YIDFF2021 will hold filmmaker Q&As, symposiums, and various exchange programs designed to create a virtual space where festival participants can enjoy sharing time together. Yamagata Online will be a challenge for YIDFF, as one of its main goals has been to bring people and films, people and people together. Hopefully this year again, the film festival will again offer a memorable, if different experience.
YIDFF2021 will take place as an online event. Its streaming partner is the Shift72 platform. This year's film selection will be available to
the public virtually throughout Japan from Oct 8 (Opening 10:00 JST) to Oct 14 (Closing 23:59 JST) .
“With a close eye on the spread of the coronavirus, we spent the past two years preparing for this edition of the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. Recognizing that there is no sign of the outbreak waning in Japan, we have decided to shift this year's YIDFF to an online space. A varied lineup of unique and solid films was chosen through rigorous process by a qualified selection committee which included
members of the local community. Moving the presentation of the films online is not the ideal viewing environment, but we anticipate that this expanded access will allow more audiences around Japan to watch these new international documentaries readily from the safety of their homes. We are currently planning filmmaker Q&As, symposiums, and various exchange programs designed to create a virtual space where
festival participants can enjoy sharing time together. Yamagata Online will be a challenge for YIDFF, as one of our main goals has been to bring people and films, people and people together. Hopefully this year again, the film festival will again offer a memorable, if different experience”.
Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival
Film tickets go on sale Oct. 1, 2021 at 19:00 (JST)
Please find more info on the Official Website HERE
Programme
Cinema with Us 2021 (4 films)
For the sixth festival in a row, we will offer a special program dedicated to the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami, entitled Cinema with Us. This project began out of the strong desire from the festival programmers, who knew filmmakers on the ground in the immediate aftermath of the disaster ten years ago, to “take the first step of sharing through film the ongoing situation there and beginning to foster new connections.”
Through sharing time with others, we experience not only each other but the past and the present, as well as the connections among more minute memories, offering some possibility of resisting the simplification of all things, and thus speaking to the enormous role that film continues to play. The program this year will introduce four films that bring us face to face with the weight of these moments and connections.
Madeleine Dreams
JAPAN / 2021 / 112 min / Director: Agatsuma Kazuki
Four Perspectives: A Decade After 3.11
JAPAN / 2021 / 82 min / Directors: Murakami Hiroyasu, Yamada Toru, Agatsuma Kazuki, Kaiko Kiichi
Alone Again in Fukushima 2020
JAPAN / 2020 / 95 min / Director: Nakamura Mayu
My Hometown
JAPAN, AUSTRIA / 2015–2019 / 101 min / Director: Iwasaki Takamasa
Cinema with Us 2021 Live talk session
Dates: Oct 11(Mon)20:00-21:30(JST)
Guests: Agatsuma Kazuki, Iwasaki Takamasa, Nakamura Mayu, Kaiko Kiichi
Languages: Japanese, English
*English-Japanese simultaneous interpretation
Zoom Webinar(URL TBA)
Admission Free/ Available on YIDFF ONLINE! to audiences overseas and in Japan.
Perspectives Japan (5 films)
Perspectives Japan introduces films that depict issues related to Japan from unique perspectives. The five titles in this program include: a film that details the dangers of state power run amok, a film that weaves together memories of protest against the authorities in the 1960s, a film that crystallizes a decade of filmmakers' contemplation since the earthquake and tsunami, a film that explores physical disability and modes of
expression through filmmaking, and a film that listens carefully to personal memories rooted in the land. These works trace each filmmaker's unceasing vision, which cannot be summed up simply by the word “Japan.”
Ushiku
JAPAN / 2021 / 87 min / Director: Thomas Ash
Whiplash of the Dead
JAPAN / 2021 / 200 min / Director: Daishima Haruhiko
BETWEEN YESTERDAY & TOMORROW Omnibus 2011/2016/2021
JAPAN / 2021 / 64 min / Producer: Maeda Shinjiro Directors: Ikeda Yasunori, Oki Hiroyuki, Suzuki Hikaru,
Takashi Toshiko
Transform!
JAPAN / 2020 / 93 min / Director: Ishida Tomoya
I Remember
JAPAN / 2021 / 224 min / Director: Hatano Shuhei
Yamagata and Film (4 films)
The Yamagata and Film special program began in 2007 when management of the YIDFF was transferred from the city of Yamagata to a publicly owned NPO, as an effort to locate the Yamagata that has nurtured the film festival. The acts of reaching out to touch the world and rooting to a sense of place are deeply connected. While Yamagata and Film began as a program addressing films about Yamagata, it also touches on film's relationship to the region, having expanded to encompass films from Yamagata and turning our attention to works and the film scene that has emerged in the region itself. This program will meditate on the reflections and changing values about that which has been lost in Yamagata to a continually changing world, while remaining connected to the land and the origins of the YIDFF.
A Movie Capital
JAPAN / 1991 / 98 min / Director: Iizuka Toshio
The World's “Top” Theater
JAPAN / 2017 / 67 min / Directors: Sato Koichi
Pickles and Komian Club
JAPAN / 2021 / 100 min / Director: Sato Koichi
*Opening Film *No English subtitles /Produced by the Komian Production Committee
The Buddha Mummies of North Japan
JAPAN, CANADA / 2017 / 20 min / Director: Watanabe Satoshi
Event Highlights
Online Komian Club
Loved by cineastes the world over as the YIDFF night-time watering hole for all festival guests and audiences, Komian Club will be held online this year. Sadly, the memorable place was torn down with the closure of the pickle shop Maruhachi Yatarazuke in 2020. We remain grateful for the organizers' thirty-year support for YIDFF and promise to carry on its legacy. The Online Komian Club will launch on the night of Thursday, Oct. 7, after the festival's opening film Pickles and Komian Club makes its world premiere — the film documents the final year of the 135-year-old establishment. Every night for seven days of the festival period, a virtual space will be open for everyone worldwide, admission free. Watch out for news updates including opening hours and other details.
Dates: Oct 7(Thu) and 13(Wed) 21:00-22:30
Oct 8(Fri) to 12(Tue) 22:30-24:30
Venue: SpatialChat (Online service)
Admission Free / Available to audiences overseas and in Japan.
YIDFF 2021 Film Letter to the Future
Program organized in collaboration with the Lussas Documentary Film Festival. In Cooperation with Institut français du Japon
Symposium: Film Festival and Film Appreciation Program
The number of filmmaking workshops and animation film screenings for elementary school students has gradually increased in Japan, but there has been little effort to encourage high school and college students to think about films they have watched. This issue and ways to approach it will be discussed. Panelists: Christophe Postic(Co-artistic Director, États généraux du film documentaire, France), Artchil Khetagouri (Director of CinéDOC-Tbilisi International Documentary Film Festival, Georgia) Ileana Stanculescu (Coordinator of CinéDOC-Tbilisi International Documentary Film Festival), Suwa Nobuhiro (Film director, Japan)
Moderator: Tsuchida Tamaki (Coordinator, Film Letter to the Future)
Date: October 10th (Sun) 20:00 – 22:00
Languages: English, Japanese, French
*English-Japanese simultaneous interpretation
*French-Japanese consecutive interpretation
Zoom Webinar(URL TBA)
Admission Free/ Available on YIDFF ONLINE! to audiences overseas and in Japan.
Sharing Air, Living Time (Collaboration project with TFAI Taiwan)
A joint-project with Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute (TFAI) which kicks off during YIDFF 2021 and closes with at the filmmaker residency program Yamagata Documentary Dojo 4 to be held in Feb. 2022. It will feature monthly sessions of documentaries and discussions online. The project investigates the meaning of mobility and sharing space in society, as these strange times push us to socially distance and isolate from
each other.
Online Talk: Sharing Air, Living Time
Dates: Oct 11(Mon) 11:00-12:30(JST)
Two Taiwanese films in New Asian Currents have chosen very different film styles to depict the plight of Vietnamese migrant workers made invisible in Taiwan society and how voices are raised. From the Perspectives Japan program, Transform! is about a wheelchair user (the director) who discovers self-expression and a new form of communication through his body in the course of filmmaking. An online discussion with the filmmakers through interpreters will explore how important it is to be allowed to feel present as a participant of wider society and how simple recognition can be denied.
Panelists: So Yushen (director, Dorm), Tseng Wen-chen (director, The Lucky Woman), Ishida Tomoya (direc-
tor, Transform!)
Moderator: Wood Lin (Taiwan International Documentary Festival Program Director)
Languages: Japanese, Chinese
*Japanese-Chinese simultaneous interpretation
*No English interpretation
Zoom Webinar (URL TBA)
Admission Free/ Available on YIDFF ONLINE! to audiences overseas and in Japan.
