A 10-film selection by the programmers of one of Asia’s most respected documentary festivals highlights key works from Yamagata’s more than three decades of existence. This exclusive focus features documentaries by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Naomi Kawase, and Ogawa Productions, among many others. DAFilms, the VOD platform of the festival association Doc Alliance, starts 2022 by partnering with YIDFF on an online program, available free for one week then for subscribers for a further two weeks.
The ten films in Made in Japan, Yamagata 1989 – 2021 trace a curious and inspiring pathway through the history of one of Asia’s most celebrated film festivals. The program is bookended by a cinematic record of the inaugural YIDFF in 1989, produced by Shinsuke Ogawa’s Ogawa Pro (A Movie Capital), and a 2021 documentary about the pandemic-induced closure of a traditional pickle shop, itself a memorable and important social space for the attendees of Yamagata every two years (Pickles and Komian Club).
Program Coordinator and YIDFF board member Fujioka Asako says, “This is the first time Yamagata is presenting any online film program on a world-wide scale. Audiences are in for a treat as important rediscoveries (A Movie Capital and Living on the River Agano) have been digitized with renewed English subtitles. This will give documentary fans around the world a real flavor of what Yamagata is all about.”
The complete selection will be available entirely for free on DAFilms.com from January 17 – 23 at this link: https://dafilms.com/program/1126-made-in-japan-yamagata-1989-2021
Between the twin poles of A Movie Capital and Pickles and Komian Club from 1989/1991 and 2021, audiences will be able to discover a further 8 titles drawn from the festival’s International Competition and New Asian Currents sections. For these two closely curated festival sections, only a fixed number of Japanese films have been invited over the 17 editions of the biannual festival, a sign of the significance of those featuring in DAFilms’ program.
Together, Made in Japan, Yamagata 1989 – 2021 gives a true sense of the depth of Yamagata’s curatorial vision, ranging from crucial early works by now celebrated auteurs — including The Weald (1997) by Naomi Kawase, in the year she completes her epic film about the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and Storytellers (2013) co-directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, in a moment where his work has received truly boundless acclaim by critics, festival programmers, and audiences alike — to lesser known or older titles that as an ensemble suggest a richness of tone and subject that few documentary festivals can boast.
“Few festivals in the world carry with them the sheer cinephile prestige of an institution like YIDFF,” says Christopher Small, head curator of DAFilms.com. “After collaborating last year with prominent festivals in Korea (Jeonju), Indonesia (Arkipel), and Taiwan (TIDF), we are delighted to finally arrive at the shores of Japan with this special collaboration with Yamagata. Their team crafted a program that truly spans the length and breadth of their three-decade history, synthesising so many of the most crucial themes and forms of experimentation into a unified selection of truly remarkable Japanese documentary cinema.”
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Made in Japan, Yamagata 1989 – 2021
Available on DAFilms from January 17 – February 6
Free for registered users for the first week
- A Movie Capital // Toshio IIZUKA // 1991
- Living on the River Agano // Makoto SATO // 1992
- The Weald // Naomi KAWASE // 1997
- The New God // Yutaka TSUCHIYA // 1999
- A2 // Tatsuya MORI // 2001
- The Cheese and the Worms // Haruyo KATO // 2005
- Dear Pyongyang // Yonghee YANG // 2005
- Storytellers // Ko SAKAI, Ryusuke HAMAGUCHI // 2013
- Cenote // Kaori ODA // 2019
- Komian and Pickles // Koichi SATO // 2021
