YIDFF 2017 Encore Screenings Part 10: Korea, People’s Lives
Screenings at the Yamagata Documentary Film Library present documentaries and movies rarely shown on television or in theaters, including works from the Film Library vaults.
The Slice Room
14:00- 19:00-（Screens twice）
The Slice Room
YIDFF 2017 New Asian Currents Award of Excellence
Director, Photography, Editing, Source: Song Yun-hyeok / KOREA / 2016 / 69 min
●Notes
Redevelopment threatens the jjok bang, a type of housing in a certain section of Seoul populated by people who are impoverished. Il-soo and Sun-hee, who have just started living together; Nam-sung, who has difficulty obtaining welfare payments; Chan-hyun, who struggles with depression—these characters search for a way to live a dignified life as they work with a support organization, all in the midst of a society that seems to be trying to run people against a wall, especially in the jjok bang. While living there during the shoot, the director asks simple questions that reveal the shortcomings of the South Korean welfare system.
The Slice Room
●Director’s Statement
I was born and raised in Korea. While participating in support work where I provided consultation to the city homeless, I began to want to become their mouthpiece. Even though the homeless are ever living and dying in the streets, the voice of their struggle never reaches the rest of society.
Upon witnessing the miserable poverty in Korean society, I was deeply shocked, and my heart was in pain. Something that we thought inconceivable is actually occurring in this country.
I want the chains that prevent the end of poverty to corrode. I want to do something that will unravel its tangled knots. I believe that our cameras telling their stories will at least bring a bud of hope.
People are dying on the streets even now. However, institutions seem to be perpetuating poverty—as if they intend it never to end.
Docujin will continue to wander the streets on the frontlines of poverty, recording the lives of those who are in struggle.
Song Yun-hyeok
Hurrahh!
15:30-（single screening）
Hurrah!
YIDFF 2017 New Asian Currents
Director, Photography, Editing: Jung Jae-hoon / KOREA / 2011 / Korean / Color / 75 min
●Notes
The camera attempts to control the viewer’s gaze and emotions as it tracks, stalker-like, the daily life of a man silently at work carrying drinks through a billiard hall, and washing cars at a gas station. In a world where all sensation of human contact or language has been cut away, the sound of machinery—the only “speech” we hear—carves the rhythm of the man’s life deep into our brain. The individuality of his human body erodes little by little, even while simultaneously seeking the right moment to overflow. This film portrays one man’s life as he goes back and forth between home and work: a certain uneasiness infiltrates everything, and somewhere, we hear the echoes of a scream.
Hurrah!
●Director’s Statement
I focused on putting mysterious energy that has no name or identity into this film. So I shaved out every social relation, emotional change, symbol, and gender. I believe our real lives are hardly able to be captured by systematic frameworks and this belief led me onto a new road, made of the senses—growling sounds from a stomach; lightning in the night; sleep talking. At the same time, this road goes towards fiction, and I thought it would be possible for some of its energy to affect the real world, if I drew the characters using documentary moments in fictional frameworks. I made Hurrahh! wishing to warmly demonstrate the perpetually destructive power inherent in people’s raw expressions. Hurrahh! is both a science fiction / horror movie and a documentary.
Jung Jae-hoon
Hurrah!
[Venue]The YAMAGATA Documentary Film Library(Yamagata Big Wing 3F) [Admission]Free admission for members (Member’s fee: free) [Presented by]YIDFF (NPO) [Contact]e-mail：info@yidff.jp(YIDFF Yamagata office)
Screenings at the Yamagata Documentary Film Library present documentaries and movies rarely shown on television or in theaters, including works from the Film Library vaults.
14:00-、18:30-（Screens twice）
Sea of Youth
Sea of Youth
Director：Ogawa Shinsuke / JAPAN / 1966 / Japanese / B&W / 16mm / 56 min
●Notes
Ogawa Shinsuke’s directorical debut traces the struggle of four students who lead the opposition against the Ministry of Education’s proposed revision to the university correspondence school systems in 1966. During their struggle, the four students are forced to re-examine the way of life they have led until now: is the slogan “Working while you study is wonderful” true? And why after having worked so hard, must they still study? Ogawa’s camera embraces them, sharing their confusion, their worries, their agony and their determination not to end their fight, and literally starts running with them. The passion of the four students and of the filmmakers blends together to make this a “youth film” in the truest sense of the word.
Report from Haneda
Report from Haneda
Director：Ogawa Shinsuke / JAPAN / 1967 / Japanese / B&W / 16mm / 58 min
●Notes
One year before Summer in Narita (1968), the first of Ogawa Production’s films about the peasants’ protest movement against the construction of the Narita Airport, Japan was in an uproar as student protesters of the New Left swarmed Haneda Airport to protest Prime Minister Sato Eisaku’s trip to South Vietnam. Donning helmets and carrying sticks—amidst Molotov cocktails and flying stones, water cannons, and armored vehicles—their clash with riot police resulted in the death of Yamazaki Hiroaki, a Kyoto University student.
In Report from Haneda, the filmmakers argue against the police report claiming Yamazaki was run over by an armored car hijacked by protesters. Through detailed inspection of the autopsy report, handmade models, photographs, and interviews with eyewitnesses, they conclude that Yamazaki was beaten to death by police batons. The camera follows the activism in support of the students detained and injured in the second Haneda demonstration a month later, showing parents looking for their children and allowing student testimonies to be heard. Filmmakers Kuroki Kazuo, Tsuchimoto Noriaki, Higashi Yoichi, and cameramen Suzuki Tatsuo, Otsu Koshiro, and Tamura Masaki participated in this production.
Ogawa Shinsuke
Born 1936 in Tokyo. After working at Iwanami Productions, Ogawa Shinsuke went freelance in 1964 and made his first film, Sea of Youth (1966), followed by The Oppressed Students (1967) and others. His films won support at workplaces and universities throughout Japan in the midst of the Zenkyoto student movement. He founded Ogawa Productions in 1968 and immersed himself in the production of the Narita series, which depicted the movement of farmers opposing the construction of the Narita International Airport. Continuing to make films from the standpoint of farmers, in 1974 he moved to the village of Magino in Kaminoyama, Yamagata Prefecture, where he filmed A Japanese Village—Furuyashikimura (1982) and Magino Village—A Tale (1986), while growing rice and observing life in the farming community. His dedicated work as an organizing member of the first YIDFF in 1989 was instrumental to this festival’s success. He passed away on February 7, 1992.
[Venue]The YAMAGATA Documentary Film Library(Yamagata Big Wing 3F) [Admission]Free admission for members (Member’s fee: free) [Presented by]YIDFF (NPO) [Contact]e-mail：info@yidff.jp(YIDFF Yamagata office)
Screenings at the Yamagata Documentary Film Library present documentaries and movies rarely shown on television or in theaters, including works from the Film Library vaults.
The Red Rain on the Equator 15:00-（single screening）
The Red Rain on the Equator
YIDFF 2011 New Asian Currents
Dir: Nova Goh / MALAYSIA, TAIWAN / 2010 / 132 min
●Notes
The director learned of both his family’s past and the revolutionary movement in his hometown of Borneo when he received a letter from his mother. The film reveals the forgotten history of the Malaysian independence movement and unearths the story of the former guerrilla fighters who threw their entire being into the subsequent revolution. While the revolutionaries now lead ordinary lives, their youth is brought back to us through private footage recorded of their training and life in the mountains. Using the historical stage of the invasion as a backdrop, the film explores that Chinese identity which lives just beneath the equator.
The Red Rain on the Equator
●Director’s Statement
I think I am a collector rather than a film director. Instead of collecting things, I collect stories, especially from those communists who appear in front of my camera—how great they are! They had a strong faith in turbulent times, they believed in a beautiful dream without any doubt, all through a revolution that lasted for half a century. Even though they failed, something beautiful was left behind in the flow of time. When they are walking on the street, they look no different from any ordinary people, but when you look into their eyes—it’s different, there’s something you can never take away from them; they experienced a thrill whose preciousness exceeds any other human being’s experience.
The “wonderful world” never comes true at the end of any revolution, but wonderful things happened during all revolutions, and wonderful memories are kept after all revolutions—as long as the people still believe in revolution.
Nova Goh
The Red Rain on the Equator
Denok & Gareng 18:40-（single screening）
Denok & Gareng
YIDFF 2013 New Asian Currents
Dir: Dwi Sujanti Nugraheni / INDONESIA / 2012 / 89 min
●Notes
Denok fled her home at 14, and after becoming pregnant met and married Gareng. The young couple left the big city to live together in the home of Gareng’s family, beginning anew by starting a pig raising business. They worry about the challenges that confront them one after another—Gareng’s father’s disappearance and the debt he leaves behind, as well as the discipline and school fees of their children. Nevertheless, the family discusses their problems thoroughly, deciding upon unique ideas to keep going. Though serious fights are inevitable, their household is tied together by a strong bond, and an atmosphere brimming with optimism.
●Director’s Statement
Personally, I have learned a lot from Denok and Gareng’s life—their spirit to love, how they accept and face the problems that continue to come their way, and their courage in laughing about themselves and their lives. Not many people have that courage. Daring to laugh at oneself means to look at one’s own life from greater distance. That’s why I admire Denok and Gareng. I believe their daily life-struggle should be seen. Their courage should be shared through a film that portrays them carefully and sincerely. I want to place Denok and Gareng into the center of our perception, because their existence is hardly looked at when we pass by.
Dwi Sujanti Nugraheni
Denok & Gareng
[Venue]The YAMAGATA Documentary Film Library(Yamagata Big Wing 3F) [Admission]Free admission for members (Member’s fee: free) [Presented by]YIDFF (NPO) [Contact]e-mail：info@yidff.jp(YIDFF Yamagata office)
Screenings at the Yamagata Documentary Film Library present documentaries and movies rarely shown on television or in theaters, including works from the Film Library vaults.
Hotel Chronicles
14:00- 19:00-（Screens twice）
Hotel Chronicles
YIDFF ’91 International Competition
Dir: Lea Pool / CANADA / 1990 / 16mm / 74 min
●Notes
This movie, in addition to standing on its own as an independent story, recalls other famous works in film and literature. The title, for example, could be taken as a pun on Sam Shepard’s Motel Chronicles. And, the images in Hotel chronicles are inseparable from those in Paris, Texas（one of whose scriptwriters, incidentally, was Sam Shepard）. Hotel Chronicles is a work after the fashion of Motel Chronicles, a combination of two popular genres: road literature and road movies.
While, with its presentations of such familiar icons as Kennedy, King, and Monument Valley, this movie can be thought of as nothing more than a collection of various stories told by various people about the American Dream as seen from the outside, It can also be thought of as a work which draws on the foundation laid down by the works mentioned above. This film, with its multiple reflections and poetic-style of narration, invites the viewer to come along on its mysterious journey of dreams.
Source：YIDFF ’91 Official Catalog
●Director’s Statement
For me it’s a two-fold challenge. On the one hand, I would get to work on a documentary after having done fiction for the last ten years, while on the other hand, I would get to talk about the United States while having been a Canadian emigrant from Europe for the past 15 years.
I’m interested by the other and I intend to accept it. But I have to be honest: I don’t really know America, I only know what I’ve heard about it growing up, the American myths, the feeling of being a traveller pulling out her Beaker and drawing up a hypothetical, imaginary itinerary for a trip to a foreign land. That’s the America I would talk about.
I am an outsider, a filmmaker, in the midst of a difficult relationship with my lover, and with America as well. Going from hotel to hotel, from city to city, catching glimpses of truths behind windows, while not wanting to fully understand, not wanting to explain or justify my presences.
I see America as an encounter, as a road to discover, but also as an act of breaking up. Maybe America is just a reflection of my own life, like the process of painful realization.
Lea Pool
Plain Talk and Common Sense (Uncommon Senses)
15:40-（single screening）
Plain Talk and Common Sense (Uncommon Senses)
YIDFF ’89 International Competition
Dir: Jon Jost / USA / 1987 / 16mm / 117 min
●Notes
Plain Talk and Common Sense starts off with an iconoclastic sequence set in a spot in the desert where two lines converge and four American states intersect. Tourists linger and mouth unintelligible gibberish which is made intelligible by subtitles. The sequence tends to run on and impatient viewers are tempted to walk out but if they do, they will miss a truly remarkable work. Jost has called his film an “essay” and he has structured it in eleven parts which roughly call into question the state of America today. It is both ironical and rhetorical, both graphic and just plain-photogenic. It is a critique, to be sure, but one made with understanding and sympathy that bespeak its title. In summing up, Jost himself appears on screen to deliver what is perhaps the best radical speech to be heard in the cinema in the video age.
Source：YIDFF ’89 Official Catalog
●Director’s Statement
My film is an essay-documentary which attempts to lay the foundation for an understanding of just what we mean when we say “America”, or, by extension, when we speak of any nation or culture. Rooted firmly in the traditions of American literature and thought, this film draws on a wide range of things “American” : from what amount to “folklore”, to a poetic rendering of American socio-political thought as well as a history of American poetry, on through to the use of government and corporate propaganda and statistics. The film unleashes a mix of methods and techniques, all intended to provoke the viewer into questioning both the form and content of the information offered. This essay finally concludes with the assertion that it is the individual who is responsible for their own acts and in turn for the aggregate of themselves, for the behaviour of the culture and society of which they are each a part.
Jon Jost
[Venue]The YAMAGATA Documentary Film Library(Yamagata Big Wing 3F) [Admission]Free admission for members (Member’s fee: free) [Presented by]YIDFF (NPO) [Contact]e-mail：info@yidff.jp(YIDFF Yamagata office)
Yamagata Biennale 2018 + YIDFF:“Evenings on Cinema Street”
It’s the season of Yamagata Biennale 2018, the city’s biennial art festival! Upcoming this September, the event will again host a collaboration program with YIDFF titled “Evenings on Cinema Street.” In between screenings of documentaries programmed under the festival theme “Like Mountains,” there’ll be talk events bringing together the festival’s artistic director Arai Ryoji, filmmaker Mogi Ayako and one of her protagonists Fukumori Shin (head of Shobu Gakuen), and Chairman of the Tohoku University of Art and Design Negishi Kichitaro. Come one come all for exciting discussions about cinema and art.
September 7（Fri）19:00
Donkeyote
Talk session with Biennale’s artistic director Arai Ryoji will be held after the show.
Donkeyote
YIDFF 2017 International Competition
Dir: Chico Pereira / SPAIN, GERMANY, UK / 2017 / Bu-ray / 86 min
◆note
73-year-old Manuel, who lives a simple life in a naturally lush village in the south of Spain, decides to throw caution to the wind and set out on an epic journey. He sets his course for the US, accompanied by his beloved donkey and dog. He plans to travel along the Trail of Tears, the 3,500 km route once walked by the Cherokee nation. He proceeds with his severe journey despite heart disease, arthritis, the aches and pains of old age, and even the orders of his doctor. Along the way he fosters a bond with his animal companions that goes beyond the boundaries of species. Will they really reach the US? This is a road movie that celebrates the life of a man trying to be free and true to himself, despite his advanced age.
◆Director’s Statement
Manolo (Manuel) has always been an inspiration to me. He is my uncle, and my godfather. When I was a child, he used to take me and his other nephews to the countryside for “adventures,” which basically consisted of the sightings of wild animals, fantastic stories about the countryside, or mysterious trips into the unknown. Thinking back, they were ordinary moments that he would turn into fantasy for us. All of us were fascinated by this character and sometimes we would wait at eight in the morning outside our houses to see Manolo passing by, begging him to take us with him. But one day, Manolo divorced from my auntie and a terrible silence became established between the two families. Many years passed with no contact—our relationship was interrupted at some point in our childhood and stayed there, frozen in our memories.
It was Christmas Day 2012 when I visited Manolo. I was about to move to the US and I felt a strong need to see him. I recognized the same man as always: his small eyes, his big ears, his deep voice and his same love for American hats. But something had changed: after two heart attacks, he now walked and walked with his new best friend, a beautiful Andalusian donkey called Gorrión (“Sparrow”).
We spent hours talking, and we promised that never again would there be silence between us. We wanted to resume our relationship from the very moment that it had stopped.
This film is both the continuation of a broken relationship, and our biggest adventure together yet. And what a big fantasy a film is!
September 14（Fri）19:00
While We Kiss The Sky Talk session with director Mogi Ayako and Head of Shobu Gakuen Fukumori Shin will be held after the show.
While We Kiss The Sky
Dir: Mogi Ayako, Werner Penzel / JAPAN / 2016 / Bu-ray / 79 min
September 21（Fri）19:00
Stubborn Dreams Talk session with filmmaker and Chairman of the Tohoku University of Art and Design Negishi Kichitaro and YIDFF Yamagata Office Director Kusakabe Katsuyoshi will be held after the show.
Stubborn Dreams
YIDFF ’91 International Competition The Robert and Frances Flaherty Prize
Dir: Szobolits Béla / HUNGARY / 1989 / 16mm / 93 min
◆note
Anyone who has seen old MGM musicals with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland as high-school kids exhorting everyone to “let’s put on a show” will recognize the momentum behind Stubborn Dreams. This is no Hollywood movie and its characters are hardly junior high-school kids. Old-world romanticism and nostalgia replaces the infectious but artificial enthusiasm of the MGM musicals. Indeed, the characters—residents of a Hungarian village called Rábagyarmat—are mostly old people reminiscing about the past. They all belong to an amateur drama society which which has staged an annual play since 1920（with intervals, between the war years, and political “lean periods” resulting from the policy of the communist government）. In dealing with the checquered history of these amateur thespians, the filmmakers and their subjects turn their movie into a meditation about growing old but sticking to tradition and making something of one’s lives.
◆Director’s Statement
Behind the beyond, in the village called Rabagyarmat near the border, there has been a theatrical company for seventy years. The person who has been in charge of putting plays on stage and holding the troupe together for 35 years running is Laszlo Acs, the school principal. The railway lines to the village were taken out as an economy measure. its memory is still cherished by the principal. The players form a close-knit community, and the life in the village would be dreary without them. Most members of the company are simple, overworked people who bear a trace of history in their hands and faces; a piece of the past survives in their gestures. When they are free, they spend the time with the company, and they greet the sunrise with the sound of the accordion. They have a subconscious desire for beauty, and an internal driver to break through and to be different. And for a short moment anyone can indeed break through. For a short moment anyone can turn into a star.
* Every talk session will be conducted in Japanese only.
[Venue]KUGURU (1F Tongari Bldg., Nanukamachi 2-7-23, Yamagata City) [Admission]Advanced ticket: 1,200 yen / Door ticket: 1,500 yen (including one free drink) * For reservation, please check out the Yamagata Biennale webpage. [Presented by]Tohoku University of Art and Design, YIDFF (NPO), Hori Ken’ichiro [Supported by]Fukumori Shin (Shobu Gakuen), Aizawa Kumi (Silent Voice) [Contact]phone: 023-666-4480 (YIDFF Yamagata office)
Documentary Dream Show—Yamagata in Tokyo is here again! YIDFF’s program travels to Tokyo, as usual, one year after the festival in Yamagata city, showcasing titles from the International Competition and New Asian Currents, selected films from the Fredi M. Murer retrospective and other special programs. Adding feature programs unique to the Tokyo event, the lineup will consist of around 70 films. Look out for details that will be announced shortly!
Documentary Dream Show — Yamagata in Tokyo 2018
●October 6（Sat）— 26（Fri）, 2018
[Venue]K’s Cinema(Shinjuku, Tokyo) [Presented by]Cinematrix [Co-presented by]YIDFF (NPO), K’s Cinema [Supported by]Japan Arts Council [Contact]phone: 81-3-5362-0671 (Cinematrix)
Screenings at the Yamagata Documentary Film Library present documentaries and movies rarely shown on television or in theaters, including works from the Film Library vaults.
Not That Way but This
15:00- 18:50-（Screens twice）
Not That Way but This
YIDFF ’97 The Pursuit of Japanese Documentary
Director: Yanagisawa Hisao／1982／113 min
●Notes
Having worked as an assistant director at Shochiku in Kyoto before the war, Yanagisawa Hisao made his début as a director of documentaries in the post war period. Beginning in the late 1960s with the release of his Children Before the Dawn (“Yoake mae no kodomotachi,” 1968) he has continued to document disabled children. From that time he altogether made 5 films over 20 years, casting his critical gaze in a variety of directions. In this work, he shows the daily lives of a group of mentally disabled adults in Chita, Aichi Prefecture. 45 year old Toki strictly observes a daily working routine of simple tasks, straightening books on shelves in a book store, and visiting a regular circuit of pachinko parlors in order to empty their ashtrays. Yanagisawa introduces us to each of the film’s subjects in a similar manner: “bad boy” Noboru for instance, or 51 year old Kayo, who fends off everyone with a bamboo stick. The community came into existence quite gradually, inspired by an exchange set up by some of the parents. Overcoming the objections of the local government association, the residents move into a rented building and, working with their guidance staff, they decide to create a facility based on plans they themselves have drawn up. Their parents and the local government association, however, believe that such a scheme is unworkable. In the rest of the film, we see a faithful portrayal of the group figuring out who should be assigned what task as they remodel and finally complete work on the building turning it into a communal work place they dub “Popeye House.”
[Venue]The YAMAGATA Documentary Film Library(Yamagata Big Wing 3F) [Admission]Free admission for members (Member’s fee: free) [Presented by]YIDFF (NPO) [Contact]e-mail：info@yidff.jp(YIDFF Yamagata office)
Screenings at the Yamagata Documentary Film Library present documentaries and movies rarely shown on television or in theaters, including works from the Film Library vaults.
Director: Manuel Alberto Maia / INDONESIA / 2016 / 76 min
●Notes
Kupang, West Timor. Nokas, a young man who works in the fields, is set to marry Ci, who raises chickens. But things do not go so easily, as unsaid rules of marriage between two families stand in the way of the couple’s happiness. As the patriarchs of both families reach agreements about the dowry and details of the ceremony, Nokas‘ resolve is strengthened, regardless of the financial cost. He turns to his sister—a powerful single mother—and to his mother and her husband who live on Semau Island across the strait, for the necessary funds.
Nokas
●Director’s Statement
I first met Nokas in April 2013, when I was working on an assignment documenting the struggle of Kolhua farmers in jeopardy of losing their land. He was resting on his farm, and in the midst of the smoke from his cigarettes, we spoke about our motherland and our birthright to live on our own land. Nokas is one of thousands of Kolhuas who continue to struggle against the local government’s mega-dam construction plan—reportedly worth over 46 million dollars.
Nokas won my heart when I learned that he was still single. A single young man in Kupang who prefers to work his land is uncommon. Most would rather hang out at the local billiard bars or work in other big cities. The challenges they face because of the government’s project are also very discouraging. Nokas’ life choices became my main drive.
My interest in this hardworking young man and his difficult circumstances led me to a profound understanding of the complexity of his family life. Out of narratives on marriage, family, and culture in Timor, I focused the film on Nokas’ efforts to fulfill his requested dowry and finally marry his true love. Therefore, I dare to say that Nokas represents contemporary Timorese life.
In the three years I worked on this film, I learned so much; not only from my characters and their culture, but also about how film has become an important and powerful medium in fighting against the structural poverty endured by many groups in society. Nokas and his family gained the same awareness, which led them to open up to being filmed and partaking in the long process of filmmaking. The whole production experience, from pre-production to post—and even through the ongoing distribution process of the film—has been a very fruitful and rewarding learning process not only for me, but also for the friends who joined me on this journey.
Director: Leonard Retel Helmrich / THE NETHERLANDS / 2010 / 111 min
●Notes
This film is the conclusion to a trilogy, filmed over 12 years, that follows an Indonesian family and centers on a grandmother who has come from the countryside to visit her granddaughter, who has lived with her uncle’s family since the death of her parents. The film briskly captures arguments between the uncle, who lacks a steady job but devotes himself to his fighting fish, and his disapproving wife, and the problem of whether the rebellious granddaughter will go to university. While skillfully touching upon religious conflict, the gap between rich and poor, and attitudinal differences between generations, the deft camerawork dramatically and humorously depicts the everyday lives of ordinary people with strong familial bonds.
●Director’s Statement
Position among the Stars is an observational documentary in the cinéma-vérité or the American Direct Cinema tradition. My deep familiarity with the people at the center of the trilogy of which this film is a part ensures that I can anticipate the potential outcome of any dramatic moment. While shooting—and while observing the family from the inside—I am focused on elements that are linked to one or more of the main themes. As with all the films in the trilogy, the narrative was created in the editing room out of more than 300 hours of footage.
Eventually we selected the best scenes from those shot that deal with the main theme of the rapidly changing Indonesian society. We edited them in a sequence that seemed both logical and poetic, since poetry is layered, just like reality. That doesn’t mean the film lends itself to one interpretation only. Events in real life are often much longer than depicted in the film, having been pared down to their essence according to the personal vision of the filmmaker.
I shot Position among the Stars with the same method as the previous two documentaries: “Single Shot Cinema,” which I developed myself. In practice that means that I film the events with one single shot, with one dynamically moving camera. I direct the camera toward positions that best express the drama in the ongoing situation. Since I follow my main characters very closely, I’m center-stage at every event, so I can shoot the situation from inside out. I have opted for this method because I realize that as an observer, I am part of the event that I am observing.
Position among the Stars is edited using scenes from the life of a family while the drama of reality unfolds in front of the camera—narrated by the cinematography, which is constantly searching and discovering.
Leonard Retel Helmrich
Position among the Stars
[Venue]The YAMAGATA Documentary Film Library(Yamagata Big Wing 3F) [Admission]Free admission for members (Member’s fee: free) [Presented by]YIDFF (NPO) [Contact]e-mail：info@yidff.jp(YIDFF Yamagata office)
The YAMAGATA Documentary Film Library Friday Theater（June 8 Fri）
Screenings at the Yamagata Documentary Film Library present documentaries and movies rarely shown on television or in theaters, including works from the Film Library vaults.
50-Year-Anniversary of the First Moon Landing
USIS（United States Information Service） Films 14:00- 19:00-（screens twice）
Science Report No.103
USIS Films（produced in Japan） / 1967 / 16mm / 14 min
Science Report No.150
USIS Films（produced in Japan） / 1969 / 16mm / 14 min
Science Report Special Issue — Project Space
USIS Films（produced in Japan） / 1970 / 16mm / 15 min
Apollo 11 — Man on the Moon
USIS Films（produced in Japan） / 1970 / 16mm / 30 min
Apollo 11—Man on the Moon
Science Report Special Issue—Project Space
Science Report No. 103
Science Report No. 150
[Venue]The YAMAGATA Documentary Film Library(Yamagata Big Wing 3F) [Admission]Free admission for members (Member’s fee: free) [Presented by]YIDFF (NPO) [Contact]e-mail：info@yidff.jp(YIDFF Yamagata office)
Screenings at the Yamagata Documentary Film Library present documentaries and movies rarely shown on television or in theaters, including works from the Film Library vaults.
In a village in northern Lebanon close to the border with Syria, farmland has been abandoned due to enduring sectarian conflict in the area and the war in Syria. Families of different religions used to live together side by side, but now an exclusionary sentiment is in the air. The film follows Haykal, a man who raises apples and sheep, and runs a restaurant with Ruwaida; at the same time building a house stone by stone so that his wife and children might someday return home. He lives his life as he always has—as if the act of remaining on this land has turned into something of a calling.
Those Who Remain
●Director’s Statement
Haykal’s story is important in the political time being, for he is, as his name indicates, a temple that guards the area where there are geographical and sectarian intersections (between Shiaa’s Hermel clearing, the Sunni’s Lebanese-Syrian north border and his Christian village). He represents the desire of Christians to stay on their land amidst the prevalence of fear of threats from the extremist currents. Unlike the sectarian people of his Christian village, Haykal “feudal” by working with his hands, and he is rooted as a Christian who lives among Muslims.
Haykal is like a marked temple in the place he resides, that he builds and protects. Those Who Remain contemplates his story as a metaphor for a national situation that simply strives to keep the Christians of the Levant on their land without belonging to sectarian parties, for Haykal’s main characteristic is human and not sectarian.
In the never-ending conflict in Lebanon, everyone, regardless of religious sect or political party, has suffered or lost a loved one. In August 2006, during the weeks of continuous Israeli air raids on Beirut, the director and her friends share with their parents a desire for peace but take different routes of action to express it. The Christian Maronite director involves her whole family and her friends in the production of the film, revealing the honest feelings—bordering on resignation—that arise from a life lived in daily chaos.
●Director’s Statement
In a sectarian state like Lebanon, people are born, raised, and defined through their sectarian identity. As for myself, I was born in Beirut in a Christian Maronite family, and this religious belonging became, since my early childhood, my identity. I can remember that during the civil war in Lebanon, my father took us to the mountains, an area totally inhabited by Christians, where he thought we would be protected from sectarian massacres. There we were not directly exposed to the sectarian combat, but to the “protection” of a fanatic Christian militia (the Lebanese forces) who, in the name of Jesus Christ and under the slogan of “protecting the Christian community,” was brainwashing us against Muslims, Palestinians, Syrians, and other Christians who would be different.
After the war, from 1990 till 2005, I spent 15 years realizing how much sectarianism destroys human beings, how much it erects a barrier to mutual understanding and social justice. I can see it clearly in my environment: my parents, my uncles, my sisters closed and isolated themselves in their Christian identity and till today they act as fatalist minorities, fearing everything.
Lately, since the 14th of February 2005, Lebanon has been living on the edge of war.
It is a very tense situation, sectarianism has been growing stronger among different communities, and I personally fear that a new civil war is approaching.
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