo |
The athletes got their start as filmmakers at the 2005 Special Olympics World Winter Games, where they worked with director Kenichi Oguri, filming and conducting interviews for a documentary (“Believe”) about the Games.
Mrs. Kayoko Hosokawa, Honorary Chairperson of Special Olympics Nippon (Japan) and former First Lady of Japan, accompanied the athletes to their meeting with Mrs. Brown. She updated Mrs. Brown on the current status of people with intellectual disabilities and their education in Japan.
Director Oguri introduced the ”Believe” film crew to Mrs. Brown, explaining that the crew has continued their film career for the past four years, including traveling to Shanghai, China, to cover the 2007 Special Olympics World Summer Games as members of the media. The result is “KIZUNA Plus,” a documentary video capturing the joy, passion, energy, smiles and friendship experienced by 7,000 athletes from around the world. They showed Mrs. Brown the first five minutes of “Believe” and a 10-minute edited version of “KIZUNA Plus.”
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Hiroki Kawaguchi, the self-proclaimed leader of the "Believe" crew, gives a gift to Mrs. Brown as Special Olympics Nippon Honorary Chairperson Kayoko Hosokawa and Brish Ambassador Sir Graham Fry look on. |
Mrs. Brown thanked the athletes for coming and complimented them on their work. “Your activity is really important because it lets people know your abilities and potential,” she said. She asked the crew to send a DVD of “KIZUNA Plus” to England so that she could hold a private screening of the documentary for her colleagues at Special Olympics Great Britain.
Mrs. Brown is a longtime supporter of Special Olympics who attended the 2003 World Summer Games in Dublin, Ireland, and visited Special Olympics headquarters in Washington, D.C., in April 2008. There she met with educators and youth, both with and without intellectual disabilities, to talk about the challenges they face and the progress they are making in changing attitudes toward people with intellectual disabilities in their communities. She promised to help advise Special Olympics on a strategy to take these youth-driven initiatives to countries throughout Europe as well as how to build Special Olympics in her nation. |
