Cinema with Us 2025
Kamei Foundation for the Promotion of Social Education
[Venues] F3 Forum Yamagata 3, Q1 Yamagata Creative City Center Q1 2-C
—Carrying on Memories and Experiences—
It’s 14 years since the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. People starting over have proceeded to lead new lives in a landscape with no trace of what it once was. There may still be bitter unerasable emotions. What kind of meaning can we detect from the images captured by cameras that bore witness to that time? We also look at the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake and Rain Disaster. Our present time is continually joined to those moments.
- The Land of Regeneration
- JAPAN / 2025 / 95 min
Director: Li Bo
Fukushima experienced the earthquake, the nuclear power plant incident, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The lives of people who have been living in Fukushima since before the earthquake, people who moved to the area after the reconstruction project, and Chinese people who live in various parts of the prefecture. A story of people living in Fukushima, who, though buffeted by many hardships, live with strength and, at times, with humor.
- At the Triangle Intersection
- JAPAN / 2025 / 94 min
Director: Yamada Toru
A couple and the husband’s mother have been living away from the town of Namie in Fukushima Prefecture since they were evacuated after the nuclear accident. As they make the decision to build a new house, their feelings as husband and wife, parent and child, and daughter-in-law and mother-in-law intersect. The film depicts their emotional struggle to live as their true selves, amidst elderly caregiving of the elderly and complex family relationships—issues brought to the surface by the disaster.
- Rokkoku Kitchen
- JAPAN / 2025 / 122 min
Directors: Kawauchi Ario and Miyoshi Daisuke
National Route 6, or ‘Rokkoku,’ runs from Tokyo to Miyagi via Chiba, Ibaraki, and Fukushima prefectures. After the nuclear incident, residents were forced to evacuate from some areas. The film turns its camera on daily life and ways of living in towns along the Rokkoku—such as Okuma, Futaba, and Minamisoma—approaching the subject through the lens of food.
*Related event: Hamacul Film Night—case. Rokkoku Kitchen October 12 (Sun) 19:00 Playground Cafe BOX (Event in Japanese only)
- Screening and Round-table Discussion
- Filming, Watching, and Discussing Documentary footage from the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake and Rain Disaster
Supported by noto records
The Noto Peninsula of Ishikawa Prefecture was hit by an earthquake on January 1, 2024 and torrential rains in September of the same year. A movement has been launched to record the landscapes and the activities of people from the past that are being overwritten by restoration and reconstruction. In Cinema with Us, which was launched after the Great East Japan Earthquake, we will view this footage, reflect on Noto, and consider the meaning of recording and passing on such memories.
Speakers: Komori Haruka (Filmmaker), Seo Natsumi (Artist, Writer), Saikai Kazusa (Project Leader, Suzu Record Center), Ogawa Naoto (Program Coordinator; Curator, Sendai Mediatheque) and others
[Date] October 13 (Mon) 11:00–15:00
[Venue] Yamagata Creative City Center Q1
311 Documentary Film Archive
YIDFF’s 311 Documentary Film Archive collects, catalogs, preserves and provides access to documentary films and related materials about the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. The archive is in the Yamagata Documentary Film Library, where visitors are able to watch the films at video booths. https://www.yidff311docs.jp