Cinema with Us 2025
Kamei Foundation for the Promotion of Social Education
Carrying on Memories and Experiences
This program, which began in 2011 in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake, marks its eighth edition. Fourteen years have passed. Many of the places that suffered great damage have been replaced by something else, and as someone who has long lived in Tohoku, I no longer call these “new landscapes.” On the other hand, I do call the people I came to know after the disaster old acquaintances. Of course, there are still moments when I am confronted with bitter emotions that cannot be erased, and I remain concerned about problems that are left invisible and unaddressed. And yet, above all, the places once called disaster areas are living lands where many people move around, and many lives unfold. From the screen, we may glimpse those individual lives that cannot be reduced to simple words like “victim” or “migrant.”
At YIDFF 2025 you can also see films together with people who are devoting themselves to documenting the aftermath of the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake. Thinking of Noto within a program that began in response to the Great East Japan Earthquake reminds us that our present time is always connected to multiple “that time(s) in the past,” and this program could offer a place where we may learn from one another as we move forward.