New Asian Currents
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- Jurors
- Kim Dong-won
Kawase Naomi
- New Asian Currents Special
- Part 1 INDONESIA: In-Docs—In a Huge Land Full of Strife
Part 2 KOREA: KOFIC and KIFV—Public Policies to Ensure a Diverse Cinema
It’s been twelve years since YIDFF began the Asia Program in 1991, introducing emerging Asian documentarists to the world. While Asian society has transformed tremendously during this astrological turn, the film festival program, now called New Asian Currents, has also expanded in the number of titles, regions represented, and variations of themes and styles. With the size of the audience increasing, the organizers fortunately have also been able to improve their services.
Telecommunications, once reliant on telex and fax, have shifted to e-mail, making possible even the exchange of images. Audiences once watched films with earphones, complete with the coughing and heavy breathing of simultaneous interpreters. Now you can experience all works with professional quality English and Japanese subtitles. In the early years, we used to panic at full-color videos which would appear on the screen in black and white! Such tragedies are long gone, and are now only nostalgic anecdotes. (Hopefully . . .)
Yet, over the years, there is something that has not changed. Despite the introduction of the Ogawa Shinsuke Prize in 1993, New Asian Currents has never been intended as a competitive program, or a selection of only the most excellent works. It has constantly aimed to provide an encounter with the unknown, a broad spectrum of various attempts at expression using the moving image in Asia. New Asian Currents strives to be a generous and open meeting place for films and people, where filmmakers as well as spectators, women and men, Japanese and non-Japanese all can discover something that is their own, in the theater, the Q&A sessions, or in the theater lobby. It is up to you.
We try to invite as many filmmakers as possible and to celebrate filmmaking. In a moment away from ordinary life where curiosity for the world and the filmmaking process is stimulated, we hope to celebrate film viewing as well. I do hope this year’s New Asian Currents will Splash! its way in and Zap! us all with its vibrant currents. Enjoy!
I take this opportunity to thank all friends of New Asian Currents who have made this program what it is.
With warm wishes,
—Fujioka Asako