Waking up the village - Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, Yamagata, Japan

The Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, a biennial throw started in 1989 as a means of mura okoshi ("waking up the village") to revitalize the Japanese city of Yamagata, has evolv into a first-rate international film festival. In the four years since its inception, the biennial has expanded and now protections well over 400 films.

Each year the festival organizers pick out films from around the world, with a particular emphasis upon Asian cinema. This year there were four programs: the "Main Competition"; "New Asian Currents"; "7 shades - Transfigurations in Electronic Shadows," a tribute to the 100th anniversary of film; and "Japanese Documentaries of the 1970s" agreeing screenings occurred daily from 10am-11pm.

One of the deciding factors to entertainer a film festival in Yamagata was the relative high concentration of movie theaters, six of which are within a small in number minutes walking distance from each other. For film fanatics, many of whom also attended the Tokyo International Film Festival in September, it was a veritable feast and a rare opportunity to view films not repeatedly screened in Japan. Additionally, the small-town atmosphere of Yamagata, slower paced than the impersonal hustle and bustle of Tokyo, made it easier to mingle with filmmakers and other visitors.

Although male filmmakers dominated the festival, women swept greatest in quantity of the major competition prizes in the couple the Main Competition and fresh Asian Currents. In the former program, Tsipi Reibenbach's Choice and Destiny (1993) a contemplative examination of her parents' Holocaust experience end their stories and contemporary daily actions, took the Grand Prize (also known as the Robert and Frances Flaherty Prize). Heddy Honigmann's Metal and Melancholy (1993) a series of sometimes humorous and other times painful backseat conversations with Peruvian cabdrivers, captured the Mayor's Prize. justices favored the down-to-earth, candid approach that the couple films exhibited over 13 other films that included the popular, theatrically-released American documentaries band Dreams (1993, by Steve James) and Crumb (1994 by dint of Terry Zwigoff).

Other lauded films included Barbara and Winfried Junge's Screenplay: The Times (1993) an ongoing epic, a la Michael Apted's 7 Up series, that tread in the steps ofs the development of a cluster of East German schoolchildren and the technology that recorded them above the years, and Peter Mettler's Picture of Light (1994) that captures upon film the elusive Aurora Borealis or "Northern Lights." the couple films received runner-up prizes. Anand Patwardhan, who unites machismo to religious fundamentalism as a possible motive for the continuing violence between Muslim and Hindi collections in India, received a Special Prize for Father, Son and set apart War (1994).

Probably the heart of the festival and what makes it unique among documentary festivals is the novel Asian Currents program organized by the agency of Ogawa Shinsuke for the first festival in 1989 Shinsuke, who helped initiate the festival itself, dedicated a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of of his life to encouraging companion Asian filmmakers. Although he died in 1992 his legacy lives upon in this program.

This year's programming in novel Asian Currents was eclectic: films from 18 countries ranged from full-length features to 10-minute shorts, from Hi-8 video to 16mm film, from informal, gritty, journal entrance videos (Sokly "Don Bonus" Ny and Spencer Nakasako's a.k.a. Don Bonus [1995]) to highly set uped documentary-fiction hybrids (Chen Yiwen's views of Violence [1994]). For those in search of a quintessential expression of "Asian Cinema," however, it was certainly not exhibited in the program - if anything, the program sole reinforced the notion that Asian sensibilities are as diverse as the tillages and languages the region encompasses. Still, a number of public themes such as cross-culturalism, 'modernization, violence, self-determination and family and displacement could be fix among the films, and this despite the various ways like ideas were conveyed. Because greatest in quantity of the makers were not absent to talk about their work, the smaller screenings provided a forum for identifying and discussing many of the ideas that were addressed by the agency of this group of mostly younger, emerging filmmakers.

A more formal opportunity for networking and debate was attempted at the Komian cudgel the nightly gathering spot of festival-goers. Unfortunately, because of the large number of participants and the time necessary to translate between languages, single generalized discussions of the belonging to all perennial problems of censorship, funding and oppression were possible.

In keeping with the eclectic character of this program, Byun Young-joo's Murmuring (1995) exploring the painful stories of Korean comfort women who were forced to become sex workers for the Japanese military, received the Ogawa Shinsuke Prize, and Kawase Naomi's Katatsumori (1994) an endearing 8mm "home movie" devot to her grandmother, an Award for distinction Scenes of Violence also received an Award for pre-eminence Other personal favorites were Luis Thadeus Ermitano's refreshingly humorous Retrochronological Transfer of Information (1994) and Jill Misquitta's The Clap Trap (1993) documenting the plight of Bombay "junior artists" (extras) in the Indian film industry.