Yamagata Rough Cut!
A “rough cut” is a loosely edited, incomplete version of a film or video work. The purpose of Yamagata Rough Cut! is to create a space where film festival participants from around the world can come together to watch, hear, experience, and discuss “rough cut” footage. The program attempts to make the dream of a dialogue transcending standpoints, genres, and borders about “raw” film footage a reality. We bring together people from all walks of the industry—producers, audience members, critics, and researchers— to meet and interact across roles, considering a collection of the world’s unruly, unpolished visual fragments and cutting up our notion of “film” as a finished whole.
Thinking Arises from the Senses
The COVID-19 pandemic afforded us several striking realizations: the true nature of the moving image is that of a dangerous monster; the media is caught in its trap; and our everyday thinking cannot escape from the information and context it offers. We must sharpen our senses, especially our sense of sight, so that we no longer see the world as the monster desires it, cut-off and divided.
Our program has long put a priority on the sense of sight. Speaking has been valued at the same level or even more. Let us take notice of the way our senses respond to the moving images projected before us, and spend some time rendering how they made us feel or think into language. After going online in 2021, we can meet again in person this year, together in the very basic act of thinking born from our senses.
As in the past, the footage will be screened twice, before and after our discussions.