Yamagata: Hasumi Speech

Mon Oct 15 13:57:04 EDT 2007

This was one of the nicer speeches I've heard at a film festival. 
Short, sweet and thoughtful. I wanted to highlight a couple things, 
especially in light of Wei Tin's query.

Quoting amnornes at umich.edu:

> we are not a group of experts that have been assembled on the basis 
> of any objective decision.
> 	However, just as an international film festival is a place of 
> accidental encounters, this panel of jurors has operated as a locus 
> of slightly accidental encounters. .......it goes without saying that 
> if the combination of our ages, generational affiliations, and 
> nationalities had been varied even slightly, we could have ended up 
> with completely different selections.

A great misconception about film festival prizes is that the best film 
wins! Having been around juries for a couple decades now (and having 
served on a couple as well), I can tell you that it's nearly arbitrary. 
Festivals select their juries according to all sorts of criteria. In 
the case of Yamagata, I can tell you that there are geographic 
considerations, but not medial ones. No one is chosen because they do 
documentary. Rather, they are chosen because people are curious how 
they would look at documentary. And as Hasumi points out, change one 
little factor and you have a different decision.

This is a good lesson for anyone out there that gets juried. Don't take 
it personally. Your work is probably better than the prize winners; and 
you prize winners should stay humble!

> When we see a certain kind of work, it is difficult to deny the 
> impression that a homogenization of the screen that we must call 
> “televisionesque” is threatening film. We can’t help but feel 
> misgivings about the loss of notions of time and space that are 
> specific to the cinema.

Remember Costa lashing out at all the "monstrosities" in the 
competition---terribly conventional documentaries that "could play on 
television sets anywhere in the world" (European tv must be great!)? I 
understand from one of the jurors that he made this a major theme of 
their five hour discussion. Opinions pitched with such verve and 
hyperbole bulldoze the alternative takes and force them to slumber or 
fester.

But also note that the attack on television is linked to a celebration 
of that which is specific to cinema. There is Hasumi shining through, 
with a little Kidlat mixed in for good measure. This helps explain why 
Fengming: A Chinese Memoir won the Flaherty Prize.
> 	This proud greeting, “Let’s meet again in Yamagata!” must not be 
> silenced, even temporarily. Let them remain on the lips of the 
> members of the NPO that has taken over responsibility for the 
> festival, of the people of Yamagata City and Yamagata Prefecture that 
> support it, of the filmmakers and guests who have come to this area 
> from across Japan and from every corner of the globe. I am confident 
> that many of the people here today carry with them that determination.

The last edition of Documentary Box really alarmed people. It was meant 
to celebrate a good run, and also mourn its passing. However, the 
essays generally have the strong stench of nostalgia for better days, 
and that fed into the pervasive worries about Yamagata's 
future----concerns inspired by the festival's own rhetoric, pr, 
Iizuka's film, and plenty of gossip.

The gossip was really out of control by the end, when a rumor about the 
demise of Komian Club raced through the festival crowds. The rumor was 
that it was going to be torn down, and this special part of the 
festival would completely change (ruin) its comfy character. Actually, 
they are simply going to take down a room that abuts the road, which is 
being widened.

The fervor got The French worried enough that they wrote an essay for 
the last Daily News. It pointed out the riches of the festival, noted 
that its particular structure (city hall vs. programmers, esp. in 
Tokyo) were a big factor in its success and shouldn't be tampered with 
lightly. Written mainly by the director of the Nyon festival, it was 
pitched in broad, general terms---meant to be confirmation/affirmation, 
but also gentle warning.

They took it to the jurors and asked them to sign. Hasumi refused. He 
worried that it was, read through the lines, mainly about director 
Yano. But more importantly, it seems he thought this kind of full 
frontal approach to a situation was unproductive. It was the same 
approach taken by the Osaka folks, who played their assigned role and 
dominated the previous symposium night. People up in Yamagata tend to 
use the more indirect, consensus mode of operation, and Hasumi opted 
out.

Whatever. The show will go on. People should stop worrying so much. It 
was an excellent festival. There were unfortunate episodes, as there 
always are. But overall, it is very much the same festival as always. 
It will, however, be intersting to see how staffing changes in the 
offing will affect things on the ground.