Film Letter to the Future
Supported by Ambassade de France / Institut français du Japon, The Japan Foundation
Amidst Time We Can’t Revisit
The act of watching a film is none other than the experience of encountering something beyond ourself, being surprised by it, driving our thoughts toward others. The voices from a film, and the responses they engender, carry the hope of reaching someone, somewhere, someday – particularly, young people. At YIDFF, in addition to the Docu-Yama Youth activities by the high school team, we continue to hold viewing programs and workshops primarily aimed at university and high school students. For this year’s program, marking its third year at the film festival, we invited the filmmaker Marie-Claude Treilhou from France, and will screen her documentary Once Upon a Time, TV (1985); together with Back to Ghawas (2006), a documentary by Sedika Rezaei, a female director from Afghanistan. Aside from her filmmaking work, Treilhou has long served as an instructor at Ateliers Varan, a French organization for film education. Back to Ghawas was developed at the workshop held in Kabul and was recommended by Treilhou for pairing with her own work as part of this program. The two films are different in their respective times and countries of production, but they share the similarity of images intervening, through television or a monitor, in traditional cultures or closed communities. The window of television brings the “now” of the outside world into communities that had been isolated until then, quietly but profoundly shaking the very way society functions. After the screening, we will hold a viewing workshop to consider, together with participants, the relationship between new media and the societies we live in, as well as their transformations. (Both the film screening and the workshop are free for students, but registration is required.)
- Film Letter to the Future Past Programs
- YIDFF2021: Young Solitude (2018, dir. Claire Simon) Talking Architect (2011, dir. Jeong Jae-eun) Beyond the Language (2019, dir. Nishino Madoka) *Facilitators: Dohi Etsuko (Children Meet Cinema), Tsuchida Tamaki (YIDFF)
YIDFF2021 ON SCREEN!: Cow (2021, dir. Andrea Arnold) *Facilitators: Nakamura Takayuki (Filmmaker), Tsuchida Tamaki
YIDFF2023: Herman Slobbe / Blind Child 2 (1966, dir. Johan van der Keuken) Beppie (1965, dir. Johan van der Keuken) *Facilitators: Christophe Postic (Lussas International Documentary Film Festival), Nishino Madoka (Filmmaker)