<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><span style="caret-color: rgb(69, 69, 69); color: rgb(69, 69, 69); background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Thank you for the wonderful report Markus, AN/NESIA was really outstanding, and I was surprised how at the Japan Wartime program, during Night Mail’s screening, people were clapping and almost shouting with excitement. </span><div style="caret-color: rgb(69, 69, 69); color: rgb(69, 69, 69); text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="text-decoration: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Let me add one more thing, among the satellite events, I was lucky enough to attend a special screening of <i>gentō (</i>magical lantern) “documentaries” shot in the Miike mines during the big strikes of the 1950s. The event took place at the Yamagata University on the typhoon day. </span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(69, 69, 69); color: rgb(69, 69, 69); text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="text-decoration: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">These “magic lantern screenings” were accompanied by a benshi-like narration. A big thank you to the organizers: Koji Toba, Hana Washitani (her narration was fantastic) and two more people (I’m sorry but I don’t remember their names now). </span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(69, 69, 69); color: rgb(69, 69, 69); text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="text-decoration: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It’s a fascinating subject. </span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(69, 69, 69); color: rgb(69, 69, 69); text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="text-decoration: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(69, 69, 69); color: rgb(69, 69, 69); text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="text-decoration: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">You can read more here: </span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(69, 69, 69); color: rgb(69, 69, 69); text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><div style="text-decoration: none;"><font color="#454545" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/arts8020064" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">https://doi.org/10.3390/arts8020064</a></font></div><div style="text-decoration: none;">and here: </div><div style="text-decoration: none;"><font color="#454545"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="https://doi.org/10.18917/iconics.11.0_27" id="LPlnk464875" style="word-break: break-all;">https://doi.org/10.18917/iconics.11.0_27</a><br></span></font></div><div style="text-decoration: none;"><br></div></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(69, 69, 69); color: rgb(69, 69, 69);">Regards</div><br><div id="AppleMailSignature" dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Matteo Boscarol<br></span><div><div style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">ボスカロル マッテオ</span></div><div style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">記憶ただ陽炎のゆらめき</span></div><div style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">- Documentary in Japan and Asia</span></div><div style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="http://storiadocgiappone.wordpress.com">http://storiadocgiappone.wordpress.com</a></span></div><div style="line-height: 24px;">- Film writer for Il Manifesto</div></div><div style="line-height: 24px;"><a href="http://ilmanifesto.it">http://ilmanifesto.it</a></div><div style="line-height: 24px;"><br></div><div style="line-height: 24px;"><br></div><div><span style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"></span></div></div><div dir="ltr"><br>On Oct 20, 2019, at 9:51, Markus Nornes via KineJapan <<a href="mailto:kinejapan@mailman.yale.edu">kinejapan@mailman.yale.edu</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">The Yamagata festival ended a couple days ago. During the festival, I kept some notes and I through I would collect them here to describe how it went. This was the 30<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the festival, and there were some retrospective events. Fewer and lower key than I expected, but I’ll save that for the end.<span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">The overall takeaway: Yamagata remains the most exciting film event in Japan. I’m partial, of course, but it’s a fact. Surrounding the competition and Asia Program are unique (sort of…more on that later) retrospectives that show both canonical and rare films. The quality of projection is very high, and the festival has proven committed to projecting films <i>on film;</i> as usual, even venues that are nothing more than museum meeting rooms had 16mm and 35mm projectors showing archival prints. <span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">And one thing that becomes more palpable with every festival is the rejection of a market or pitching forum. Thank god. And thanks to this, the festival stands out as a true celebration of cinema. Finally, it’s as friendly and as welcoming as ever. Komian Club, the pickles restaurant that the festival takes over every night, remains—as Oda Kaori put it at a 30<sup>th</sup> anniversary event—“non-discriminatory” (<i>musabetsu</i>); the entire festival gathers and celebrates together into the morning every evening. It’s great. What a great festival. <span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Attending any film festival involves the usual hard decisions about what to see and what to miss, and the feverish running from venue to venue. I’ll make that dash around the festival below. These are rather scattershot…..<span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">International Competition: The foreign filmmakers and programmers are always scratching their heads over the selection. I don’t know if the festival even realizes how strange the slate looks year after year. But the festival has remained committed to a democratic selection process that involves a wide mix of citizens and professional film people, and no top curator making final decisions. So, naturally, strange films rise to the top and it’s somewhat ragtag. Also, some festival friends tend to get favored treatment in a tiny 15-film slate construed from thousands of entries. A good example from this year is <i>Living the Light—Robby Müller.</i> The foreigners were, like, why??? But Müller was a friend of Ogawa Shinsuke’s. He was a talented filmmaker, but still (similarly, people wondered about a previous festival’s Müller retrospective, when there are living filmmakers who changed the course of documentary history). <span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Other festival friends this year include Wiseman (<i>Monrovia</i>), Patwardhan (<i>Reason</i>), and Wang Bing (<i>Dead Souls</i>), who have been in this tiny competition before. Reason was a respectable choice—it’s a major, harrowing, Patwardhan film about nationalist violence. In one unforgettable sequence, three nationalist agitators call for the audience to “crush Anand Patwardan’s bones”; the camera pans and shows the director shooting among the press, and he gets a question in: “I’m right here. You want me, come and get me.” He’s a brave man in a dangerous spot. As for Wiseman, his film has already made festival rounds; but he’s hugely popular in Japan. Same with Wang Bing. <span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">But Wang Bing deserves some highlighting. The thing is well over 500 minutes when you include intermissions, so it fills an entire theater for an entire day—and they showed it twice. You have to admire Yamagata’s courage to show films this long, especially when the competition is so small (Wiseman’s film was 143 and Patwardan’s was 208 min). They also showed his West of the Tracks and Feng Ming, both of which took top awards. I love those films, but this one did nothing for me. I’m willing to admit it might be because I watched it at home streaming, rather than in a theatrical setting I had no control over and with a crowd (the Yamagata audiences were huge and a majority stayed to the end). I found <i>Dead Souls</i> dull and repetitious, a mere string of (often poorly-shot) interviews. I was grateful that it didn’t show the disturbing ethical lapses of his recent films. But the whole affair was lifeless and could have been accomplished in a 2-hour film. Obviously, the jury disagreed. They gave it the Flaherty grand prize. <span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Suwa was on the jury and I cornered him at the closing party to ask what turned his proverbial crank. He has some decent reasoning: the 8 hours stringing together various POVs on the same physical space and time had this strange, cinematic dynamic. An accretion of details, sometimes contradictory, that intermingle and work off each other in a manner he had never experienced in cinema. OK. I guess I can imagine that, but I certainly didn’t experience it. WB himself was a no-show. Wang Bing has a rep for suddenly dropping out of programs that people put their treasure and sweat into, most recently at Wellesley last year. But here Yamagata’s devoting two days of theatrical real estate to his film, and imagine how much money it costs to subtitle an 8 hour film. What made this no-show particularly obnoxious was the fact that he was just in Tokyo a couple weeks ago for a small, minor gallery installation. In a message to the awards ceremony, he said he was simply too busy. But it’s hard not to imagine that the difference between Yamagata and that tiny gallery was that the latter is trying to sell his work for tens of thousands of dollars. I guess he felt no upside to attending Yamagata.<span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">In contrast, screenings of Makino Takashi’s <i>Memento Stella</i> were prefaced by a heartfelt message to the audience where the director explained how desperately he tried to work around typhoon flight cancellations to get the festival from Berlin. He even offered a profound thanks to the programmers for their efforts to show his work. <i>Memento Stella</i> was never going to win an award, and the film has been ravaged in social media. But those writers were expecting “documentary” in the conventional sense, and this is a Makino film. And one of his best. It has connections to <i>the</i> world, but the film is a trippy, starry trance film-of-a-documentary. Suwa and I talked about this one, too. We were both thrilled to see Yamagata include it in the competition. After all, one of Yamagata’s legacies in Japan has been to smash conventional notions of the nonfiction form. <span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Onward: Wakai Makiko’s New Asian Currents program was as strong as ever. Although the international competition filmmakers rarely get it because they are focused on their competition, the Asia program remains the heart and soul of Yamagata. Unfortunately, frenetically rushing from program to program, I only saw about four of the films, but I liked all of them. The title that I heard dropped more than any other was probably the special invitation of Mickey Chen’s <i>Boys for Beauty,</i> which was shown in tribute to the director following his untimely death. My fave was Oda Kaori’s <i>Cenote</i>. It was a stunning experimental doc she shot in the freshwater sinkholes of Yucatan. The film alternates between underwater photography and more ethnographic images on the ground above. The former were sensuous and haptic and reminded me a lot of the experience of <i>Leviathan</i> (incredibly, these razor sharp images were shot on iPhone); unlike <i>Leviathan</i>, the images of people up on the ground focus on faces and give some sense for their life (happily, these grainy images were shot on Super-8). Oda also had an art exhibit connected to the film at a local gallery.<span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">The sidebars were of the usual high quality. The cleverly titled AM/NESIA: Forgotten “Archipelagos” of Oceana, by Hama Haruka and Greg Dvorak, had a wonderful structure: Crossings, Lands, and Bodies were “three archipelagos” containing the films. Most of the films were from the last 5 years, but they also showed a sound version of the 1933 <i>Lifeline of the Sea, </i>one of the first long-form documentaries in Asia. These were tightly programmed to play off each other in their brackets and get people thinking. For example, imperial era <i>Lifeline</i> was shown back to back with Sekiguchi’s <i>Senso Daughters</i>, and peoples’ breath was taken away when Japanese songs from the <i>Lifeline</i> era were sung in the later film. This kind of thoughtfulness was evident in the catalog as well, for instance putting the colonizer in brackets when listing the source (eg., Hawai’i [USA]). This is Yamagata smart. I love it. The program came with a great catalog with essays and poetry. I haven’t cracked this one, yet, but look forward to it.<span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Another sidebar was Tsuchida Tamaki’s Double Shadows 2. Like its predecessor, this was a cineaste’s fun feast of films about film. There were a few classics that have rarely been shown in Japan (<i>Showman, Meeting Marlon Brando, Chronicle of a Summer</i>), along with a worthy new film or two (Kim So-young’s <i>Goodbye My Love, North Korea, Chuck Norris vs. Communism</i>). A highlight was a tribute screening of <i>On My Way to Fujiyama, I Saw… </i>by Mekas. This was also the festival’s opening film. I missed the opening ceremony, but the introduction by Kimura Michio (the farmer poet that invited Ogawa to Magino) was the talk of the festival. He had met Mekas on that 1983 trip to Japan, and contrasted Mekas’ nostalgia for his home to Kimura’s own hatred for his own village. This program, by design, is a grab bag of cool and interesting films yet, unlike AM/NESIA, does not make the effort that went into programming felt. Thankfully, there is a very serious catalog, filled with top writers and a great section on Mekas. I’d seen most of the films, so I spent my time elsewhere. <span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Another major program was Morita Noriko’s The Creative Treatment of Grierson in Wartime Japan. If Double Shadows 2 was a cineaste world, “the 30s program” as people were calling it, was an historian’s world. I heard one disparaging comment calling it “that dissertation program”; true, it’s the topic of the curator’s dissertation. But it was anything but stale. There were a set of carefully chosen frames that teased out the global connections and synchronicities going on in the late 30s and early 40s when documentary was taking its conventional form. I’ve never seen such a program attempted anywhere, and thought it was very successful. It pitted canonical documentaries like <i>Drifters, Housing Problems</i> and <i>Turksib</i> against their Japanese counterparts, some of which are rarely shown canonical docs, and others unknown films which have not been screened since their initial release. Everything was projected on film, which was occasionally eye-opening (foreign curators I talked to were delighted at both the chance to see early Japanese doc and the proper projection of classics that made them rethink the films). And the special catalog, with essays by Kinejapaners Naoki Yamamoto, Anastasia Fedorova, Aaron Gerow and myself (also Okada Hidenori) amply showed how the theoretical discourses around documentary were far more advanced than anything going on in the West (ie., Rotha and Grierson). There were good talks as well; I was particularly impressed by Anastasia Fedorova’s discussion of <i>Turksib</i> and the equally imperialist<i> Hakumo-sen</i> (as well as her contribution to the catalog). <span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">One of the more unusual programs was Home Movie Day. This was part of the global home movie day celebration, although it took place a few weeks early. The venue was the Forum, and independent cineplex. On the surface, the Forum looks like any other multi-screen cineplex; however, its roots sink back to the independent screening movement forged by Ogawa and others. So it was wonderful to walk into the theater and see a battery of Super-8 projectors set up in the back. The first film was startling. It was 20 seconds of a clock tower at night, followed by what looked like colorful strips of films running down the screen; it was accompanied by the director crouching in the front of the screen with a tiny music box playing a paper strip. It was startling because this was the festival trailer that opened every screening. It was a charming, lovely trailer and truly wonderful to see a live performance in Super-8. This was followed by various home movies brought in by directors visiting the festival, including John Torres from the Philippines, Oda Kaori, and others. As you might imagine, this was hit and miss. But the climax of the program was fantastic. Onishi Kenji, the Don of Super-8 in Japan and projectionist for the evening, showed his documentary on the 2013 festival. It was, as usual, filled with fast-motion clips of familiar faces and stunningly beautiful, hand-developed Super-8. And this was followed by Sato Makoto’s rarely screened Super-8 documentary/fiction/home movie, <i>Megami-sama kara no tegami</i> (<i>Letter from the Goddess</i>). Oh, and the young ‘uns in the audience were treated to a stuck projector and film meltdown! The MC actually had to explain what they were looking at. Onishi called from the back, “No worries. It happens all the time.” Charming. <span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">The festival offered a new edition of its 3/11 series, Cinema With Us 2019, programmed by Hosoya Shuhei. There was a relatively small selection of films, with an equal selection from Taiwan (especially by Huang Shu-mei). Also a 3-hour symposium with Wood Lin, Komori Haruka, Aikawa Yoichi (who is researching the Ogawa Pro screening movement) and media theorist/historian Kadobayashi Takeshi. There was some talk about the program is making the problem of forgetting palpable. Fewer films than before. Fewer audience members. It will be interesting to see how the festival deals with this inevitable trend as 3/11 recedes into the past. <span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">There were other programs I didn’t have a chance to get to. Reality and Realism: Iran 60s-80s, Perspectives Japan (recent domestic docs), Yamagata and Film (also an ongoing program), Yamagata Rough Cut (workshopping docs by young filmmakers in rough cut form), Chris Fujiwara and Kitakoji Takashi ran another film criticism workshop, and Fujioka Asako programmed Rustle of Spring, Whiff of Gunpowder: Documentaries from North India. The latter was in conjunction with the establishment of a film archive in northeast India, where political unrest has made such an institution impossible up to now. Another event that caused a lot of buzz was a small program of documentaries on butoh dancer Ono Kazuo, climaxing with a live performance by dancer (and festival interpreter!) Kawaguchi Takao in the ruins-like attic of a nearby primary school; I heard it was breathtaking. There were also a few symposia celebrating Yamagata’s new status as a UNESCO Creative City. <span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Oh yes, and it seems the Fins threw some money at the festival to promote their country…by constructing an honest-to-god Finnish sauna in front of one of the venues. Unfortunately, you needed both time and a swimsuit.<span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">What am I missing? <span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">One relatively new thing were satellite events held at night at cafes around town. They had this kind of thing in the past, but in 2019 they felt more organized and ubiquitous. Some of these showed films. Others were organized by other documentary festivals, or journals like <i>neo-neo</i> and <i>F/22</i>. These were really uneven. Some were virtually empty. Others were packed, drawing spectators from the official, ticketed events. In this sense, while it was interesting, it might also be a little self-defeating. The festival is doing a bunch of these themselves (Taiwan party, karaoke night), and they tend to be more meaningful and well-attended.<span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Ah, once again the festival published the free <i>Sputnik</i> magazine. This is produced by a team led by Tsuchida Tamaki, with editors Okuyama Shinichiro, Nakamura Daigo, and Nakamura Masato. Billed as a “YIDFF Reader,” it includes essays on nearly 30 of the festival films, and by prominent scholars and critics. What a wonderful idea. There is still a daily newspaper, but <i>Sputnik</i> has heft because its prepared over the summer. The writing is solid and critical. <span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">And did I mention that <i>Sputnik</i>, like all festival publications and every single screening and symposium, is bilingual? Where there are other languages besides English and Japanese, there are always interpreters/subs as well. It’s by far the most international festival in Japan, putting TIFF to shame (as Aaron often points out). <span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Another thing worth noting is that Yamagata’s celebration of cinema spins off to the rest of Japan after the closing ceremony. The festival selects some directors to hold screenings in other parts of the prefecture. And then quite a few directors are tapped for screening events at universities and institutes around Japan. Sharing the documentary love. <span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">The festival also held tribute screenings for friends of the festival who passed away: in addition to Mekas and Chen, there were Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Tamura Masaki, Barbara Hammer, and Peng Xiaolian. And, sadly, Ogawa Shinsuke’s wife, Shiraishi Yoko, passed away the day before the festival. Word spread mid-festival, although I’m unsure if there was a tribute or not. There was also a beautiful catalog offered at the venues for Miyazawa Hikaru, one of the core masterminds of the Yamagata Festival. He died last year at aged 64. Miyazawa-san was a fixture at YIDFF, and an activist supporting local film culture through independent screenings. Everyone missed his presence very much. The catalog features tributes from scores of people who appreciated his efforts to make Yamagata a “Movie Capital.” <span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">That phrase sounds a bit ridiculous, but it comes from Ogawa Shinsuke and the title of Iizuka Toshio’s 1989 documentary on the first YIDFF. This was shown, along with its 2005 sequel, as part of a modest celebration of the 30-year history of the festival. Director Iizuka Toshio gave an interesting discussion about the films. He described how this was his first attempt at directing, and Ogawa gradually took the project over during postproduction. (I was there; it was ugly.) And one of the toughest things for him was seeing Ogawa go on and on and on about how he wanted to encourage and support Asian filmmakers. Ogawa even talked about creating a kind of transnational collective of directors in Asia. Iizuka would listen to these monologues, which are sampled in <i>A Movie Capital,</i> and feel distress: Why, he thought, doesn’t he try to raise up directors in his own collective first!??! <span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">There was an interesting panel about the history of the festival organized by Masuya Shuichi, who has led the festival’s volunteer network since the beginning. I was struck by Masuya’s introduction to the 30-year anniversary symposium. He brought us back to the Manifesto that was drafted by Kidlat Tahimik (who had attended the Oberhausen festival the year of its famous manifesto), and signed by the Asian filmmakers at the 1989 festival. Kidlat, Ogawa and Co. were complaining that no Asian films were in the competition and called for Yamagata to nurture Asian documentary. Well, the Asia Program was started in 1991 and mirrored the international competition. This became New Asian Currents in 1995; not only did it grow in size and stature, but it also became as competitive as the international competition. Masuya pointed out there was no way to predict in 1989 that the New Asian Currents in 2019 would be swamped by 2,000 entries. Talk about explosive growth. <span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Masuya also helped us imagine the conditions that led to the creation of the festival. Back in the 1980s, it was hard to see films. There was no bullet train until 1992, so going to the big city was a chore (I remember driving over the mountains over 8 hours to visit with Ogawa or the long train ride through Sendai). It was also going to cost you 30,000 for all the travel, hotel and food. And because home video was still nascent, DIY was the only option. People like Masuya, Miyazawa and other core people in the festival would get friends together and rent prints and hold screenings. The festival was a natural extension of this. <span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">There was another tidbit from this symposium that I didn’t know, or if I ever did I forgot: the creation of Komian Club appears connected to a conversation I had with Masuya at the 1991 festival. I pointed out how expensive Japan was for the Asian filmmakers (and poor students like myself). A coffee or a beer was a significant purchase, let alone food. So the following festival, they founded the Komian Club. It’s now turned into one of the loved features of YIDFF. <span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Masuya also found Ogawa’s “Movie Capital” hyperbole a bit embarrassing, and certainly premature. But in retrospect, Masuya realized that this was Ogawa laying down a challenge to the festival to grow into the title. Maybe Yamagata is no Paris, but I think it has become a movie capital in its own, unique way. <span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. At the end of his 30<sup>th</sup> Year symposium, Masuya asked for some thoughts from his audience about the next 30 years. I offered one or two. Yamagata Documentary Film Festival is remarkably rich. At the same time, it has become regrettably predictable. In the last decade they took on an odd repetition problem. It remains a truly great festival, but one with no sense of surprise. There has been an earthquake program in every edition since 2011. They’ve had Taiwan-centric programs in 2005, 2015 and now this year. This was the third iteration of Islands after 2009 and 2011. Double Shadows doubled this year. Combined with regular programs focusing on a geographical location (Switzerland, Germany, Lebanon, Africa, Iran, etc.), there is a sense of deadening familiarity about the festival. <span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Part of this is a packaging problem; things going on inside the programs are more complex and curated than they appear in the PR. In this sense, the contrast between this year’s Double Shadows (basically more of the same—title + 2) and Islands (really intensely curated with overt, thought-provoking structures and creative naming) is striking. <span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">I realize there are programs that they pretty much need to do every year: Perspectives Japan (for the new Japanese work that didn’t make the competitions), Yamagata and Japan for local films (new and old), Rough Cut! (a really worthy effort that can help produce better films), and I realize it’s hard for them to give up the 311 program. But this puts a lot of pressure on the other retrospectives to create a sense of wonder and expectancy, to open eyes and draw audiences beyond set constituencies.<span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">I hope they’ll stop doing the same thing over and over again and bring back a sense of unpredictability that inspires a giddy anticipation before the festival. YIDFF is stuck in a rut—a really great rut. But a rut, nonetheless. The festive sense of “festival” is being taken over by predictability and endless reiteration. People have been whispering this for many years; I wonder if it ever reached the ears of the festival?<span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">That said, there are few film festivals around the world that are as rich and varied. And if you are interested in Asian film, it’s hard to beat. I’m thankful for all the films I had a chance to see (including old films on film), all the people I met, and the daily experience of learning new things and new ways to think about what I thought I knew. <span></span></p></div></div></div>
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