japanese
Tomorrow’s a Day Away
  • The Heart of Jenin
  • Kites
  • Let’s Be Together
  • Megunica
  • Rough Aunties
    		•

    A Special Program of EUNIC Japan

    With great pleasure I would like to congratulate and to thank the organizers of the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival 2009 for presenting, for the first time, a documentary film program that was planned and organized in cooperation with the EUNIC Japan Cluster, founded in February 2008 in Tokyo. The Yamagata festival is among the top-ranking documentary festivals in the world and attracts filmmakers and cineastes from throughout Japan and the world every second year. The fifteen EUNIC Japan Cluster member states welcome this engaged initiative of the YIDFF to promote here the spirit of European cooperation, which within the European Union is carried out in the political, economic, and cultural spheres.

    EUNIC Japan is enthusiastically engaged in developing and fostering European cultural cooperation with relevant partner institutions in Japan. The presentation of the EUNIC Japan program, with films from Denmark, Germany, Italy, and Poland, and the United Kingdom under the title “Tomorrow’s a Day Away,” will definitely contribute to a better understanding of common European views on and approaches to global and regional problems, which are of common interest to all inhabitants of the “global village.”

    Our very special thanks go to the festival organizers, the film directors, and to the participating European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) in Japan and all other EUNIC Japan and EU member states contributing to the festival’s program.

    To the festival and its audience we wish a wonderful event and continued success.

    Dr. Uwe Schmelter
    Regional Director for the Goethe Institutes in East Asia
    Head of EUNIC Japan Cluster

    EUNIC JAPAN

    The EUNIC Japan Cluster was founded by representatives of nine European Union member states and their respective national cultural institutes in February 2008, less than two years after the central EUNIC (European Union National Institutes for Culture) network association was established in Brussels. Now, just one year later, the number of members has increased to 15, which are: Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Spain and the Czech Republic are expected to join soon.

    Initially established in Tokyo under Austrian presidency, the EUNIC Japan Cluster has been under German presidency and Austrian vice-presidency since May 2008. The institutional members of EUNIC Japan work under the global and general guidelines of the EUNIC umbrella organization, which is under Danish presidency. It concentrates on cultural cooperation with relevant partner institutions in Japan within the thematic framework of Culture and Media, Multilingualism, Culture and Education, Intellectual Property, Culture and Crisis, and other topics.

    The presentation of a EUNIC film program at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival 2009 is one of its first joint activities in Japan, which will be followed by a European Baroque Music Festival in 2010–11, and joint activities on the issue of intellectual property with EU member states, Japan, Korea, and China.