JIFF

[Aaron Gerow]

While I've got a few moments in my hotel room, I thought I'd mention the 
Jeonju International Film Festival which I am attending now.

The JIFF in Korea has a strong emphasis on digital, animation, and 
experimental films, but also shows a lot of features, mostly independent 
ones. It also has an emphasis on thinking about cinema, so there was not 
only a symposium (which I participated in), but also several theme based 
retros.The big theme this year has been war and cinema, with the symposium, 
an animation retro, and a Korean War cinema retro all taking place relating 
to that topic.

The Japanese selection has been OK, but not thrilling. The festival 
commissioned three short digital films from three young drectors of whom 
Suwa Nobuhiro is one. Sakamoto Junji's KT was the opening film, playing in 
anticipation of its simultaneous opening in Korea and Japan this weekend. 
There are few too many Japanese films that have been around for a while, 
like Furumaya's Bad Company, and not enough new ones. Other Japanese films 
include Zeze's Tokyo Erotica, Saito Hisashi's A Painful Pain, Nagasaki's A 
Tender Place, Mori's Laundry, Okuhara's Wave, Spirited Away.  There was also 
a retro on Japanese experimental animation with Kuri Yoji in attendance and 
screenings of war documentaries by Kamei and Oshima.

The Asian Cinema Studies Society conference also took place simultaneously, 
but I wasn't able to attend too much of that conference due to my 
commitments with the JIFF. I gave a paper on Love Letter and Like Grains of 
Sand, Robert Hyland gave one on Swallowtail, and Peter Rist talked about 
camera movement in Japanese silent film.

I'm off to Seoul tomorrow to give another paper at Jungang University.

Aaron Gerow

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