YIDFF Thirty Years: Our Past and Our Future
Thirty years ago, director Ogawa Shinsuke, whom one might call the founder of the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, advanced two very important ideas: The creation of a new kind of film festival, where films come to life through the participation of both filmmakers and audience, and the puzzle of why documentary film wasn’t developing in Asia.
How these questions have been dealt with in the past three decades will be addressed and explored in these screenings and talks.
A Movie Capital
(Eiga no miyako)- JAPAN / 1991 / Japanese / Color / 16mm / 99 min
Director: Iizuka Toshio
Photography: Otsu Koshiro, Kato Takanobu
Editing: Ogawa Shinsuke, Tamura Masaki, Iizuka Toshio, Kuribayashi Masashi
Sound: Asanuma Koichi
Production Assistant: Masuya Shuichi
Producer: Fuseya Hiroo
Production Company: Ogawa Productions
Source: YAMAGATA Documentary Film Library
This first film was ignited by the passion of the volunteer group YIDFF Network, who wanted more than anything to record the birth in 1989 of Asia’s first international documentary festival. From the shooting and the early editing stages, it mainly documented the YIDFF Network’s activities, but eventually the editing decisions shifted from the film’s director Iizuka Toshio to Ogawa Shinsuke. Despite this inconsistency, the film is a steadfast record of the atmosphere of a world in a time of dynamic historical flux, exemplified by events such as the Tiananmen Square massacre and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
A Movie Capital Again
(Eiga no miyako futatabi)- JAPAN / 2007 / Japanese / Color / Digital File (Original: DVCAM) / 90 min
Director, Editing, Producer: Iizuka Toshio
Photography: Watanabe Satoshi
Sound: Katto Isamu
Music: Kaneko Toshiro
Production Company, Source: Amour
Sixteen years after A Movie Capital, filmmaker Iizuka Toshio, who was working on reconstructing the 1989 version using original outtakes, found himself face-to-face with YIDFF’s biggest turning point since its inception. He starts rolling his camera as the air is filled with arguments about whether the festival should become independent, as a private, non-profit organization (NPO).
Talk YIDFF Thirty Years—Our Past and Our Future
Reviewing A Movie Capital and its sequel, and two independently published books about YIDFF, this event looks back on the past thirty years of the festival to assess the first seventeen years hosted by Yamagata-city, and its thirteen years as an NPO, and discuss—together with the audience—where it is heading.
*No simultaneous English interpretation is available for this event.
- Date and Time: October 15 (Tue) 13:30–16:00
- Venue: Yamagata Manabikan 1F
- Speakers:
- Kobayashi Shigeru (Director), Kurata Takeshi (Author of “Yamagata eigasai o ajiwau”), Oda Kaori (Director of Cenote), Masuya Shuichi (Board member, YIDFF)
- Chair: Suzuki Masashi (Editorial board member, The Yamagata Shimbun Newspaper)
* Special screening of footage discovered by YIDFF Daily News Kirokuhan (recordkeeping team)!