Mochitsuki is about How One Community Celebrates the Japanese New Year, bringing together tradition, family and love… all through MOCHI. The ancient tradition of preparing Mochi to celebrate the Japanese New Year goes back centuries. Join one close-knit intergenerational community who revels in the ceremonial pounding of the cooked rice, the forming of the warm Mochi cakes, and of course eating the yummy results!! Elders and kids alike reflect on what Mochi means to them, leaving not a cheek untouched by rice flour.

Director's Bio: Sky Bergman is an accomplished, award-winning photographer and filmmaker. Lives Well Lived was Sky’s directorial debut. Her fine art work is included in permanent collections at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Seattle Art Museum, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Her commercial work has appeared on book covers for Random House and Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc., and magazine spreads in Smithsonian, Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel, Reader’s Digest, and Archaeology Odyssey. Sky Bergman currently is a Professor of Photography and Video at Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo, CA.