Cinema with Us 2017
Special Section: Dialogue on Archiving
Discussions
Supported by Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Insurance Inc [SOMPO ART FUND] (Association for Corporate Support of the Arts, Japan: 2021 Fund for Creation of Society by the Arts and Culture), Association for Corporate Support of the Arts [GBFund], Kamei Foundation for the Promotion of Social Education
To Resist Making a “Clean Break”
“Cinema with Us,” being held for the fourth time, features work that emerged out of the unprecedented March 11th, 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, and accompanying nuclear power plant accident. Time waits for no one—the children born then are now about to enter elementary school. In the six years that have passed, the tectonic plates have slid around so much that it has become unclear which disaster is being referred to at any given time, and political talk of “recovery” is so ever-shifting that one is never certain who the recovery is for. Through films that confront this reality, I want us to continue to resist the gradual loss and alteration of our memory. With documentaries of the disaster easily surpassing television and narrative film in their depiction of its reality, and also featured in other programs at YIDFF (this year, Tremorings of Hope in the International Competition and The Road Home and BETWEEN YESTERDAY & TOMORROW Omnibus 2011/2016 in Perspectives Japan), we must start to conversely ask the question: how has the disaster affected documentary film?
To further expand the activities of the 311 Documentary Film Archive, we have invited the Bophana Audiovisual Research Center, in Cambodia. We will reflect on how film archives might aim to offer ways to deepen historical understanding of regions affected by disaster.