David and Sueko McLane began to work together in Japan when they produced a short documentary of the 1995 Hanshin earthquake called “Kobe, the First Year After.”

At the time, neither of them lived in Kobe and suffered little damage, yet felt they should do something to at least record the event. The video was based on interviews with survivors, most of who were thankful to be alive, who told their stories in Japanese, the narration was in English.

Two versions were produced, one with English subtitles for the Japanese, the other with Japanese subtitles for the English. The latter took a third place at the 1997 Tokyo Film Festival.

During the next five years they produced short videos documenting various aspects of actual life in Japan and the western part of the United States, mostly along the remnants of Route 66 between Santa Monica, California and Amarillo, Texas. These were not commercial ventures, but used as material for the sessions they ran at NHK Culture Centers in Osaka for people working to get up to speed with their English.

They married in 1999 and moved to Congress, Arizona in 2001 where they live in a 20-year-old adobe house and continue to work on actual-life projects.

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