This selection of short and medium-length works highlights a range of concerns: performance, family, history, velocity, and disappearance. The filmmakers’ diverse approaches connect the modes of the personal essay, the film-letter, the documentary, and the avant-garde formal experiment; all are linked by the urgency of the need to communicate the experience of a lived moment in time.
Programmer: Chris Fujiwara
Chris Fujiwara has written and edited several books on cinema, including Jacques Tourneur: The Cinema of Nightfall; The World and Its Double: The Life and Work of Otto Preminger; and Jerry Lewis. He was the editor of Undercurrent, the film-criticism magazine of FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) and a film critic for the Boston Phoenix, and he has contributed to numerous magazines, journals, and newspapers. He has lectured on film history and film aesthetics at various universities. Formerly Artistic Director of Edinburgh International Film Festival, he has also developed film programs for other institutions and has organized and served as a mentor for numerous workshops on film criticism and film programming.
Orbit 50: Letters to My 3 Sons
Dir. Kidlat Tahimik | Philippines, Japan | 1992 | 17′
A video diary in which the filmmaker’s devotion to his family, his richness of association, his profound sense of struggle and resistance, and his feeling for Japanese culture fuse beguilingly.
About The Director
Kidlat Tahimik has been exploring his inner cultural contradictions by making films since 1975. His cinema has earned him the title of ”Father of Philippine Independent Cinema.” At the Berlin Film Festival 1977, he won the International Critics Prize for his first film Perfumed Nightmare (Mababangong Bangungot). This made Kidlat Tahimik a fresh and original voice in the genre of Third Cinema — the 70s global film movement to resist Hollywood commercial formulas and Moscow’s propaganda flics. Kidlat’s lifetime achievement awards include the Prince Claus Award (Netherlands 2017), the Fukuoka Prize (Japan 2012), and at home, recognized as the National Artist for Cinema (Philippines 2018.)
Thus a Noise Speaks (ノイズが言うには)
Dir. Kaori Oda | Japan | 2010 | 38′
A personal essay film that incorporates documentary footage and staged scenes to represent and reflect on the filmmaker’s act of coming-out to her family, and the aftermath of that act. “The most difficult film I have ever made, and I think this will always be the case. I had to make it in order to move forward.” (Kaori Oda)
About The Director
Japanese filmmaker Oda Kaori (1987) has mainly worked in the field of documentary. She studied in Sarajevo under the supervision of Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr. Her first full-length film Aragane (2015), screened at numerous festivals, such as Doclisboa Film Festival, Mar del Plata, TIDF, and so on. Cetenote (2019) has been also screened at IFFR, FICUNAM to name a few.
The Thread of Red Cocoons (ひらいてつぼんで)
Dir. Kaori Oda | Japan | 2012 | 13′
A film on literal and invisible connections, linking childhood play to ritual and the mundane to the infinite.
About The Director
Japanese filmmaker Oda Kaori (1987) has mainly worked in the field of documentary. She studied in Sarajevo under the supervision of Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr. Her first full-length film Aragane (2015), screened at numerous festivals, such as Doclisboa Film Festival, Mar del Plata, TIDF, and so on. Cetenote (2019) has been also screened at IFFR, FICUNAM to name a few.
Animals
Dir. Osamu Kanemura | Japan | 2017 | 26′
A film about the city-scape as a diary or essay.
About The Director
Tokyo-based photographer and filmmaker Osamu Kanemura graduated from Tokyo College of Photography, Yokohama, Japan in 1993. In 1997, he received the New Photographer Prize from the Photographic Society of Japan Award and the New Photographer Prize at the 13th Higashikawa International Photography Festival. In 2000, he received the 19th Ken Domon Prize, and in 2014, he received the 39th Nobuo Ina Prize.
Silent Light
Dir. Liao Jiekai | Singapore | 2015 | 12′
An old female voice narrates memories of growing up in a Singapore that no longer exists, the passing of a generation and her acceptance of death; deep into the night, mechanical fans rotate to the rhythm of passing wind, a mourner accompanied by restless phantoms and a lonely moth perched upon the yellow funeral tent; together they welcome the silent light of daybreak.
About The Director
Liao Jiekai is an award-winning filmmaker based in Singapore and Tokyo. He is a founding member of the film collective 13 Little Pictures (Singapore) and production company Prism Pictures (Japan). His feature films were screened in numerous international film festivals in Tokyo, Jeonju, Shanghai, Torino, Paris and Rotterdam.