TIFF change

[Anne McKnight]

I'm sure there are many angles here...

That said, one interesting document that might be of interest caught my eye
recently--the Foreign Minister addressing members of the "content world" as
cultural ambassadors. It's on the MOFA website, at
http://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/fm/aso/speech0604-2.html (English) and
http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/press/enzetsu/18/easo_0428.html (日本語). The
move to work with UNESCO to provide for a "Safeguarding of the Intangible
Cultural Heritage" (through the無形遺産条約) was quite interesting to me. If
I read him correctly, he's making a strong bid to see world-wide recognition
of cultural forms as national heritage items, and to leave the door open for
digital/animated cultural forms to be included, as well as bunraku and
repertory cultural forms that correspond to the "national living treasure"
model.

FM Aso's choice of venue and audience on the "creator" end of things was
quite interesting to me--Digital Hollywood, which emphasises a curriculum of
media technics (DTP, anime, CG, web content, programming), and whose
graduates might well go on to work in film production, among other things.
Among the effects of digital diplomacy that he cites is Zidane saying that
the Captain Tsubasa animé "first instilled a love of soccer" in him.

The speech did kind of make me wonder what MOFA/ministry conversations are
going on at the "studio system" (to use a slightly obsolete descriptor) end
of things, like production, financing, content delivery, copyright, and
other things that are currently in flux in Hollywood--especially given the
resonance of the school's name with the bi-annual Digital Hollywood
conference, a more infrastructurally-oriented industry event.

Anne

On 10/28/06 7:18 PM, "Aaron Gerow" <aaron.gerow at yale.edu> wrote:

> As I reported not too long ago, it looks like the government is going
> ahead with altering the Tokyo International Film Festival by inserting
> it in a common front of Japan's international contents business
> strategy. According to this morning's Asahi, the METI minister will
> announce at today's TIFF closing ceremony that, among other things, the
> government will be working to align various contents markets, including
> the TIFF and the Tokyo Game Show, by scheduling them together or one
> after another, creating an "International Contents Carnival" (as it is
> being called for the time being). The Asahi article makes it clear that
> one of the main reasons is that the government is interested in
> "multi-content" products, where anime are made into films and games,
> etc. No word, it seems, about promoting good old fashioned original
> movies....
> 
> Anyone going to the closing ceremony tonight who can give us a report?
> 
> Aaron Gerow
> KineJapan owner
> 
> Assistant Professor
> Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
> Yale University
> 
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