YIDFF Network Special Screening
The YIDFF Network is a volunteer group that was brought together for the inaugural YIDFF in 1989, as an initiative of Ogawa Shinsuke. Since that time, the group has continued to be active on a wide range of levels, including organizing twice-monthly screenings aimed at the general public called “Friday Theater.” Some volunteers have been involved in the selection of the International Competition as well as past New Asian Currents and Japanese Panorama programs. They also undertake tasks related to the films, including reporting for, editing and publishing the Daily Bulletin, issued for the duration of the Festival, as well as videotaping and photographing the proceedings. Recent years have seen growing involvement from students, and those living outside Yamagata. YIDFF Network Special Screenings are organized for each Festival, with the intention of presenting films from the volunteers’ original perspectives.
—Masuya Shuichi
KIBA Tokyo Micropole / Sumeba Miyako
- FRANCE / 2005 / French, Japanese / Color / Video / 61 min
Director, Narration Script: Catherine Cadou
Editing: Robert Weiss
Music: Oe Hikari
For many years, the director Catherine Cadou has been involved in introducing and popularizing Japanese films in France as an interpreter and translator. She has also been a familiar face at this festival as an onstage interpreter and translator since YIDFF’s inception in 1989. This directorial debut documents the residents of Kiba, Tokyo, where her life in Tokyo is based. Here, the last glimmers of the traditional manual work of tofu sellers and carpenters can be seen. The film expresses the director’s affection towards the old-fashioned communal atmosphere that still remains in this old town, located just across the river from the skyscrapers and highways of Tokyo.