Report from Yamagata

[batgirl at tkb.att.ne.jp]

Dear KineJapanners,

[Following on Markus's vibrant, vital postings on the Yamagata 
International Documentary Film Festival earlier this month, I wanted to 
add a few reflections on the festival as well. I thought I'd wait until 
after the heady fervour of the festival had died down, and yours truly 
had been able to recoup enough sleep and gain some kind of perspective 
on the films and events to write coherently about them. In retrospect, 
may be that writing amidst the wild rush would have made for a better 
posting, but here goes nonetheless.]

A week after the festival, some memories to add to the rich description 
Markus gave us. The first one is perhaps prosaic: this year's festival 
was marked by the omnipresence of lines--to get into screenings, to get 
into Komian, or even to get tickets to get into screenings later on in 
the day. The lines for some films at the main competition venue wound 
their way down the stairs from the sixth floor nearly to the ground 
floor. Muse and the Forum, the venues for the Asian competition and the 
science film and postwar Germany series, distributed tickets for each 
day's screenings around 9:30 each morning, which meant line-ups outside 
both theatres--in some cases halfway around the block--from 8:30 am 
(not as long after Komian had closed as some may have liked). Muse and 
Forum are on opposite sides of the downtown area, which made for a lot 
of people dashing back and forth between the two early in the morning 
every day, including people jumping into cabs to make sure they'd 
arrive in time. A normal scene for other festivals, to be sure, but an 
interesting twist for Yamagata--and hopefully one that will serve as a 
visual expression of viewer/community support for the festival, useful 
for arguing for the importance of continuing it in whatever form in 
years to come.

The science film series was one of the toughest programmes to get into, 
and had some complete gems, both Japanese science films and a programme 
of UFA docs from the 1930s now at the National Film Center. Many of the 
programmes were organized by theme, with work from different decades. 
Some of the newer films were clearly chosen to fit specific themes, 
rather than to point to new and exciting directions in science 
documentary filmmaking (I'm thinking of one recent space exploration 
doc that was essentially a plug for renewed funding from the Japanese 
government using on-screen testimonies from "foreign" (i.e. 
Euro-American) scientists about Japanese leadership in astrophysics 
research), but the overall comparison of science film style and ideas 
of "what science is" that the thematic programmes afforded made for a 
thought-provoking programme.

Two more highlights of this year's programming not yet mentioned, both 
related to sound:

1) One of the last afternoons of the festival, Sawato Midori gave a 
spell-binding performance of Oh! Furusato (Ah, My Hometown), a 1938 
Mizoguchi film shot in Yamagata, accompanied by cello and keyboard. 
What made the performance so amazing (not that Sawato-san isn't always 
so) was that the film itself no longer exists, so the three performers 
were recreating it entirely through sound, as the audience "watched" a 
black screen. One can only hope that more "Sawa-Talkies" (as the event 
was dubbed) are produced soon!

2) The last screening of each day in the main international competition 
venue was preceded by a broadcast of the NHK radio programme 
"Soundscape", a short recording of environmental sounds from a specific 
place in Japan (all the installments presented at YIDFF were from sites 
in Yamagata Prefecture). The recording of Hijiori Hot Springs was 
eerily evocative, with everything from the rushing of water in the 
river to the sound of geta striking the pavement. Another magical 
moment in the dark, amidst the often so visual swirl of the festival.

On the topic of sound, I'd be curious to hear: how was Kikuchi 
Nobuyuki's talk on sound? I didn't have quite as strong a reaction to 
Pedro Costa's talk as Markus, though not getting to the actual topic of 
"sound" until the 80 minute point, and starting off by announcing a 
lack of preparation, struck me as extremely unprofessional. I thought 
that what Costa was trying to say (again, this is not about sound, but 
in general) was not that you can't do anything with amateur equipment, 
but that it's a problem that the film industry (including festivals, 
producers, etc.) would have you think so. In other words, it's a 
structural problem that impedes entry to filmmakers who aren't already 
connected within the funding structure. Nothing new, of course, and 
Costa is in a relatively comfortable position so can say this, so I 
wish that if this is indeed what he meant, he'd been able to express 
this more directly--and if only someone in the room had connected this 
comment to the J-Pitch series that Fujioka Asako organized to teach 
younger filmmakers exactly how to deal with exactly this problem. 
(Apparently, and unfortunately, his comments did send shock waves 
through many of the younger filmmakers in the room--I'd be curious to 
hear how the comments were translated as that could also have had 
something to do with it.) At the end of the talk, Costa also gave some 
concrete examples of how sound can drive a scene, illustrated with 
clips from In Vanda's Room and Colossal Youth, that made me wish he'd 
started off with these, rather than the rambling statements that Markus 
described.

Maybe it was just the conversations that I was privy to, or the films 
that I saw (for example, I didn't make it out to the 8mm screenings), 
but despite the sound-specific programming, there seemed to be less 
discussion about issues of medium, for example sound and editing, the 
boundaries of the genre of documentary, or the relationship and 
positions of DV and film, than in earlier years. Are we at a moment in 
which the flexibility of what might be defined as "documentary" has 
become more accepted, at least in the communities of people who 
participate in the Yamagata festival, whether as filmmakers, 
movie-goers, programmers, jurors or critics? The discussions can 
certainly be hackneyed, but as Kidlat's performance and the 
International Competition jury statement by Hasumi at the closing 
ceremonies indicates, it just seems irresponsible to say that DV has 
arrived, and bury the discussion.

As the jury choices may indicate, there also seemed to be less work 
that asked questions about medium and mediation, at least in the 
international and Asian competition films. (Unfortunately, I missed 
Kidlat's screening, which seems from Markus's posting to have been a 
wonderful and rare moment of complete engagement with the geo-politics 
of these questions.) Was this the result of programming decisions? Of 
the kind of work that was submitted to the two competitions, i.e. the 
pool of work from which the programming teams had to choose? Of a 
larger trend in the worlds of documentary (whatever those might be)? A 
massive question, obviously, but I'm curious, and would be curious to 
hear if other KineJapanners have noticed a similar turn away from these 
questions.

Sarah
______________________________________
Sarah Teasley
Department of Art History
Northwestern University
s-teasley at northwestern.edu